at some point in your life you'll hear someone say too many people on this Earth we need a new plague or perhaps you watch The Avengers and thought that Thanos had a point simple calculus this universe is finite it's resource is finite if life is left unchecked life will cease to exist this idea that the world is going to become overpopulated and exceed its carrying capacity dates back to around 1798 when Thomas Malthus published his theory in his book an essay on the principle of population in his book malthu says the power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce substance for man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race Malthus was an English Economist who lived during the Industrial Revolution in England when it was in stage two of the demographic transition mom Malthus believed that a population would continue to grow at an exponential rate but a society's food production would only grow arithmetically eventually Society would teach a malthusian crisis where the population would exceed the carrying capacity which would result in famine War the spread of disease and the eventual destruction of society now Malthus believed that Society needed to intervene to prevent its population growth from spiraling out of control one way this could be done is by having governments step in and put policies in place that would motivate people to have less children or restrict people from having children Malthus was one of the first people to look at demographic data and raise concerns about population growth if we go back to his quote we see that Malthus is talking about this catastrophic moment Malthus believed that our population would continue to grow until it exceeded the world's carrying capacity and in order to prevent this catastrophic moment from occurring we have to have an intervention that stops our population growth from being exponent just malthusian catastrophe would occur when the population would exceed the carrying capacity and Society would no longer be able to produce an enough food for its citizens the thing though about Malthus is well he was wrong over time as societies evolved their population does not continue to grow exponentially in fact we know that as a country moves through the demographic transition model their population may actually start to shrink also we can see that thanks to the agricultural revolutions and new advancements in farming technology we are able to produce more and more food with less land which counters malthus's idea that food production is arithmetic today we can see that our population growth is not exponential like shown in this J curve chart but more of a logistic growth where we can see that as countries develop their growth starts to slow and eventually levels off unfortunately for Malthus he was also criticized during his time his ideas of smaller family sizes came out during a time where it was socially acceptable to have larger families many criticized him for being anti-family and for also being an alarmist now to be fair Malthus did get some things right today we can see that countries that are in stage two of the demographic transition model do have a population growth that resembles a J curve countries that have their population growth resemble the J curve are currently on an unsustainable path but over time we see these countries continue to grow and develop economically and open up more opportunities for women in society well we start to see that their population growth slows down today there are still people that believe in malthus's ideas however these people believe that it's not just food that is the problem but the Earth's resources in general these people are known as neo-malthusians they believe in malthus's core ideas but have expanded on his original idea essentially the world has a finite supply of natural resources and as our population continues to grow we'll continue to deplete those resources Thanos for example would be a great example of a neo-malthusia his solution was to kill half the world's population today some neo-malthusians look at climate change water shortages desertification and all the other changes happening to our world as evidence that they and Malthus are right all right that was just a quick look at Malthus and Neo malthusian now comes the time to practice what we've learned as always answer the questions on the screen right now and when you're done check your answers in the comments section down below or the description of this video if you found value in this video don't forget to hit that subscribe button and if you need more help with AP Human Geography check out my ultimate review packet it's a great resource that can help you get an A in your class and a five on the national exam as always I'm Mr sin and I'll see you next time online