Dwindling Natural Resources: A famine is on its way

Posted April 28, 2008

“Neo-Malthusianism has a tragic message for the modern world.” — Lord William Rees-Mogg

Blogger’s note: Thomas Robert Malthus was a 19th century economic theorist who predicted the world’s natural resources could not keep up with its population growth. We managed to avert this situation in the last century, but Lord William Rees-Mogg of Whiskey and Gunpowder says Malthus’s predictions may come true in this one. Learn why he believes we could see a global famine in the next 100 years. You can find the article here or read on below.

by Lord William Rees-Mogg

Baltimore – (TFN): I am almost afraid to say so, but Thomas Robert Malthus, the English economist, is coming back into fashion. As I am the nearest thing there is to being Malthus’s publisher, and have a great admiration for his work, I ought to be pleased. However, neo-Malthusianism has a tragic message for the modern world.

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Thomas Malthus was born in 1766. In 1798, he published “An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society.” Subsequent revised editions appeared in 1803, 1806, 1807, 1817, and 1826. The First Edition is indeed an essay, though it contains the outline of the Malthusian natural resources and famine argument. Malthus did a great deal of subsequent research for the later editions.

The reasons I can claim to be the publisher of Malthus are that my publishing business, Pickering and Chatto, which was founded by William Pickering in 1820, was the first publisher of a collected edition of Malthus’s works, edited by E.A. Wrigley and David Souden. This was the first “Pickering Master” that we published after reviving the Pickering imprint; we published it in 1986, and it remains the only collected edition of Malthus. Read on to learn why modern economists are returning to Malthus’s 200-year-old theories.

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