Comments on: The ‘2030 crisis’ and the return of Malthus/2009/03/23/the-2030-crisis-and-the-return-of-malthus/Andrew Curry's blog on futures, trends, emerging issues and scenariosSat, 13 Mar 2010 23:16:28 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Eco-pragmatism and resilience « thenextwave/2009/03/23/the-2030-crisis-and-the-return-of-malthus/#comment-2610Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:16:28 +0000/?p=801#comment-2610[…] foods, the UK Government’s Chief Scientist, John Beddington (who has been worrying about the 2030 “perfect storm” for some time now)  promoted GM foods as part of the solution in a speech at the beginning of […]

]]>By: The crisis and the world’s poorest « thenextwave/2009/03/23/the-2030-crisis-and-the-return-of-malthus/#comment-2283Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:42:58 +0000/?p=801#comment-2283[…] thenextwave the next wave – Andrew Curry’s blog on futures, trends, emerging issues and scenarios « The ‘2030 crisis’ and the return of Malthus […]

]]>By: Thomas Homer-Dixon/2009/03/23/the-2030-crisis-and-the-return-of-malthus/#comment-2274Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:46:38 +0000/?p=801#comment-2274Nice summary, especially the distinction between possible explanations of why Malthus has been wrong (at least so far): human ingenuity vs. cheap energy. My sense is that the both factors have played a role and that the flexibility and increased prosperity provided by both may be near its limits

I address constraints on ingenuity in my book The Ingenuity Gap, and I address the energy issue in my book The Upside of Down.

By the way, the statistic you cite is provided on pages 82 and 83 of the latter book: a tankful of gasoline contains free energy equivalent to that expended by an adult male laborer over two (not four) years.

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