The Neo-Malthusianism Case Study

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In 1980, biologist Paul Ehrlich was sure that the earth was quickly on its way to a scarcity of resources. He was so sure of this occurring over the next decade that made a bet with Julian Simon, a sceptic of environmentalism, about it. The measure would be tracking the price of a bundle of five natural resources, if the prices went up over a ten year period, they would reflect scarcity. Samuels won, resources only got cheaper. and Samuels made a wager. Eilrich famously lost, but if the wager were to last from 1980-2008 he would have been the clear winner1. Eilrich was a Neo-Malthusian, he was worried about the quick population growth and the eventual consequences of food shortages2. The Neo-Malthusianism perspective and dilemma were first …show more content…

The Neo-Malthusian dilemma is the worry that our food stocks will not match the population growth leading to famine and disease. This is a growing concern since our population is quickly increasing, we are not bringing new land under cultivation, and we are damaging the environment that is producing our food and sustaining our people. Between 1999 and 2011, the world population increased by one billion, Middleton(2013) noted that it took until 1804 for the world to reach its first billion. The population growth we have exhibited is exponential, and it is only scheduled to peak some time between 2050 and 21003 . Many countries are still expected to go through major population growth. We constantly hear about China and India but Africa is expected to overtake them both by 2050 and make up 23% of the global population4.These large populaces depend on land to grow their food. Urbanization is transforming some farmland into urban areas, like in China for example5 .This land is no longer being used for farming. Until the 1950s, we were able to develop new land for cultivation and thus produce more food, but since then we’ve had no new land to

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