On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 22:50 +0530, Deepa Mohan wrote: > By 2040, we would need to triple the global food supply in order to > meet the basic food needs of the eleven billion people who are > expected to be alive. But doing so would require a 1000 percent > increase in the total energy expended in food production.[54] Guess > what? Eleven billion people won't be alive by 2040.
the nice, and oft-unremembered thing about malthus [1] was that he couched his dire predictions so similar to the one above with caveats such as "Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind." most modern malthusians, such as the author of the excerpted text above, forget to do this; indeed, they take for granted that their pessimistic projections are based on correct premises, even though similar pessimistic projections have always been proven wrong by the facts, so far. -rishab 1. "An Essay on the Principle of Population", 1798, available e.g. at http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/malthus/popu.txt
