Abstract
Prophecies of calamities involving starvation due to deficiency of rains are abundant in the Judeo-Christian heritage, thundered by the prophets of the Bible, from the warning words of Moses the first prophet to that of the last. Yet, famine, due to drought, was prophesized to occur as a result of the wrath of the Almighty, and as a punishment of not following His commands. As time progressed these commands were differently interpreted by the various spiritual leaders, who arose and offered new versions of the original ones.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Malthus, 1798, An Essay on the Principle of Population, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. London, printed for J. Johnson in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1798.
- 2.
A survey of the internet using Google of the term “Thomas Malthus” gives 676,000 references, “Marquis de Condorcet” 415,000, “Malthusian catastrophe” 75,700, “Theory of Marquis de Condorcet” 52,000.
- 3.
According to its website, the Club of Rome is composed of “scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents who are convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies.”
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T. Dyson, World food trends: A neo-Malthusian prospect? Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 145(4) (2001).
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Issar, A.S. (2010). Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian Prophecies of Calamity. In: Issar, A. (eds) Progressive Development. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10640-8_3
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