He was at the right place at the wrong time, but his time may come again. Malthus predicted a correlation between increases in the population and agricultural growth, but he did not consider the contributions of fossil fuels in the mix. As the era of overwhelming contributions by fossil fuels wanes, Mathus's predictions rise up again. Hermele (human ecology, U. of Lund, Sweden and U. of Gothenburg, Sweden) argues Malthus's case for the future in terms of land use and agrofuels, ecologically unequal exchange, and environmental load displacements. He examines the importance of land, land-use scenarios for agrofuels (and nine billion people), regulating land use for agrofuels (in the case of Brazil), framing the unequal exchange, weak and strong measures of the interface between nature and the economy, measures and interpretations of ecologically unequal exchange, obvious and obscure displacements, and the argument about the return to the land, revisited. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Although it is recognised that Thomas Robert Malthus was wrong when he posited a contradiction between population increase and agricultural growth, there are increasing signs that he could be proved right in the future. Perhaps Malthus was too late and too early in his prediction?
He was too late, because he did not foresee the shift from land-based resources to fossil fuels, outing an end to the limits of agricultural growth, at least temporarily; and he was too early to witness that fossil fuels would come up against their own limits in terms of supply as well as in terms of global warming.
This study deals with land-based resources and the role they play in the global socio-ecological metabolic regime, both now and in the future. In particular, the controversial use of agrofuels as a solution to coming scarcity is subjected to close scrutiny.
Rohkem infot Taylor & Francis e-raamatute kohta