Thomas Malthus hypothesized that, while food supplies increase only in an arithmetical progression, populations increase in a geometric progression. Thus, as both entities increase, the food supply would become insufficient for the population, resulting in famines and increased poverty. Malthus's predictions failed to materialize but may become relevant in the context of global warming.

The British demographer and political economist Thomas Robert Malthus was born in 1766. Malthus was homeschooled until he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784. He studied English, Latin, and Greek, but his main interest was math. Receiving a master's degree in 1791, he was elected a fellow of Jesus College and ordained an Anglican minister in 1797. Malthus's training as a church leader served him well in describing his ideas about poverty, disease, and famine. These issues and his schooling led Malthus to develop a unique philosophy about God's rule and how populations could be controlled.

Malthus formulated his theory of population growth in the pamphlet An Essay on the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798), creating a public flurry. Malthus researched many methods of containing catastrophic population growth. He understood that humankind had natural devices, such as crime, disease, and war, for controlling population. The heart of Malthus's doctrine is that an increasing population puts an ever-increasing pressure on natural resources. He was searching for an answer that would allow a balance between population growth and the increase in the world's supply of food.

Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population caused immediate debate in intellectual circles. It proposed that population growth would outpace food production, with devastating consequences.

The technologies that have allowed food growth to increase in step with population growth may only be an intermediate solution to the problems posed by Malthus. The concept of climate change did not exist in Malthus's world or in his theories, but the effects of climate change today may be more than technology can deal with.

Malthus also recognized that human activities could reduce the fertility of natural resources and further impair people's abilities to supply the essential goods needed to survive (Eiseley, 1961).

Notable intellectuals have called Malthus's principles of population growth a theory of doom and gloom, yet his work may reveal the need for equal and just allocation and use of resources.

Malthus's theory ignited scholarly debate about the balanced use of natural resources in order to keep the climate in harmony with the universe. A new factor in the race between population growth and increasing food supplies is the effect of climate change on food production. Climate change is attributed to many causes, primarily human related, including increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and increasing ozone levels. Malthus's principles of population growth are an important factor in understanding the effects of change and how these changes affect human beings and their climate. The very process of providing the basics of human existence alters the environment that provided these basics, positively or negatively, and may affect Earth's climate.

In spite of living with the ideas and advances of the Enlightenment, Malthus overlooked the technological innovations that were being developed. These innovations were changing lives, altering the environment, and allowing people to survive longer.

The science of agriculture made many advances in the 1800's that allowed farmers to make more productive use of their lands. The development of effective contraception also had the potential to check population growth. These events illustrated the flaws in Malthus's theory.

Many developing nations have not adopted improved farming techniques or methods of contraception, however (Ehrlich, 1990). In the case of these nations, Malthus's theory seems to be coming true. Overpopulation, famine, and war continue to devastate these nations, yet the economic successes of industrializing nations tend to counter Malthus's theory.

Economists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have criticized Malthus's theory on the grounds that technological advances, the expansion of the market economy, the division of labor, and capital goods have offset large population increases. These developments have made possible the competition between nations for wealth, power, glory, and prestige. This competition, while increasing food and resource supplies, has also resulted in environmental degradation. This environmental abuse has led many environmentalists to claim that continuing resource depletion and waste will lead to a Malthusian end to the recognizable world.

It is sometimes asserted that Malthus was incorrect, because the population grew more slowly than he predicted, while resources have grown at a much faster rate. What is important to his argument is that the population always expands to the limits imposed upon the society. He points out that a growth in population forces an increase in productivity, which causes a larger growth in the population. The same increase in productivity fuels changes to the environment that may cause changes in climate as well.

References

1. Ehrlich, Paul, and Anne Ehrlich. The Population Explosion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.

2. Eiseley, Loren. Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It. New York: Doubleday, 1961.

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