Word: darwins
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Darwin admits that present-day food production can be stepped up. He says, for instance, that a way of turning wood into human food would be a great forward step. The Germans used this very simple process on a large scale during World War II, and "wood molasses" for cattle feed has been produced in small quantities...
...Sight. But Darwin is not interested in such small details. On his chosen scale of 1,000,000 years they will not be important. Each laborious triumph in food production will only put off the evil day. The earth's population will double again, again and again. After ten centuries of well-fed doubling, it will have increased 1,024 times. In the unlikely event that the food supply will have kept pace, another mere thousand years of doubling will certainly bring the end. In the year 3953 A.D., the earth will be felted with people as thick...
...Grandson Darwin restates Malthus. Human increase, he says, is a "geometrical progression." The more it has increased, the faster it will increase in the future. Food supply, on the other hand, increases only "arithmetically" by simple addition. Past increases do not add to its speed of increase...
...natural rate of increase of passably well-fed peoples, Darwin says, leads them to double their numbers every 100 years. To feed the doubled population, food production must be doubled too. Twice as much land must be cultivated or the old land must be made twice as productive. In the next century the population will double again, and the earth must produce four times as much food as it does...
This sort of reasoning is as old as Malthus, and Darwin knows the arguments that are commonly used against it. One of them is to point out that the earth's population has increased enormously since the time of Malthus, but that much of it is better fed now than it was then. His reply: humans have been living in a fleeting Golden Age that is due to the impact of science on transportation and agriculture. When the Golden Age is over (and its end is in sight), most of the earth's babies will again starve...