Is Planet Earth Full?
Overpopulation is a dirty word.
Politicians talk about climate change and plastic pollution; conservationists preach of mass extinction and deforestation. We decry the erosion of our soils and contamination of our water.
But, heaven forbid, you suggest there are too many people. That’s a cardinal sin: it’s blaming the voter base. It’s questioning our core biological instinct. Life is good; people are even better.
That hasn’t stopped a daring few.
Back in 1798, Thomas Malthus — a cleric and scholar — was the first to preach the dangers of never-ending population growth. Writing in ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’, Malthus explained that every increase in food production did not lead to increased nutrition, but ever more people. Agriculture was a Ponzi scheme. Eventually, Malthus predicted, humanity would reach the confines of our finite planet: the brick wall of famine and disease.
Yet nothing happened. The centuries passed and growth persisted.
As the 1970s approached, the message of Malthus was preached once more, notably in Paul Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’. Mass starvation awaited us. Hundreds of millions were to die. But the 1970s came and went.
Like the boy who cried wolf, the peddlers of overpopulation are branded doom-mongers. Critics…
