Other Answers (5)

• Malthus is one of the original doom and gloomers. I have read books written in the 1970s that predicted many catastrophes, including famine. What the doom and gloomers have underestimated is man%26#039;s ability to adopt to situations.
  
  I wonder if anyone will even remember E.O. Wilson when the population doubles. Strains were visible decades ago. There have been famines in India and China in the past centuries and these countries have solved that problem for now--and they are much more populous now. Ireland too had famines and now is quite prosperous. 0% 0 Votes
• Think he was mostly right. You see it with wild animal species in ecology all the time. The population is controlled by the resources available.
  
  The difference with people is we can recognize trends (most of us) and adjust our behaviors and technologies to more efficiently use the resources we depend on most. The problem comes when we don%26#039;t see clear connections between what we use and the damage we cause. We can figure it out, but it takes time. As the population increases, we have less time to react (figure out the relationships, how they may impact us, and determine the best ways to minimize the impact). 0% 0 Votes
• i agree. his basic maths is unassailable. his projection was based on the agricultural capacity of his day, which has been vastly increased in several %26#039;revolutions%26#039; since, but it must be obvious to anyone not kidding themselves that we really are reaching a limit now, or in fact have overshot it already. we are living in interesting times..... 0% 0 Votes
• wrong.. it assumes that the biosphere is creating waste.. that is NOT true... matter and energy can be neither created or destroyed....
  
  we can have infinite growth we would just have to find better ways to recycle the waste we produce into the resources we need.... 0% 0 Votes
• I have not read what Malthus wrote (though I%26#039;m going to look it up now).
  
  Dr. Jello is %26quot;correct.%26quot; Every single person on earth could be given 5 acres of land (actually it%26#039;s just under that now, about 4.8 acres of land per-person). However who is going to get the five acres of prime arible agricultural land in California, and who is going to have their five acre on top of Mt. Everest?
  
  Some of our wastes, we humans can dispose of indefinitely. We can use glass and aluminum over and over again, as long as we wish. Our coal and oil, however are limited, and will eventually run out. Unless another astroid hits the earth....then more coal and oil will be created in the super heated sludge factory that happened to the earth before (all of our oil was created during just a couple of cataclismic events).
  
  We can use wood products forever, as long as we continue to plant forests after we harvest them. Otherwise Earth will turn into one giant Easter Island.
  
  I live, work, and own land in the agriculture sector, and have most of my life. I%26#039;m a lot closer to nature, and see the changes that happen over the years,and decades, because I%26#039;m outside in nature every single day.
  
  The global economy scares the crap out of me. This is the first time in the history of mankind such a thing has happened. I personally believe it%26#039;s doomed to fail, and fail in quiet a spectacular way.
  
  I raise meat goats. I have customers from all over the globe who come to my farm. Many of them are from Saudi Arabia, and all of the central African countries.
  
  This year has been an especially long, wet, and very cold spring here in Idhao. My pasture is bairly up to my ankles, and that%26#039;s with zero livestock yet turned out on it. To my customers from these desert countries, and serriously overgrazed countries, my pasture looks lush and wonderful. I know if I turn my stock out, there%26#039;s only a days worth of food for them, tops.
  
  Then the pasture will need to rest, and re-grow. Or I could allow the goats to remain on it...and of course they would eat it down to bare dirt, and compact the soil. Then the winds would come and take my topsoil away. That kind of thing is happening in many, many part of the world (like Africa, and India) because there are simply too many people, and too much livestock, in too small an area.
  
  Last summer my neighbors well went dry. Their well is 150 feet deep....that is an exceptionally deep well. Our is 200 feet....we didn%26#039;t loose our water....yet.
  
  I live in Idaho, in the very heartland of Potato country. In 1905 the farmers made the Snake River run dry right where I live. Not just low, but completely dry.
  
  So over 100 years ago, there were already too many farmers for this desert ecology. How many more people do you supose there are in 100 years?
  
  Now wells are punched into the Snake River Aquifer to supply water from underground for the farms (as well as tapping the Snake River). My neighbors 150 foot deep well went dry.......
  
  I know what is happening the the entire Aquifer...same thing that happened to the Snake River 100 years ago.
  
  I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle area. I remember when I was a small child and looking at the suburbs of Seattle. There were entire hills that were masses of trees and forests, with a house here and there. Now it%26#039;s masses of houses, with a tree here and there. And people wonder why their houses slide down the hillsides when the rains come?
  
  Where I grew up in my teen years, there was a creek at the bottom of the hill, just a short ways down from my house. Way far up the hill, there was a dairy farm. The dairy farmer eventually sold his land. An elementary school was build where the house, and milking parlor stood. Then a church....then hundreds of houses. Five years after the dairy farmer sold his land, the pollution runoff from all those perfect lawns that had been installed killed the rare fresh water clams in the creek at the bottom of the hill.