efore the population must inevitably outgrow the supply of food. The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together are very striking. For example take the population of the Earth to be 11 millions; and suppose the present food production can easily support such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be 22 millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years, the population would be 44 millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of 33 millions. In the next period the population would be 88 millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to half that number. At the conclusion of the first century, the population would be 176 millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 55 millions; leaving a population of 121 millions totally unprovided for (Malthus, 1992). He postulated that population growth was already outpacing the production of food supplies in 18th-century England. Malthus foresaw massive food shortages and famine as an inevitable consequence of population growth. He mentioned "positive checks" such as war, famine, and disease, and "preventative checks" such as celibacy and contraception (Microsoft Encarta 1998). In 1968 Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb. They were the first to popularize how serious the problem had become. While incorrectly predicting short-term large-scale famine and plague, the book awakened the world to the upcoming problems. Exponential growth is only one of many factors that determine population size. Some of the other factors that drastically reduced the amount of time it took for the worlds population to double in size are, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial revolution, and World War II, these major events gave the population growth an enormous boost (Seitz, 1995). The Chinese governm...
