Tag Archives: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.”