*yawn*
Yet another example of someone so ill informed he doesn't understand that economic growth is growth in value; it doesn't have to involve an increase in resource use. He also fails to see that advances in genetics mean another green revolution is already occurring, and the end of the fossil fuel era won't stop that.

Malthaus observed that human populations are capable of growing exponentially. But capability and practice are two very different things, and world population is not growing exponentially. And though population is a factor in climate change, it's hardly a driving force - it's not changing anywhere near fast enough to replace (or prevent) the effects of technological and behavioural change on emissions.

The author asks.."Was Malthus wrong?"

Well yes he obviously was wrong. Even the man himself accepted that later in life.
And why was he wrong? Because he failed to understand the nature of human invention and ingenuity. He failed to understand that as the need appeared, so followed the answer. He thought that population would continue to increase but agricultural innovation wouldn't.

So what does the author then do? He makes the exact same error.... "The fossil fuel era is ending, and with it, the possibility of Green Revolution agriculture."

Well, apart from the fact that, if needs be, we still have more than enough fossil fuel for agriculture for the next 4 centuries, the assumption made by the author that we won't find other answers if such fuels do expire, is just the same Malthusian error re-gifted.

Environmentalism is a religion and just like a religion they have their 'end-of-times' myths. Cults that predict the end of the world next Tuesday-week, don't give up or learn when their predictions fail. They just make new predictions, and believe them just as fervently as before.

Same here. Malthus was wrong. Malthusians are always wrong (see Ehrlich). But they keep predicting and believing the end-is-nigh, because they want the end to be nigh. They hate that liberal capitalism has unlocked the problem of world hunger, and just want it to fail.

It won't...or at least it won't while-ever liberal capitalism holds sway

Maybe, but we still export 70% of what we grow! And could more than treble that production if we were intelligently lead! Add water and guess what? Yes, we can't make it rain, so dams could become big expensive white elephants, but we can permanently fill Lake Eyre, with a dual-lane canal system that utilises lock gates and huge northern tides to keep water moving and flushing the system twice daily.

Then site a dozen or so MSR thorium power stations to among other things power a dozen or more deionisation dialysis desalination plants to put water where there is now none! As taped underground solutions that more than double the production for half the traditional water.

If our parliament weren't science free zones it'd be already started along with the automation we need to grow the economy, self-reliance, self-defence, without importing more people!
Alan B.

Malthus was actually right about the situation up to his own time. He just couldn't foresee the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, which unlocked enormous resources and has fueled our population growth for the past two centuries. The same could be said about Paul Ehrlich, who was unable to predict the success of the Green Revolution. I suspect that if mhaze was around in 1967, he(?) would have predicted trouble, too, if he was told that India was a massive importer of food, had widespread malnutrition, and had a population that was set to double in another 30 years.

If you look at the whole course of human history and prehistory from archaeology, and not just the last 200 years, you see a recurrent pattern. People multiply beyond their means of subsistence, and living standards decline. Leaving aside war for more resources, death rates increase, and child labour loses much of its value, because the market for hired labour has collapsed and land per person has become so small that not even slave labour can raise production enough to pay for itself. People then find the means to limit their numbers, often extremely brutal, if the society doesn't collapse. Sometimes there is a temporary improvement due to new crops or new technology, or because a disaster such as the Black Death has pruned back the population. In the end, however, any surplus is eaten up by more and more mouths until the accustomed level of misery is restored. Take a look at Paolo Malanima's paper "Wages: Ancient, Medieval and Modern"

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paolo_Malanima

Historical trends in average height are also a good measure of well-being.

https://eh.net/encyclopedia/historical-anthropometrics/

You cornucopian optimists need to take a look at what our numbers and consumption are doing to our planetary life support systems. Climate change is just one aspect of this, and maybe not even the most significant.

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html

It is ridiculous to believe that the Syrian civil war or the massive caravans heading towards the US border from Central America have nothing to do with the fact that these countries have quadrupled their populations since 1960.

The author should read the book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. It shows with quite robust (but not perfect) data that global population growth will peak by about 2050 and then decline significantly thereafter. This will reduce pressures on so many aspects of our social and natural environment, including resource use, that Malthus and the author will be shown to have both been wrong in their negativity and pessimism, especially on the climate change issue.

Speaking of nihilism and what it is now doing to what remains of any kind of humanizing culture in America why not read the essays on the nihilist in chief featured on this site:
http://www.eand.co