Essay On Remembering Malthus

Population Growth is an issue that exists in today’s world that needs to be confronted before it becomes out of hand. The population itself has reached overwhelming numbers making it a problem that could turn to be dangerous. The amount of humans that the earth can support or the carrying capacity is slowly rising but at a much slower rate than the population growth rate. The increasing growth rate has its negative effects environmentally, agriculturally, socially, and economically and also has its positive effects nationally, and economically. The government is brainstorming and trying to come up with ways to decrease

Throughout the book “Stuffed and Starved”, Raj Patel, the author, makes connections between the current state of the world food system, and the Malthusian and Rhodes dilemmas, the first, proposing that the world population is growing exponentially, but the resources to feed this growing population are finite, whereas the second suggests that hunger leads to unrest, hence as long as people are kept fed, they won't revolt. Patel sections the system and points out to the defects at all levels—starting from the fundamental unit—the seed, going broader touching upon redistributors, consumers, corporations, and, above all, governments and policies. The five major areas Patel criticizes I would like to emphasize are: prevalent selection of desirable

Dr. Forsyth implements plenty of evidence as well as proven statistics to back up his outlook on these issues. The growth of human population is happening at an exponential rate, implying that in a short period of time population growth will double. “We find it difficult to comprehend exponential growth, but it may prove to be our fatal blind spot” [3]. When analysing the world’s population over a long period of time, it took roughly 19,000 years for the world’s population to go from 5million people to 500 million people in 1500 A.D. [4] With an estimated population of 7.5 billion people [5], for a period less than 1000 years, population increased more than 1500 times its size than it was in the 1500’s. In addition, on a more minute scale of time, in 1950 the world’s population was roughly 2.5 billion people [6] in merely 50 years the world’s population has tripled. With these statics, it is evident that the world’s population is increasing at an incomprehensive rate. With populations at their peak, overconsumption is another problem this world faces, as Dr. Forsyth affirms “humans consume far more than their fair share of the Earth’s natural productivity.”[7] Due to this over consumption of resources, there is a vast demand for cheap food which results in the clear cutting of large forest to generate room for new plantations of food. When doing so, humans destroy habitats that

Thesis: The topic of human population growth is an important issue due to its impacts upon people in developing countries, economics, religion, food production, and the environment; without any limitations, population growth can lead to negative consequences, such as famine and environmental destruction, or even positive outcomes, such as potential economic growth.

No matter how many people do claim overpopulation is not a relevant issue, it very much is because of the simple fact that starvation and pollution are very real and existing issues that are ultimately offset by overpopulation. In an article titled “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” author Erle C. Ellis uses the analogy “Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences,” to argue that overpopulation is not a problem by stating the opposing claim. “We are nothing like bacteria in a petri dish,” Mr. Ellis solemnly asserts, “...these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain

Renowned environmentalist Lester R. Brown wrote about 10 Troubling Trends we’re seeing in in our environment and in our global ecosystem. His fourth point on his list, population growth, is one that has been an issue since the 1950s. As far as our population, urbanization, and industrialization goes, functionalists recognize that while it has been functional in creating a more effective, interdependent, and productive society, it has also been problematic. It has weakened social bonds and an absence of norms. We have began to lose our ability to function effectively. Even with our growth of large complex societies due to the population getting bigger and bigger. Brown’s ninth point on his list is the spreading of hunger. This is a direct

Imagine if Earth’s population was so large that all of the world’s resources had to be exhausted to their last limits just to provide food for only half of the population. That is exactly what 17th-century demographer Thomas Malthus envisioned when he predicted how the world’s population would affect the world’s resources. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in the late 18th century, Malthus expressed many controversial predictions in which he argued that the increase of resources was arithmetic while the increase in population was exponential; thus, he concluded that the population would greatly outpace the amount of resource growth on Earth. Being that Malthus made his predictions during the industrial revolution (which was when North America and Europe reached stage two of the demographic transition), many critics of his theory claim that Malthus’ calculations were inaccurate because he did not consider technological advances in relation to food production. Also, Malthus’ critics believe that he overestimated population increase (mainly because of the time period he lived in) and (adverb) underestimated the production rate of resources. Though both sides of the debate are plausible, it is evident that Malthus’ views were incorrect because modern-day statistics regarding population and food production do not support his claims. Therefore, because of Malthus’ uncircumspect approach when he predicted population

