Debating Malthus : a documentary reader on population, resources, and the environment

"Does the environment pose limits to human population size and wellbeing? Or does human intelligence and resourcefulness ensure that environmental limits will be expanded and respected? Is a growing population a (or even the) key driver of resource depletion and environmental degradation? How does all of this relate to issues of social justice for people and other species, and for ecosystems and for the globe as a whole? This highly teachable collection of primary source documents traces the issue of the earth's increasing human population and its place in environmental thinking and political action over five centuries. It allows readers to follow discussion about these ideas from early contexts in which they were forged in debates before Thomas Robert Malthus's influential Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) right through to present day. These sources show that concepts such as population, resources, and the natural environment are not self-evident "things," but intertwined concepts with complex histories. Themes across the readings include evolution, eugenics, war, social justice, birth control, environmental Armageddon, and climate change. Other responses to the idea of new "population bombs" are represented here by radical feminist work, by Indigenous views of the population-environment nexus, and by intersectional race-gender approaches. By learning the patterns of this discourse, students will be better able to critically evaluate historical conversations as well as contemporary debates."