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The neo-Malthusian movement is one of the most prolific and fatalistic groups among public intellectuals examining the fate of the environment. This movement's ideology rests on the premise that an out-of-control rate of population growth is one of the single most important factors adversely impacting human deprivation and the Earth's resources. One cannot fully appreciate the intellectual impact of the movement without first situating it within the historical context of ecological and sustainability doctrines.

Neo-Malthusian thinking traces its roots to the ideas of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). In 1798, Malthus published the first edition of his iconoclastic Essay on Population, asserting that population increases in a geometric rate (i.e., 2, 4, 8, etc.) in contrast to the arithmetic rate of food production (i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc.). This observation led him to conclude that, unless some measures of population control take place, humans will suffer hunger, calamities, and deprivation, since they will exhaust the Earth's necessary resources to sustain life. He also asserted that population growth has a positive correlation with the rate of production, adding to further demands for nonrenewable resources. When Malthus wrote his treatise in the 18th century, he was responding to the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment, particularly the potent influence of the Marquis de Condorcet's An Essay on the Principle of Population, as well as the optimistic views of his own father.

Ecological sociology is indebted to Malthus for much of its analysis of the various ways humans impact their own environment. Environmentalists often cite his cautionary pessimism when they analyze the state of the Earth's resources. Demographers are indebted to him for his first examining the social impact of fertility rates and thus justifying the need for a national census to keep track of population movement and growth. His ideas also influenced evolutionist thinking in economics and biology.

References:

1) Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1969. An Introduction to the History of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2) Birdsall, Nancy, Allen C. Kelley, and Steven Sinding, eds. 2003. Population Matters: Demography Change, Economic Development and Poverty in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.

3) Gross, Matthias. 2004. "Human Geography and Ecological Sociology." Social Science History 28:575-605.

4) McCormick, John. 1989. Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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