THE 20™ CENTURY MIRACLE THAT COULD HAVE CONVERTED THE REVEREND MALTHUS. In 1789, the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus announced the end of the world. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, he proved to his own satisfaction that sooner or later there would be more people than the land could possibly feed. Malthus was a professor of history and political economy at a time when most popular thinkers believed the world was perfectible.. .that the day was not far off when all wrongs would be righted. Malthus boldly disagreed. On his travels through Europe and his native England he saw that whereas the population constantly increased, the means of subsistence was fixed by the amount of farmland available. He warned that growth must be stopped —that families must be limited in size or face starvation. For a century after his death in 1834, various glib interpretations of the Malthusian theory were synonymous with pessimism, resignation and doomsaying. What the Reverend didn't foresee, of course, was the scientific revolution, which enabled modern agriculture to outstrip the 19th century farmer's productivity. We think the introduction of polyester fibers might also have cheered up the baleful Reverend. This consumer product is making it possible to increase dramatically the amount of land available for growing food. In 1977 alone, for example, the U. S. textile industry used over 3.6 billion pounds of polyester fibers. To grow an equivalent amount of cotton would have
required some 7 million acres of farmland— an area larger than New Jersey and Delaware combined. In theory, these 7 million acres could have produced enough soybeans to supply the protein needs of more than 100 million people... a very comforting safety valve for the Reverend Malthus to have contemplated. As the leading developer and supplier of ethylene glycol—40 percent of the raw material in polyester fiber—Union Carbide has, since 1925, pioneered new and improved technology for the production of this vital chemical. We are spending at the rate of 10 million dollars a year on research—not only to improve our present level of efficiency, but perhaps even more significantly, to develop a process that will no longer depend on scarce petroleum for feedstocks. The ethylene glycol sales needs of the growing polyester industry are being served today by Andy Black, Art Boucher, Dick Butler, John Fleck, Don Harris, Mike Jones and Walt Locher. These bright, knowledgeable people know the kind of problems that stumped the Reverend Malthus exist only to be solved. And that the best way to make a miracle is more hard work.
PEOPLE PLANNING THE FUTURE. UNION CARBIDE Chemicals and Plastics Feb. 20, 1978C&EN
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