Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 148.87.1.170 (talk) at 16:25, 19 March 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

I plan to edit the page on the Malthusian catastrophe, but I first need to collect some facts that I plan to include. For the present, I would like to make a comment here and list the items I plan to include when I make my changes, and to solicit some feedback.

I think the current presentation under-represents the neo-Malthusian point of view. The citation of "The Population Bomb" is inadequate -- the book is out of date, and its arguments are also too limited in scope.

I plan to add a reference to "Cannibals and Kings" by Marvin Harris with a brief comment about the book including a description of the state of the world in the late 19th century that is much like that predicted by Malthus, and that the book also describes three innovations of the 20th century that enabled the postponement of the catastrophe and why. I will need to find the ISBN for this book.

I plan to add a reference to an essay by Daniel Quinn that presents some current neo-Malthusian arguments.

I plan to add a brief discussion of the following points. Many people believe that the web of all life is very interdependent, and that the destruction of habitat that correlates with increasing human population causes extinctions of species at a rate estimated currently to be about 200 each day. This is one indication of the approaching Malthusian Catastrophe beyond Malthus's original arguments. The Global warming problem is a second indication. One of Harris's three 20th century innovations mentioned above was the exploitation of petroleum. The Petroleum industry predicts that petroleum resources will be exhausted much before the end of the 21st century. This is a third indication.

Buzz Bloom