In 1798, the British scholar Thomas Malthus predicted in his An Essay on the Principle of Population that food production would never catch up with the exponential growth of the world's population. He concluded that the explosive growth of global population would eventually lead to famine, poverty, and war.
1798 年，英國學者馬爾薩斯在《人口論》一書中預言，地球生產的糧食永遠也趕不上人口呈幾何級數暴增的速度，世界人口爆炸將導致飢餓、貧窮與戰爭等災禍。