Ecofascism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism

Ecofascism (sometimes spelled eco-fascism) is a term used to describe individuals and groups which combine environmentalism with fascism.

Philosopher André Gorz characterized eco-fascism as hypothetical forms of totalitarianism based on an ecological orientation of politics. Similar definitions have been used by others in older academic literature in accusations of ecofascism of "environmental fascism". However, since the 2010s, a number of individuals and groups have emerged that either self-identify as "ecofascist" or have been labelled as "ecofascist" by academic or journalistic sources. These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism, and will typically argue that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is a complete halt to immigration or, at their most extreme, genocide against non-White groups and ethnicities. Many far-right political parties have added green politics to their platforms. Through the 2010s ecofascism has seen increasing support.

Definition

In 2005, environmental historian Michael E. Zimmerman defined "ecofascism" as "a totalitarian government that requires individuals to sacrifice their interests to the well-being of the 'land', understood as the splendid web of life, or the organic whole of nature, including peoples and their states". This was supported by philosopher Patrick Hassan’s work analysing historical accusations of ecofascism in academic literature. Zimmerman argued that while no ecofascist government has existed so far, "important aspects of it can be found in German National Socialism, one of whose central slogans was "Blood and Soil". Other political agendas, instead of environmental protection and prevention of climate change, are nationalist approaches to climate such as national economic environmentalism, securitization of climate change, and ecobordering.

Ecofascists often believe there is a symbiotic relationship between a nation-group and its homeland. They often blame the global south for ecological problems, with their proposed solutions often entailing extreme population control measures based on racial categorisations, and advocating for the accelerated collapse of current society to be replaced by fascist societies. This latter belief is often accompanied with vocal support for terrorist actions.

Vice has defined ecofascism as an ideology "which blames the demise of the environment on overpopulation, immigration, and over-industrialization, problems that followers think could be partly remedied through the mass murder of refugees in Western countries." Environmentalist author Naomi Klein has suggested that ecofascists' primary objectives are to close borders to immigrants and, on the more extreme end, to embrace the idea of climate change as a divinely-ordained signal to begin a mass purge of sections of the human race. Ecofascism is "environmentalism through genocide", opined Klein. Political researcher Alex Amend defined ecofascist belief as "The devaluing of human life—particularly of populations seen as inferior—in order to protect the environment viewed as essential to White identity."

Terrorism researcher Kristy Campion defined ecofascism as "a reactionary and revolutionary ideology that champions the regeneration of an imagined community through a return to a romanticised, ethnopluralist vision of the natural order."

The European Commission describes ecofascism as the "weaponization of climate change by far right populist political parties and white supremacist groups". Tactics of this weaponization include the use of language and equating actors in population and migration discourses to components of the climate crisis. As said in a policy brief for The International Center for Counter-Terrorism, this "linguistic violence" entails that "the invasion of non-native species that threaten the environment becomes synonymous with the invasion of immigrants, the protection of the environment with the protection of borders, trash with people, and environmental cleansing with ethnic cleaning."

Helen Cawood and Xany Jansen Van Vuuren have criticised previous attempts to define ecofascism as focusing too heavily on environmental and ecological conservationism in historical fascist movements, and the subsequent definitions being too broad and encompassing many ontologically different ideologies. In their criticism they summarise the current definition of ecofascism as used in the academic literature as "a movement that uses environmental and ecological conservationist talking points to push an ideology of ethnic or racial separatism". This is supported by Blair Taylor statement that ecofascism refers to "groups and ideologies that offer authoritarian, hierarchical, and racist analyses and solutions to environmental problems". Similarly, extremism researchers Brian Hughes, Dave Jones, and Amarnath Amarasingam state how ecofascism is less a coherent ideology and more a cultural expression of mystical, anti-humanist romanticism. This is further supported by Maria Darwish in her research into the Nordic Resistance Movement where while there is concern for environmental issues they are "a concern for Neo-Nazis only in so far as it supports and popularizes the backstage mission of the NRM", that is the implementation of a fascist regime, and Jacob Blumenfeld stating "ecofascism names a specific far-right ideology that rationalizes white supremacist violence by invoking imminent ecological collapse and scarce natural resources".