The main concern when population increase is brought up is “how are we going to feed everyone?” The answer to this question is not a new farming technique or a new genetically modified plant that grow at the speed of light. The answer is simply a change in our lifestyle and to stop wasting so much food. My mother and father every weekend go out and buy a weeks’ worth of groceries and a lot of times they buy too much of a food that we already have or they but avocados that will go bad by the time we need to use them. This creates so much unnecessary waste and we are all guilty of it. I once met a woman who lived in France and she told me about how every day after work she bought the groceries she needed for that night and the two benefits to this were that her food was always fresh and she never threw out food. To be honest I had never thought of only buying what you needed for that night it always made sense to me to buy everything at once and get it over with and not have to worry about buy groceries until next weekend. Little did I realize that this is the mindset that causes so much waste because we are simply unaware of the problems that we are creating. The combination of the food waste we throw out as consumers and the food waste that is thrown out by businesses across the globe is 1.3 Billion tons which is over a third of what the globe produces; this is a number that is much

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”- Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

Thomas Robert Malthus is one of the most controversial figures in the history of economics. He achieved fame chiefly from the population doctrine that is now closely linked with his name. Contrary to the late-eighteenth-century views that it was possible to improve people’s living standards, Malthus held that any such improvements would cause the population to grow and thereby reverse these gains. Malthus also sparked controversy with his contemporaries on issues of methodology (by arguing that economics should be an empirical rather than a deductive science), over questions of theory (by holding that economies can experience prolonged bouts of high unemployment), and on policy issues (by arguing against free

Our main topic for today is that fact that there are over 7.2 billion people in the world, with about another billion being added every twelve years, that is about two hundred and twenty thousand people added everyday. With this rapidly producing population comes one big thing, overpopulation, or the function that is to many of a certain species living in a place that does not have the resources to sustain that size of a population. A major example that shows that humans are overpopulated in New York city, New York has approximately 8.4 million people in only about 300 square miles, or the fact that so many people living in the world, and the fact that one in every seven people go to bed hungry every night.25000 of these hungry people died

Adequate availability of resources, such as food and water, are only available to a limited population, and the way of life of humans is often at the expense of other species and natural habitats. Also, in 3 to 4 decades an extra 2 billion people will be living on Earth. This means food production must rise by 60%.

Epstein Paul. “Food Security and Climate Change: The True Cost of Carbon” Sustainability: A Reader for Writers. Ed. Carl G. Herndl. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 147-151. Print. The author of the article shows people how climate change and weather events eventually reduce food production, food insecurity and trigger political instability with specific examples and statistics. The author ultimately concludes that it is a critical time for people to

Roger Smith is the author of, “Population Growth and Environmental Impacts”, and he explains how many scientists believe that the usage of natural resources is much greater than what is actually replaced (1). As well as that, “biologists believe that because of human expansion, pollution, and increasing energy consumption, a mass extinction is under way that is as serious as the one that killed the dinosaurs,” (Smith 1). This is evident all around us because if one were to take a look at a landfill plastic, styrofoam is plying up day after day. Much food is wasted and due to the lack of resources for construction companies to build in ever growing cities and most resort to receiving the natural resources from foreign places, i.e. the Amazon rainforest deforestation. It is true that human population has had a rapid increase of demand on Earths supply of resources ,however the amount of people is not causing the rapid depletion. It is the lack of proper usage and distribution of the resources. Pregnant Pause is a pro-life Organization that has a team of people researching and analyzing data to see if the their is enough on Earth to provide for everyone. The writer(s) of the article has stated the obvious conclusion that “the overwhelming majority of Americans and Europeans, the problem is not that they have too little to eat, but that they eat too much,” (Pause 1).

Holding on to these fundamental concerns an examination of world hunger and population growth illustrates the problematic nature of this program. The connection between hunger and overpopulation is the notion that the world cannot produce enough food to feed the number of human beings alive. However, the "world produces enough grain alone to provide every man, woman, and child on Earth with 3,000 calories a day" (Hartmann 1995: 16), illustrating this "fact" as profoundly false. Hartmann further states, "at least on a global scale their is not shortage of food"(Hartmann 1995: 16), which insinuates that the concern is not production, but rather distribution. The unequal distribution and consumption of resources by the West (Hartmann 1995: