The sustainability debate concerns whether the world will experience stable or improving living standards for the foreseeable future, or whether the current trajectory will overtax the natural environment, leading to a ‘crash’ in living standards. This paper selectively reviews relevant research, focusing on both ecological concerns and technological progress, and asks whether sustainability wo...

In the bicentennial year of Malthus’ seminal paper, human society is still debating whether the evidence of biophysical limits on population growth (which applies to other species) also applies to Homo sapiens. In terms of evolutionary or geological time, 200 years is a trivial span to test such a hypothesis. Human ingenuity and technology appear to invalidate Malthus’ hypothesis, although the ...

This article challenges the widely held assumption that Thomas Robert Malthus was a lonely pessimist in late eighteenth century. Interpreting sources had used to write his Essay on Principle of Population as predictions future, argues inherited sense looming doom from predecessors. In second half century, David Hume, Adam Smith, Richard Price, and Paine predicted Britain's ruin through national...