Escapology, or How to Escape Malthusian Traps

Abstract

This chapter discusses ways of escaping Malthusian traps, showing how a framework taking the classical problem of overpopulation as its heuristic starting point can provide a key to contemporary problems and ways of dealing with them. Based on a concise model of the overpopulation trap, I discuss a variety of escape routes starting with the solutions and non-solutions suggested by Malthus (moral restraint, vice, and misery); followed by strategies of shifting the problem to subalterns and/or outsiders; and culminating in cornucopian solutions like exponential industrial growth and technical progress. Subsequently, I move to the neo-Malthusian challenges of the contemporary era, from climate change to energy scarcity. After a brief outline of the traps threatening the foundations of contemporary industrial civilization, I survey conceivable ways of dealing with them. In doing so, I revisit the escape routes discussed previously and ponder which of them, if any, may be available, eventually in a modified form, to deal with looming scenarios of neo-Malthusian crisis.