Overconsumption Is the Problem, Not Overpopulation
You should care more about consuming consciously than not having kids or scorning others who do.
Does the name ‘Malthus’ ring a bell?
In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned of an impending ecological trap driven by overpopulation. As he saw it, exponential population growth would override arithmetic growth in agricultural yields. He foresaw too many mouths to feed and not enough food to feed them. This became known as the Malthusian trap, and the Malthus philosophy has been the subject of vigorous debate ever since.
Six years after Malthus introduced his theory, the world population reached one billion. And 216 years after that milestone, we’re now hurtling toward a population of eight billion.
The overpopulation Malthus expected has indeed come to bear.
But the bigger ecological problem is one the Englishman couldn’t have seen coming: an explosion in consumption fueled largely by the same technological advancements that have led to exponential growth in agricultural yields.
Malthus’s premise — that a dichotomy between human population growth and resource availability would spell trouble — was dead on.