Borrowing from the "watermelon" analogy of eco-socialism, Berggruen Institute scholar Nils Gilman has coined the term "avocado politics" for eco-fascism, being "green on the outside but brown(shirt) at the core".

Madison Grant

Sometimes dubbed the "founding father" of ecofascism, Madison Grant was a pioneer of conservationism in America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Grant is credited as a founder of modern wildlife management. Grant built the Bronx River Parkway, was a co-founder of the American Bison Society, and helped create Glacier National Park, Olympic National Park, Everglades National Park and Denali National Park. As president of the New York Zoological Society, he founded the Bronx Zoo in 1899.

In addition to his conservationist work, Grant was a trenchant racist. In 1906, Grant supported the placement of Ota Benga, a member of the Mbuti people who was kidnapped, removed from his home in the Congo, and put on display in the Bronx Zoo as an exhibit in the Monkey House. In 1916, Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race, a work of pseudoscientific literature which claimed to give an account of the anthropological history of Europe. The book divides Europeans into three races; Alpines, Mediterraneans and Nordics, and it also claims that the first two races are inferior to the superior Nordic race, which is the only race which is fit to rule the earth. Adolf Hitler would later describe Grant's book as "his bible" and Grant's "Nordic theory" became the bedrock of Nazi racial theories. Additionally, Grant was a eugenicist: He cofounded and was the director of the American Eugenics Society and he also advocated the culling of the unfit from the human population. Grant concocted a 100-year plan to perfect the human race, a plan in which one ethnic group after another would be killed off until racial purity would be obtained. Grant campaigned for the passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and he also campaigned for the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which drastically reduced the number of immigrants from eastern Europe and Asia who were allowed to enter the United States.

In the modern era, Grant's ideas have been cited by advocates of far-right politics such as Richard Spencer and Anders Breivik.

Nazism

The authors Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier suggest that the synthesis of fascism and environmentalism began with Nazism, stating that 19th and 20th century Germany was an early center of ecofascist thought, finding its antecedents in many prominent natural scientists and environmentalists, including Ernst Moritz Arndt, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, and Ernst Haeckel. With the works and ideas of such individuals being later established as policies in the Nazi regime. This is supported by other researchers who identify the Völkisch movement as an ideological originator of later ecofascism. In Biehl and Staudenmaier's book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, they note the Nazi Party's interest in ecology, and suggest their interest was "linked with traditional agrarian romanticism and hostility to urban civilization". With Zimmerman pointing to the works of conservationist and Nazi Walther Schoenichen as having pertinence to later ecofascism and similarities to developments in deep ecological understanding. During the Nazi rise to power, there was strong support for the Nazis among German environmentalists and conservationists. Richard Walther Darré, a leading Nazi ideologist and Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture who invented the term "Blood and Soil", developed a concept of the nation having a mystic connection with their homeland, and as such, the nation was dutybound to take care of the land. This was supported by other Nazi theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg who wrote of how society's move from agricultural systems to industrialised systems broke their connection to nature and contributed to the death of the Volk. Similar sentiments are found in speeches from Fascist Italy’s Minister of Agriculture Giuseppe Tassinari. Because of this, modern ecofascists cite the Nazi Party as an origin point of ecofascism. Beyond Darré, Rudolf Hess and Fritz Todt are viewed as representatives of environmentalism within the Nazi party. Roger Griffin has also pointed to the glorification of wildlife in Nazi art and ruralism in the novels of the fascist sympathizers Knut Hamsun and Henry Williamson as examples.

After the outlawing of the neo-nazi Socialist Reich Party, one of its members August Haußleiter moved towards organising within the environmental and anti-nuclear movements, going on to become a founding member of the German Green Party. When green activists later uncovered his past activities in the neo-nazi movement, Haußleiter was forced to step down as the party's chairman, although he continued to hold a central role in the party newspaper. As efforts to expel nationalist elements within the party continued, a conservative faction split off and founded the Ecological Democratic Party, which became noted for persistent holocaust denial, rejection of social justice and opposition to immigration.

Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi's avowed Nazism, combined with her advocacy of animal rights and vegetarianism, has made her a figure of interest to ecofascists.

The French-born Greek fascist Savitri Devi (born Maximiani Julia Portas) was a prominent proponent of Esoteric Nazism and deep ecology. A fanatical supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Party from the 1930s onwards, she also supported animal rights activism and was a vegetarian from a young age. In her works, she espoused ecologist views, such as the Impeachment of Man (1959), in which she espoused her views on animal rights and nature. In accordance with her ecologist views, human beings do not stand above the animals; instead, humans are a part of the ecosystem and as a result, they should respect all forms of life, including animals and the whole of nature. Because of her dual devotion to Nazism and deep ecology, she is considered an influential figure in ecofascist circles.

Malthusianism

Malthusian ideas of overpopulation have been adopted by ecofascists, using Malthusian rationale in anti-immigration arguments and seeking to resolve the perceived global issue by enforcing population control measures on the global south and racial minorities in white majority countries. Such Malthusian ideas are often paired with Social Darwinist and eugenicist views.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber

Ted Kaczynski AKA "The Unabomber" in a mug shot taken shortly after his arrest in April 1996.

Ted Kaczynski, better known as "The Unabomber", is cited as a figure who was highly influential in the development of ecofascist thought, and features prominently in contemporary ecofascist propaganda. Between 1978 and 1995 Kaczynski instigated a terrorist bombing campaign aimed at inciting a revolution against modern industrial society, in the name of returning humanity to a primitive state he suggested offered humanity more freedom while protecting the environment. In 1995 Kaczynski offered to end his bombing campaign if The Washington Post or The New York Times would publish his 35,000-word Unabomber manifesto. Both newspapers agreed to those terms. The manifesto railed not only against modern industrial society but also against "modern leftists", whom Kaczynski defined as "mainly socialists, collectivists, 'politically correct' types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like".

Because of Kaczynski's intelligence and because of his ability to write in a high-level academic tone, his manifesto was given serious consideration upon its release and it became highly influential, even amongst those who severely disagreed with his use of violence. Kaczynski's staunchly radical pro-green, anti-left work was quickly absorbed into ecofascist thought.

Kaczynski also criticized right-wing activists who complained about the erosion of traditional social mores because they supported technological and economic progress, a view which he opposed. He stated that technology erodes traditional social mores that conservatives and right wingers want to protect, and he referred to conservatives as fools.

Although Kaczynski and his manifesto have been embraced by ecofascists, he rejected "fascism", including specifically "the 'ecofascists'", describing 'ecofascism' itself as 'an aberrant branch of leftism':

The true anti-tech movement rejects every form of racism or ethnocentrism. This has nothing to do with "tolerance," "diversity," "pluralism," "multiculturalism," "equality," or "social justice." The rejection of racism and ethnocentrism is - purely and simply - a cardinal point of strategy.

In his manifesto, Kaczynski wrote that he considered fascism a "kook ideology" and he also wrote that he considered Nazism "evil". Kaczynski never tried to align himself with the far-right at any point before or after his arrest.

In 2017, Netflix released a dramatisation of Kaczynski's life, titled Manhunt: Unabomber. Once again, the popularity of the show thrust Kaczynski and his manifesto into the public's mind and it also raised the profile of ecofascism.

Garrett Hardin, Pentti Linkola, and "Lifeboat Ethics"

Pentti Linkola's advocacy of "Lifeboat Ethics" is cited by commentators as an example of ecofascism.

Two figures influential in ecofascism are Garrett Hardin and Pentti Linkola, both of whom were proponents of what they refer to as "Lifeboat Ethics". Hardin was a professor of Human Ecology at the University of California often described as a white nationalist. His work was focused on the ethics of overpopulation and population control and suggested different methods like "birth control, abortion, and sterilization". Not only did he have medical suggestions but also stood against immigration and the end of foreign aid.

Linkola was a Finnish ecologist and radical Malthusian accused of being an active ecofascist who actively advocated ending democracy and replacing it with dictatorships that would use totalitarian and even genocidal tactics to end climate change. Both men used versions of the following analogy to illustrate their viewpoint:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

Renaud Camus

Renaud Camus' conspiracy theory, the Great Replacement, has been influential on ecofascism, being referenced explicitly in multiple manifestos and had its ideas relayed in others. In the conspiracy theory, the "native" white populations of western countries are being replaced by non-white populations as a directed political effort.

Association with violence

Ecofascist violence has occurred since the 21st century, with academics and researchers warning that as ecological crises worsen and remain unaddressed, support for ecofascism and violence in the name of ecofascism will increase.

In December 2020, the Swedish Defence Research Agency released a report on ecofascism. The paper argued that ecofascism is intimately tied to the ideology of accelerationism, and ecofascists nearly exclusively choose terror tactics over the political approach. Further, the SDRA argues not all ecofascist mass shooters have been recognized as such: Pekka-Eric Auvinen who shot eight people in Finland in 2007 before killing himself adhered to the ideology according to his manifesto titled "The Natural Selector's Manifesto". He advocated "total war against humanity" due to the threat humanity posed to other species. He wrote that death and killing is not a tragedy, as it constantly happens in nature between all species. Auvinen also wrote that the modern society hinders "natural justice" and that all inferior "subhumans" should be killed and only the elite of humanity be spared. In one of his YouTube videos Auvinen paid tribute to the prominent deep ecologist Pentti Linkola.

2010s

James Jay Lee, the eco-terrorist who took several hostages at the Discovery Communications headquarters on 1 September 2010, was described as an ecofascist by Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Anders Breivik committed the 2011 Norway attacks on 22 July 2011, in which he killed eight people by detonating a van bomb at Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo, and then killed 69 participants of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp, in a mass shooting on the island of Utøya. While dismissive of climate change, Breivik's manifesto was concerned with the carrying capacity of the planet, taking inspiration from Kaczynski and Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race. Breivik’s solution to this perceived problem was to cap the global population at 2.5 billion people, with the reduction in the global population being forced upon the global south. Through his actions he sought to inspire other terrorist attacks, and was an inspiration for later ecofascist terrorists.

William H. Stoetzer, a member of the Atomwaffen Division, an organisation responsible for at least eight murders, was active in the Earth Liberation Front as late as 2008 and joined Atomwaffen in 2016.

Brenton Tarrant, the Australian-born perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand described himself as an ecofascist, ethno-nationalist, and racist in his manifesto The Great Replacement, named after a far-right originating in France. In the manifesto Tarrant specifically mentions Breivik as an ideological and operational influence. Researchers point to Tarrant's terrorist attack as the moment when discussion of ecofascism moved from academic and specialist circles into the mainstream. Jordan Weissmann, writing for Slate, describes the perpetrator's version of ecofascism as "an established, if somewhat obscure, brand of neo-Nazi" and quotes Sarah Manavis of New Statesman as saying, "[Eco-fascists] believe that living in the original regions a race is meant to have originated in and shunning multiculturalism is the only way to save the planet they prioritise above all else". Similarly, Luke Darby clarifies it as: "eco-fascism is not the fringe hippie movement usually associated with ecoterrorism. It's a belief that the only way to deal with climate change is through eugenics and the brutal suppression of migrants."

Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso shooting wrote a similar manifesto, professing support for Tarrant. Posted to the online message board 8chan, it blames immigration to the United States for environmental destruction, saying that American lifestyles were "destroying the environment", invoking an ecological burden to be borne by future generations, and concluding that the solution was to "decrease the number of people in America using resources". Crusius outlined how he took inspiration from Tarrant and Breivik in his manifesto. Crusius and Tarrant also inspired Philip Manshaus who attacked a mosque in Norway in 2019.

