The way of the world

This book stands in an ancient intellectual tradition. Its theme dates back to the year 1798, in which the English economist Thomas Malthus published his famous theory of demography. Human population, Malthus reasoned, grows exponentially, as each extra couple multiplies itself in turn; whereas food production can increase only arithmetically, and beyond a point not at all. Return to equilibrium is possible only through starvation or disease, provoked either by natural catastrophe or by wars over the scarce remaining resources.

The resources of the earth have proved to be more elastic than Malthus foresaw. The mechanisms by which they may be exhausted are infinitely more complicated than he realised. And, apart from the phenomenon of soil exhaustion, which had been familiar to mankind since ancient times, he did not foresee the actual destruction of the productive capacity of the earth in the process of trying to extract more from it. Nor did he anticipate the technology by which mankind would one day acquire the means of controlling its own fertility.