Word: malthus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...addressed some of the most demanding problems facing us in the 21st century--particularly in light of Malthus' 18th century theory that population growth will overpower the planet's ability to sustain itself. Scientific inventions and discoveries ameliorate the problem but not enough to prevent global disaster. Widespread demand for food and manufactured products has contaminated our food chain, arable land and water sources, as well as the air we breathe. We must all begin to cope with the results of urban sprawl and help prevent the destruction of Earth's ecological balance and the life of our planet...
...when he wrote 200 years ago, Malthus was wrong. He did not see that nations are not like ecosystems, that people could expand into new regions and, with the burgeoning technology of the Industrial Revolution, become vastly more efficient at producing food and wresting raw materials from Earth...
...something else is going on, and I think Malthus may have sensed it coming. As long ago as 1679, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (the Dutch inventor of the microscope) speculated that the limit to the human population would be on the order of 13 billion--remarkably close to many current estimates. For our position in the natural world is once again undergoing a sea change. We are not the first nor are we the only species to spread around the globe, but we are the first to do so as an integrated economic entity. Other species maintain tenuous genetic connections...
...tide is running back toward Malthus. We are emerging from a 10,000-year vacation from nature still not fully realizing that our own survival hinges on reducing the damage we do to Earth's natural systems. We may not drive ourselves to the complete oblivion of biological extinction, but I fear that the Malthusian specters of famine, warfare and disease will rise in the comparatively short run (the next few centuries), coupled with an accelerating loss of human cultural diversity and, ultimately, quality of life...
...what we have become: the first global economic entity, a fascinating state arrived at through no end of cleverness but a state that is ultimately limited by the health and productivity of the natural system in which we live. We can, if we choose to do so, prove Malthus' direst prognostications wrong...