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Overpopulation? Fiddlesticks! There are no inherent limits to growth.

Article Excerpt
In the late twentieth century, it once again became popular to claim that the world is "overpopulated" and that we were headed for demographic disaster. Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb predicted massive starvation well before the end of the century. It didn't happen. World population did indeed roughly double in the second half of the twentieth century--but the per capita output of food (and everything else) increased. Not just in the rich countries either: all the world not under communist control did better People were--and are--eating better than ever despite phenomenal population growth. Malthus held that the earth is incapable of increasing agricultural output at more than an "arithmetical" rate, while population expands at a "geometrical" rate. He was wrong. Food output not only increased at a geometric rate, it actually increased faster than population.

The Malthusians didn't know what hit them. Actually, some of them still don't--we still hear them muttering that we have "too many people." But there comes a time when the facts clobber you in the face with such force that it's impossible not to notice. Despite all the claims, when starvation occurs, it is due not to agriculture and the limited "carrying capacity" of the planet but to politics. To be more precise, there are two sorts of starvations: little and big. In the little ones, natural disasters beset a few thousand unfortunate people, creating short-term emergencies. Then the rest of us rush them supplies. If the local...

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