Overpopulation. From its usage in Thomas Malthus’s notorious 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” to its resurgence in Paul Ehrlich’s 1960 “The Population Bomb,” the word invokes images of a bleak, hopeless future. As the story goes, the ever-increasing birth rate triggers rampant food shortages and systemic resource deprivation, culminating with the human race extinguishing itself. Ehrlich went as far to predict an imminent cataclysm: “England will not exist in the year 2000.”