Most nonsense views, when stated clearly, arise from mistaken premises. The error isn't innocent, not simple ignorance, since the faulty premises are carefully selected to conceal the falseness of the argument.

Let’s start with some facts.

Earth’s human population is already at a level well in excess of that which the eco-system can sustain. In other words, in each period we are now using up more natural resources than the environment produces. We are spending all our biological income, and then running down the capital to cover the rest of our consumption. Do that for too long, and the capital runs out.

The issue isn't what you do so much as how you do it. At each phase of development all resources available are consumed, but as time passes and techniques improve more is accomplished with the same resources. The classic example is that something like 60% of humanity would starve to death if we reverted to the primitive agricultural methods espoused by many.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is fish. We are now catching a significantly greater weight of many species each year than the living stock grows. The result is that the average age of many such fish has dropped substantially, and we are now catching only youngsters because they never get the chance to grow big. And, of course, as a fish stock declines, so does its ability to reproduce. Fewer fish make fewer new fish.

We'd have the same problem if we were still hunter-gatherers on land as well, but we're not. We exhausted all of the wild boar and red deer long ago, and switched to domestic livestock.

As with fish, so with other natural resources. Forests are destroyed by over-cutting, animals are hunted to extinction, or both simply die out because we turn their habitats into farmland or cities.

We used to light the night with whale oil too, but we now have other methods. It came as a shock to the whalers when the change happened since they never thought that the day would come when their work had no value. Later, it was the buggy whip manufacturers. And so forth.

So what might we do about it? The following equation covers all the possibilities:

I = P x A x T

I is our total environmental impact. It is made up of the average Affluence (consumption) per person, times the number of people (Population), mitigated by improvements in Technology.

So to reduce our impact, we could reduce average Affluence. The trouble is, most of the world is determined to do the opposite. Can you really believe that all those Indians and Chinese, who outnumber us, are going to agree to forego rising out of poverty? In that light, trading our Chelsea Tractors for Priuses, or not leaving the TV on standby, is simply irrelevant.

Or we could improve our Technology. And we surely will. But, also surely, not enough and not in time to prevent even more serious damage. Technology didn’t prevent the destruction we’ve already caused, so why should we believe it will do that enough in future? There’s simply too much inertia.

Technology did prevent massive destruction. The PAT argument disproves the Malthusian argument.

That leaves only Population, which fortunately we can do something about. . . We know how to achieve this, and it isn’t difficult or expensive. It needs little government intrusion and no coercion, although it does require persuasion.

No, we can't do anything about population. All we can do is choose to depart and leave those who choose otherwise to carry on. Persuasion is useless except for generating rents for busybodies bilking gullible swells. It's a con job.

Thomas Malthus, actually wasn’t as wrong as he was portrayed. He was merely premature. He didn’t anticipate the huge increases in land under cultivation or the scientific advances that have occurred since the 1700s. However, with the understanding developed since his time, we can now see the great difficulties in extending these trends.

It's the same difficulty that he had, and the result will certainly be the same. Malthus is the poster boy for ignorance and lack of imagination. It isn't that he didn't know things, lots of things, it's that he didn't appreciate how little he knew of what could be known. That's deep ignorance, an affliction that most often strikes scholars.