Thomas Robert Malthus has had a very long run. Issuing his first essay on population in 1798, he has persuaded millions of people that the world is threatened by overpopulation.“The effect of Malthusianism was immediate and dramatic,” writes historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. “For half a century social attitudes and policies were decisively shaped by the new turn of thought.”[1] And the impact continues.Until November I had never read Malthus’s essay.[2] To my surprise, it is a delightful … [Read more...]
The trouble with the political push for climate change activism
The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, as the old song goes, have shoved their way into the fall. And with them, the political push for climate change activism chucked kids out of the classroom and into the streets this past Friday (not that they needed a reason to cut class, especially in nice weather). Not to be outdone by the shouting students, this past Monday, adults from around the globe with their own dreams of climate utopia (and excuse to cut work and party in a fab city), descended … [Read more...]
How to Prevent Climate Change? Prevent Births!
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...]
