Malthus was wrong because the only farm implement he'd ever seen was a hoe. He had never heard of a John Deere tractor.

The guys predicting imminent "peak oil" ten yrs ago had never heard of 'fracking'.

All the future dire predictions will inevitably suffer from the same problem, because it's inherent in the process.

Caddy

Fewer kids cannot even be a meaningful statistical factor in view to the total population increases.

(A) food production got vastly better, and,

(B) as people move out of subsistence agrarian existence they have less kids.

Malthus was wrong? But still, we are approaching peak oil but more importantly we are approaching peak phosphorus. As to "predictions" you would have to post the actual paper. Generally speaking, when science "predicts" something, it's more often the fault of bad science journalism than an inaccuracy of the science. Say a paper predicts: "peak oil in 10 to 50 years" or peak oil could be here in as little as 10 years (but could be as far out as 50, stated further in the paper)". Headline of news story: peak oil in a decade!!! Maybe the truth is buried deep in the article, maybe not. Science journalism is boring. To liven it up, the theoretically possible is often pushed in lieu of the probable...

OK, but how about the fact that there were maybe 600 million people worldwide in Malthus' time, and hunger and malnutrition were widespread, and now we've got 6 or 7 BILLION and there's damn near no starvation outside of places where war rages.

We didn't even have to work hard for the most part to get everyone else to follow the "our way or the highway" philosophy of diplomacy.

Our worldview as Americans has been restricted to our own country because up until very very recently, we had the complete luxury of doing so without it really mattering to us in one way or another what other people in the world thought or did.

Oh, yeah? Hast thou forgotten that,

Of necessity, We the People joined the Soviets in bulking up massively to win our respective chunks of WWII.

With the Brits, French, Japanese and Germans all trashed to one degree or another that left us and the Soviets the two big kids on the block, especially once they got their own bomb.

AND their now dreaded Commie Army occupied fully half of Europe!

We 'Muricans** did NOT repeat the mistakes of Versailles but did the complete opposite with the Marshall Plan, NATO and the UN. We let their Emperor live and got Japan turned around. We stepped up in 1950 for South Korea and they turned out pretty decent, right? BTW, IMO Vietnam War was bad! Korean War was good!

This has resulted in over 75 years of relative peace with massive improvements to the everyone's poverty, health, food insecurity, literacy and on and on.

So I can see why 'Murica is The Great Satan.
*/sarcasm off

**Homework for C. R. Stucki: and just which party was firmly in control of 'Murica when we did all those smart post-war things?

Parson Thomas Malthus, probably the world's first 'demographer', warned the world in the late 1700's, that the human population was soon to outrun the world's food supply.

In your (very recent) lifetime, people used to fret that we were on the verge of "peak oil"

Based on historical evidence, one could more realistically worry that what we're about to run out of could be common sense.

your larger point is a very good one. the fact of global problems creates the need for problem solving on a global scale, and that goes beyond even climate change. the human race is due for some serious global problems, not least of which is that there will soon be too many of us for the global ecosystem to support. food, water and energy may all soon be somewhat scarce.

JL

If the COVID-19 pandemic doesn't start to change that out-dated kind of thinking, then probably nothing will and the pandemic will last longer than it should.

And, I shouldn't have singled out America - we live in a multi-polar world with north/south and east/west divisions, among others and thinking about how we are all so interconnected and interdependent doesn't come easily. But, the existential challenges we all face have both global and community impacts and so we must all broaden our outlook and change the way we think about and see the world.

"Why is the "worldview" of Americans so restricted to their own country? In the world we live in now, this is a very dangerous way of thinking."

I thought I would answer this question from an earlier post for two reasons: 1) It's an interesting question and 2) it's relatively easy enough to explain I think.

The answer basically has 3 parts or aspects to it, all interrelated:

America is HUGE, insular, pretty much occupies a continent unto itself, and has no recent memory of frequent invasion or a conqueror from outside. This is in contrast to others like France in Europe, or Russia during the 20th century, or recent colonialism during the 20th century, as happened in Africa or to China.

We're safely tucked behind two oceans, and the only neighbor we interact with the most, Canada, pretty much shares our culture and language so much that we dominate it completely. Add to that, most Americans, their parents, and grandparents have no experience of a world or an America that doesn't involve America as THE superpower, both a military and economic colossus that everyone else in the world pretty much had to treat as mice would treat an elephant. We didn't even have to work hard for the most part to get everyone else to follow the "our way or the highway" philosophy of diplomacy.

Our worldview as Americans has been restricted to our own country because up until very very recently, we had the complete luxury of doing so without it really mattering to us in one way or another what other people in the world thought or did.