Defying Malthus
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In the wake of the Second World War, the human population grew faster than ever. As in times past, some of the brightest among us began to ask if there would be enough food. And yet, when it looked like the human population might grow beyond our ability to feed it, Malthus was defied again. A revolution, a “green revolution,” swept across the globe. Instead of famine, food has become more abundant than ever.
An Innovation Explosion
In the late 1960s, Paul Erlich published his famous book, The Population Bomb, where he claimed that hundreds of millions would soon die due to overpopulation and a resulting lack of food. Elrich was simply mirroring what was a popular sentiment at the time. A contemporaneous MIT study called The Limits to Growth, came to a similar conclusion in 1972. Utilizing some of the most advanced computers and modeling available at that time, the MIT researchers concluded that we would soon run out of key resources as our population growth would strip the Earth bare.