Eco-fascists have been noted as using the Algiz rune and pine tree emojis to identity each other online on social media platforms

2020s

The Swedish self-identified ecofascist Green Brigade is an eco-terrorist group linked to The Base that is responsible for multiple mass murder plots. The Green Brigade has been responsible for arson attacks against targets deemed to be enemies of nature, like an attack on a mink farm that caused multi-million-dollar damages. Two members were arrested by Swedish police, allegedly planning assassinating judges and bombings.

In June 2021, the Telegram-based Terrorgram collective published an online guide with incitements for attacks on infrastructure and violence against minorities, police, public figures, journalists, and other perceived enemies. In December 2021, they published a second document containing ideological sections on accelerationism, white supremacy, and ecofascism.

During 2021, several neo-Nazi groups and individuals who espoused ecofascist rhetoric were arrested and charged by French authorities for planning terrorist attacks. These include the group Recolonisons la France, and two "accelerationists" in Occitania.

In an interview with a blog Maldición Eco-Extremista a leader of the eco-extremist group Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) claimed to have taken organisational influence from the fascist accelerationist terrorist group Order of Nine Angles. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies characterized ITS as ecofascist.

Payton S. Gendron, the instigator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, also wrote a manifesto self-describing as "an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist" within it and also professing support for far-right shooters from Tarrant and Dylann Roof to Breivik and Robert Bowers. Later in 2022, the Terrorgram collective released another publication, with analysts believing it would likely inspire further "Buffalo shootings".

In Finland on 15 March 2024, the anniversary of Christchurch mosque shooting, a Finnish army Non-commissioned officer was arrested for allegedly planning a mass shooting in a university in Vaasa that day. As her motivation she said the world needed "a mass culling" to put an end to "selfish individualism", "human degeneration", global warming and conspicuous consumption. The Finnish police described her as ecofascist and that she had read books by Nietzsche, Linkola and Kaczynski. Additionally she had praised Pekka-Eric Auvinen in internet conversations and had visited Jokela school where he perpetrated the mass shooting.

On 12 August 2024 at least five people were wounded in a mass stabbing attack in Eskisehir, Turkey. The perpetrator had called for "Total Human Death" and voiced support for Ted Kaczynski and Accelerationism on the Internet.

Criticism

The deep ecologic activist and "left biocentrism" advocate David Orton stated in 2000 that the term is pejorative in nature and it has "social ecology roots, against the deep ecology movement and its supporters plus, more generally, the environmental movement. Thus, 'ecofascist' and 'ecofascism', are used not to enlighten but to smear." Orton argued that "it is a strange term/concept to really have any conceptual validity" as there has not "yet been a country that has had an "eco-fascist" government or, to my knowledge, a political organization which has declared itself publicly as organized on an ecofascist basis."

Accusations of ecofascism have often been made but are usually strenuously denied. Left wing critiques view ecofascism as an assault on human rights, as in social ecologist Murray Bookchin's use of the term.

Deep ecology

Main article: Deep ecology

Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. It has long been linked to fascist ideologies, both by critics and fascist proponents. In certain texts, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, a leading voice of the "deep ecology" movement, opposes environmentalism and humanism, even proclaiming, in imitation of a famous phrase of the Marquis de Sade, "Écologistes, encore un effort pour devenir anti-humanistes" ("Ecologists, another effort to become anti-humanists!"). Luc Ferry, in his anti-environmentalist book Le Nouvel Ordre écologique  published in 1992, particularly incriminated deep ecology as being an anti-humanist ideology bordering on Nazism. Modern ecofascism has been described as a deep ecological philosophy combined with antihumanism and an accelerationist stance.

Bookchin's critique of deep ecology

Murray Bookchin criticizes the political position of deep ecologists^` such as David Foreman:

There are barely disguised racists, survivalists, macho Daniel Boones, and outright social reactionaries who use the word ecology to express their views, just as there are deeply concerned naturalists, communitarians, social radicals, and feminists who use the word ecology to express theirs... It was out of this former kind of crude eco-brutalism that Hitler, in the name of "population control," with a racial orientation, fashioned theories of blood and soil...

