> Environmentalist Stewart Brand summarized how the Malthusian predictions of The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth failed to materialize due to radical

> Environmentalist Stewart Brand summarized how the Malthusian predictions of The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth failed to materialize due to radical changes in fertility: "The theory’s Malthusian premise has been proven wrong since 1963, when the rate of population growth reached a frightening 2 percent a year but then began dropping." The fertility reduction in industrialized societies is a common "debunking" of Malthusianism, but it's dangerously short-sighted. Like antibiotics, industrial societies select for that part of the population that can multiply despite the change in environment. Total fertility falls at first, until the resistant strain grows to a significant fraction of the population.