For 218 years---since Thomas Robert Malthus published the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population---people have been coming up with new rationales for limiting or even reducing human population. For Malthus, the fundamental reason is that people ate too much, so increasing their numbers would lead to starvation as farmers' ability to raise enough food fell behind a mushrooming population. Others since then have expanded his argument to all kinds of other resources---forests, … [Read more...]