A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay(Conservation, population, and the Indifference to Limits) by John F.Rohe is an extremely interesting, must-reading, for all responsible people. Alarming, yet exciting, to gain a realistic understanding of conservation. Thinking non-conservationists will become conservationists. Conservationists will find the back-up information to substantiate their beliefs.

Richard M. Shuster, Retired Circuit Judge
5th Judicial Circuit Court, Barry County,
Michigan

At a time when many people downplay Malthus, or even ridiculed him, his predictions are coming true-if we just take notice. This is certainly not visible in the suburban supermarket where many of the people who affect what is happening shop. However, for growing numbers of malnourished people on our planet, this is all too apparent. This fine book looks at the underlying causes for this predicament and suggest that the only final way to resolve this problem is to face up to our population problem. Increasing food production, if that were still possible, only postpones the worst, and because the world's population would be larger, would make the suffering even more terrible. Everyone should read this book.

Rohe addresses the natural limits that we face, population, resources, environmental degradation, the earths carrying capacity whose totality is a disease of being indifferent toward these limits. He write with the precision and logic of a lawyer which he is.

This book by Malthus is essential for the evolution of the economy thought. Its principles were taken by others economist and sociologist to make their own theories, David Ricardo for example, one of the most important authors of the clasic school. Malthus recomendations had influenced remarkable politicians, who change importants laws in England based on Malthus ideas. A must for everyone interested in the early economy books.

"The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years." --Thomas R. Malthus, Principle of Population

When I filled out and mailed my census questionnaire in 2000, I reflected upon Malthus's sobering classic, An Essay on the Principle of Population. When I was in elementary school in the 1960's, I remember reading optimistic reports in my Weekly Reader that new high-yielding crops would make it possible to meet the food requirements of the world. If those utopians were familiar with Malthus's essay, their visions for the future welfare of humanity might have been less optimistic. However, if there was over-optimism then, it has largely vanished now.

Who has not viewed educational television programs discussing the severe stresses on the global environment due to our excessive consumption of both renewable and nonrenewable resources? Environmentalists highlight the dire energy and environmental problems facing us in the future. The poorer countries would also like to enjoy the benefits of industrialization that will, of course, further tax our resources and stress our environment. Even if we assume the environmentalists exaggerate our circumstances, even the scientifically illiterate comprehend that the capacity of the earth to support life is finite. In the face of such problems, Malthus's three "incontrovertible truths" are as relevant today as the day he penned them:

"That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence, is a proposition so evident, that it needs no illustration.

"That population does invariably increase, where there are the means of subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will abundantly prove.

"And, that the superior power of population cannot be checked, without producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter ingredients in the cup of human life, and the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have produced them, bear too convincing a testimony."

Both liberals and conservatives have hated Malthus's essay. It dumps cold water on humanitarian hopes and can be used in support of abortion rights and government restrictions on family size. To our peril, we would like to live, aided by technology, in denial of Malthus's postulate, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." To our endangerment, we would prefer to luxuriate in ignorance of his observation that his postulate "implies a strong and constantly operating check on population fromn the difficulty of subsistence." Says Malthus, "This difficulty must fall some where; and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind." Where will this "difficulty of subsistence" put a check on our currently growing world population?

When I was born in 1957, the world population was just under 2.9 billion. It is now over 6 billion. The U.S. Bureau of the Census estimates that the world population will reach 9.3 billion in 2050. With the technological enhancement of our ability to augment our means of subsistence, have we deceived ourselves into believing that we can indefinitely defy the principles of population that Malthus contended were "incontrovertible truths"? Are we robbing from our future by building up a high-interest debt to nature that will lead us to bankruptcy?

We are in need of the fortitude and love of truth that enabled Malthus to say of himself the following:

"[H]e has not acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him to believe what he wishes, without evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence."

Indeed, the evidence is clear to anyone not addicted to postmodern and new age paradigms of unreason. If we do not put a check on our population, then inevitably, as Malthus puts it, "necessity" will check it via "misery and vice." Thus, Malthus's essay is not just and old classic; it is an old classic containing a valid warning for people of our world today.

This small and often overlooked essay by Thomas Malthus is probably one of the most important essays ever written.

Way back in 1798 Malthus wrote this essay to expose how human population is still being kept in check by mother nature. Famine, plague and war pop up whenever a population gets too high.

The essay has been overlooked mostly because of the stance Malthus takes in this book towards the poor. He suggests that when you give money to people who don't work, you help them have children. This increases the population without increasing production of food. Also, by increasing the standard of living of these people, you then qualify more people to receive without working, exacerbating the situation. Malthus clearly supports workhouses to welfare in this essay.

This essay had influenced two notable people. First is Charles Dickens. In 'A Christmas Carol' you read how Scrooge said, "that if the poor would not go into workhouses, they might as well die and decrease the surplus population". This was aimed straight at Malthus. The second person he influenced with this essay is Darwin. While reading Malthus, Darwin realized that population pressure was that "natural selector" that made evolution possible.

If you want to read a piece of history, read this essay. If you then want to get a more modern and thorough take on the subject read Marvin Harris's "Cannibals and Kings".

Synopsis from Amazon.co.uk -- This volume represents a major critique of the way Malthusian thinking has influenced capitalist development policy in the modern period, as well as in the past. It highlights the strategic role of Malthusian ideas in the defence of capitalist political economy when confronted by struggles for equality and human progress.