Few names ignite disdain among both liberals and conservatives as much as “Malthus”. The turn-of-the-19th century English philosopher Thomas Robert Malthus is the epitome of fatalism and despair. Malthus predicted that as the population of humankind increased beyond a certain level, the Earth would run out of food supplies, failing to foresee how technology, the energy revolution and the discovery of new agricultural markets would infinitely postpone that dire occurrence.
Malthus revised his theory several times during his lifetime, admitting the flaw in it. But the larger meaning of his lifework, of which his food theory was only a part, is undeniable. For Malthus, humankind inhabits a fragile ecosystem, meaning we are a species existing in nature, and the natural world at extremely high levels of human population will tend to decay. Malthus was the philosopher of limits. Thus, in a spiritual sense, we live in a Malthusian Age.
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