The same eco-brutalism now reappears a half-century later among self-professed deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted to starve to death and that desperate Indian immigrants from Latin America should be excluded by the border cops from the United States lest they burden "our" ecological resources.

Sakai on "natural purity"

Such observations among the left are not exclusive to Bookchin. In his review of Anna Bramwell's biography of Richard Walther Darré, political writer J. Sakai and author of Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, observes the fascist ideological undertones of natural purity. Prior to the Russian Revolution, the tsarist intelligentsia was divided on the one hand between liberal "utilitarian naturalists", who were "taken with the idea of creating a paradise on earth through scientific mastery of nature" and influenced by nihilism as well as Russian zoologists such as Anatoli Petrovich Bogdanov; and, on the other, "cultural-aesthetic" conservationists such as Ivan Parfenevich Borodin, who were influenced in turn by German Romantic and idealist concepts such as Landschaftspflege and Naturdenkmal.

Narrowness of the label

Political scientist Balša Lubarda has criticised the use of the term "ecofascism" as not sufficiently covering and describing the wider network of ideologies and systems that feed into ecofascist action, suggesting the term "far-right ecologism" (FRE) instead. Lubarda is supported by researcher Bernhard Forchtner who emphasises ecofascism's existence as a fringe ideology that has had little impact on the wider far-right's interaction with environmentalism.

Disavowment

As ecofascism has become more prevalent various environmental groups and organisations have publicly disavowed the ideology and those who subscribe to it.

Far-right green movements

In recent years there has been a greater proliferation in ecofascist groups globally in line with the proliferation of ecofascist rhetoric.

Australia

Australia has seen an increasing prominence of ecofascism among its far-right groups in recent years.

Austria

The Greens of Austria  (DGÖ) had been founded in 1982 by the former NDP official Alfred Bayer to use the popularity of the green movement at the time for the purposes of the NDP. The party managed to win a number of municipal seats in the mid-1980s but in 1988 the Constitutional Court banned the party on grounds of Neo-Nazism alongside a parallel ban on the NDP.

Finland

The neo-fascist Blue-and-Black Movement includes ecofascist policy goals, stating that they aim to protect the nature and biodiversity of Finland, and to live in harmony with nature, ending ritual slaughter, fur-farming and animal testing.

France

Nouvelle Droite movement

The European Nouvelle Droite movement, developed by Alain de Benoist and other individuals involved with the GRECE think tank, have also combined various left-wing ideas, including green politics, with right-wing ideas such as European ethnonationalism. Various other far-right figures have taken the lead from de Benoist, providing an appeal to nature in their politics, including: Guillaume Faye, Renaud Camus, and Hervé Juvin.

Génération identitaire

In 2020, following articles from self-described ecofascist Piero San Giorgio , a spokesperson for Génération identitaire, Clément Martin, advocated for zones identitaires à défendre, ethnically homogenous zones to be violently defended in order to protect the environment.

Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN) in the French National Assembly, has shown an ecofascist approach towards climate change issue and has incorporated environmental issues into her platform, although her policies regarding the climate often reflect a nationalist and protectionist stance to address it. Le Pen has stated that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist, and that immigrants "do not care about the environment". Jordan Bardella, president of National Rally, embraces similar beliefs and has stated "Borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them we will save the planet."

Solutions for climate change proposed for Le Pen also align with right-wing conservative economics. She has disregarded liberal free trade economics, under her belief that it "kills the planet" and creates "suffering for animals". Rather than supporting mass production of international commerce, she designed a localist project for "economic patriotism" to boost French products.

Climate change was not in the RN's party platform until around 2019, when the issue began to be capitalized electorally by both leftist and center parties alike. In response to this rising awareness regarding environmental issues, Le Pen designed an energy plan focused on fossil fuels, opposing wind and solar energy, and emphasizing expanding nuclear power wherein she delineated a party policy where 70% of France's electricity was to come from nuclear energy by 2050. Additionally, Le Pen supports maintaining oil heating systems and reducing taxes on fossil fuels, which contradicts climate experts' recommendations, and could increase France's dependence on fossil fuels.

