Population Growth and Technological Change

Abstract

Population growth and its impact on the environment has been a hot topic for decades, ever since Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb was published in 1968. Extending many of the arguments first put forth by Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century,¹ Ehrlich predicted an exponential increase in global population coupled with massive starvation, given that growth in the food supply wouldn’t be able to keep pace.