Green Neo-Malthusians?

In 1803, Thomas Malthus, an Anglican priest, published An essay on the Principle of Population; or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an enquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions.


Malthus' concern was the the Utopian dream of progress envisioned by enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, Condorcet and Godwin, was imperiled by population growth , which in turn would be the product of egalitarian policies such as the Poor Laws. In short, feed the poor or provide for anything but the meanest subsistence and you only encourage them to breed and thus contribute to catastrophic overpopulation.

Two centuries later, we are still here and still hearing the same warnings. Now, as then, we are told that the earth has or will soon reach the point where it is unable to support a growing population. While the science is more sophisticated by many orders of magnitude the ethical argument seems not to advanced at all. While the affluent classes in the comfortable west will certainly have to make adjustments, we are told, it is the world's poor, of whom there are all too many already, who will have to take the biggest hit.

The tragedy of course is that this argument was first grounded in faith and in fact quite often continues to be. Very few (Bjorn Lomborg is one exception) have suggested that the overwhelming issue facing humanity is the appalling, evil poverty that afflicts its majority. And no one dare state the obvious: That alleviating this must mean an unparalleled decline in the material standards of the life of the planet's rich. In our lives.

This was the lacuna in Malthus' work -- it is the rich who consume and not the poor. And it is the elephant in the room with current environmental concerns.