Germany

Staudenmaier points to how from the post-war period in Germany an ecofascist section has always been present in the German far-right, though as a minor peripheral section, with others pointing out a long history of right-wing individuals and groups being present in the environmental and green movement in Germany.

Die Heimat

Frank Franz, the current leader of the NPD, in 2017.

Die Heimat (The Homeland), previously known as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a German Nationalist far-right party, has long sought to utilise the green movement. This is one of many strategies the party has used to try to gain supporters.

The German far-right has published the magazine Umwelt & Aktiv [de], that masquerades as a garden and nature publication but intertwines garden tips with extremist political ideology. This is known as a "camouflage publication" in which the NPD has spread its mission and ideologies through a discrete source and made its way into homes they otherwise wouldn’t. Right-wing environmentalists are settling in the northern regions of rural Germany and are forming nationalistic and authoritarian communities which produce honey, fresh produce, baked goods, and other such farm goods for profit. Their ideology is centered around "blood and soil" ruralism in which they humanely raise produce and animals for profit and sustenance. Through their support of this operation, and the backing of many others, it’s reported that the NPD is trying to wrestle the green movement, which has been dominated by the left since the 1980s, back from the left through these avenues.

It's difficult to know if when one is buying local produce or farm fresh eggs from a farmer at their stand, they're supporting a right-wing agenda. Various efforts are being made to halt or slow the infiltration of right-wing ecologists into the community of organic farmers such as brochures about their communities and common practices. However, as the organic cultivation organisation, Biopark, demonstrates with their vetting process, it's difficult to keep people out of communities because of their ideologies. Biopark specifies that they vet based on cultivation habits, not opinions or doctrines, especially when they're not explicitly stated.

AfD

Prominent Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) politician, Björn Höcke, has stated his desire to "reclaim" natural conservation from the left. Höcke believes that nature conservation is not correctly executed under climate justice politics, and is quoted stating that the AfD has "to take the issue of nature conservation back from the Greens" However, Höcke recognizes that a socially conservative position that strongly values environmental protection is not the majority position of the AfD. Regardless, Höcke sees the work of far-right ecological magazine, Die Kehre, as laying a theoretical standpoint for the AfD to later draw from.

Collegium Humanum

The Collegium Humanum was an ecofascist organisation in Germany from 1963 to 2008. It was established in 1963 as a club, was first active in the German environmental movement, then from the early 1980s became a far-right political organisation and was banned in 2008 by the Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble due to "continued denial of the Holocaust".

Other groups

The term is also used to a limited extent within the Neue Rechte. The neo-Artamans have been identified as ecofascists in their attempts to revive the agrarian and völkisch traditions of the Artaman League in communes that they have built up since the 1990s.

Hungary

László Toroczkai, leader of the Our Homeland Movement party, speaking at Corvin köz

Following the fall of Communism in Hungary at the end of the 1980s, one of the new political parties that emerged in the country was the Green Party of Hungary. Initially having a moderate centre-right green outlook, after 1993 the party adopted a radical anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-Semitic and pro-fascist stance, paired with the creation of a paramilitary wing. This ideological swing resulted in many members breaking off from the party to form new green parties, first with Green Alternative in 1993 and secondly with Hungarian Social Green Party in 1995. Each green party remained on the political fringe of Hungarian politics and petered out over time. It was not until the formation of LMP – Hungary's Green Party in the 2010s that green politics in Hungary consolidated around a single green party.

The far-right Hungarian political party Our Homeland Movement has adopted some elements of environmentalism, and commonly refers to itself as the only true green party; for example, the party has called on Hungarians to show patriotism by supporting the removal of pollution from the Tisza River while simultaneously placing the blame on the pollution on Romania and Ukraine. Similarly, elements of the far-right Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement proscribe themselves to the "Eco-Nationalist" label, with one member stating "no real nationalist is a climate denialist".

