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That's a misread of Malthus: https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 And in th
by elproxy 6y ago
That's a misread of Malthus: https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20
And in the meantime the state of science has evolved a bit. We have a better idea today where we stand on planetary boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThis Twitter thread is an overcorrection. I've seen people characterize Malthus's position as "Famine is an inevitable part of the natural order of things" or "The current global population is the maximum we can possibly support", and neither of those are true. But he definitely didn't believe that "there are no limits to resources or food production". He claimed that it was absolutely impossible to improve agricultural productivity more than linearly (https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onep..., p.10), and questioned whether densely settled countries like Japan and China could ever achieve even twice their current productivity (p. 8).