A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay: Conservation, Population and the Indifference to Limits

Rating:
Summary: A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay
Review: A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay(Conservation, population, and the Indifference to Limits) by John F.Rohe is an extremely interesting, must-reading, for all responsible people. Alarming, yet exciting, to gain a realistic understanding of conservation. Thinking non-conservationists will become conservationists. Conservationists will find the back-up information to substantiate their beliefs.

Richard M. Shuster, Retired Circuit Judge
5th Judicial Circuit Court, Barry County,
Michigan

Rating:
Summary: Events are prooving Malthus right. We better take heed.
Review: At a time when many people downplay Malthus, or even ridiculed him, his predictions are coming true-if we just take notice. This is certainly not visible in the suburban supermarket where many of the people who affect what is happening shop. However, for growing numbers of malnourished people on our planet, this is all too apparent. This fine book looks at the underlying causes for this predicament and suggest that the only final way to resolve this problem is to face up to our population problem. Increasing food production, if that were still possible, only postpones the worst, and because the world's population would be larger, would make the suffering even more terrible. Everyone should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Do 200 year old principles have relevance today?
Review: In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote the controversial Essay on the Principle of Population in which he stated: ". . . the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Two hundred years later, a far more congested world must make room for an additional 250,000 people every day (total births minus total deaths). Malthus suggested there might be an inverse relationship between the quantity and the quality of human life. Approximately one billion people now go to bed hungry every night. Several hundred thousand die of malnutrition every year. Violence and hostility are on the rise in increasingly over- populated regions. Malthus recognized limits. Was he just a "squeezing, grasping, covetous old sinner" inspiring Dickens' fictional Scrooge? Or does the Malthusian message of 1798 have relevance to the present world? This Bicentennial Malthusian Essay revisits principles found controversial in 1798 to identify the root cause of our unrest.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent outline of our indifference toward the future.
Review: Rohe addresses the natural limits that we face, population, resources, environmental degradation, the earths carrying capacity whose totality is a disease of being indifferent toward these limits. He write with the precision and logic of a lawyer which he is.