India

Narendra Modi addressing at the inauguration of the India Pavilion, at COP21

Narendra Modi's leadership of India with the Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to install a complete system of Hindutva, with repression of racial and religious minorities and caste discrimination. Since 2018 Modi has been increasingly viewed as an environmental champion and used rhetoric about protecting the environment to greenwash his image and the image of his party.

International

Greenline Front is an international network of ecofascists which originated in Eastern Europe, with chapters in a variety of countries such as Argentina, Belarus, Chile, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland.

Serbia

Leviathan Movement promotes ecology and protects animals from cruelty by, among other things, saving them from abusers. Leviathan has been reported as an ideologically neo-fascist and neo-nazi group. They used to share an office with the Serbian Right, a far-right political party, and Leviathan ’s leader, Pavle Bihali, is seen in pictures on his social media accounts posing with neo-Nazis.

Sweden

The Nordic Resistance Movement, a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement in the Nordic countries and a political party in Sweden has been continually described as ecofascist, and have declared themselves as the "new green party" of the Nordics.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the initiators of the Ecopop initiative were accused of eco-fascism by FDFA State Secretary Yves Rossier [de] at a Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland event on 11 January 2013. However, after threatening to sue, Rossier apologized for the allegation.

United Kingdom

Protestors against Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, 2009

There is also a historic tradition between the far-right and environmentalism in the UK.Throughout its history, the far-right British National Party has flirted on and off with environmentalism. During the 1970s the party's first leader John Bean expressed support for the emerging environmentalist movement in the pages of the party's newspaper and suggested the primary cause of pollution as overpopulation, and therefore immigration into Britain must be halted. During the 2000s the BNP sought to position itself as the "only 'true' green party in the United Kingdom, dedicating a significant portion of their manifestos to green issues. During an appearance on BBC One's Question Time in October 2009, then-leader Nick Griffin proclaimed:

Unlike the fake "Greens" who are merely a front for the far left of the Labour regime, the BNP is the only party to recognise that overpopulation – whose primary driver is immigration, as revealed by the government's own figures – is the cause of the destruction of our environment. Furthermore, the BNP's manifesto states that a BNP government will make it a priority to stop building on green land. New housing should wherever possible be built on derelict "brown land".

The Guardian criticised Griffin's claims that himself and the BNP were truly environmentalists at heart, suggesting it was merely a smokescreen for anti-immigrant rhetoric and pointed to previous statements by Griffin in which he suggested that climate change was a hoax. These suspicions seemed to be proven correct when in December 2009 the BNP released a 40-page document denying that global warming is a "man-made" phenomenon. The party reiterated this stance in 2011, as well as making claims that wind farms were causing the deaths of "thousands of Scottish pensioners from hypothermia". John Bean a far-right activist and politician, the first leader of the BNP and latterly a leader within the National Front, wrote regularly in the National Front’s magazine about the problems of pollution and environmental degradation tying them to ideas of overpopulation and immigration.

In 2024 it was reported by Searchlight that the fascist groups Patriotic Alternative and Homeland party has also started to make claims that the countryside was being destroyed by immigration.

In Scotland, former UKIP candidate and activist Alistair McConnachie, who has questioned the Holocaust, founded the Independent Green Voice in 2003, and multiple ex-BNP members and activists have stood as candidates for the party.

United States

Main article: Hardline (subculture)

During the 1990s a highly militant environmentalist subculture called Hardline emerged from the straight edge hardcore punk music scene and established itself in a number of cities across the US. Adherents to the Hardline lifestyle combined the straight edge belief in no alcohol, no drugs, no tobacco with militant veganism and advocacy for animal rights. Hardline touted a biocentric worldview that claimed to value all life, and therefore opposed abortion, contraceptives, and sex for any purpose other than procreation. On this same line, Hardline opposed homosexuality as "unnatural" and "deviant”. Hardline groups were highly militant; In 1999 Salt Lake City grouped Hardliners as a criminal gang and suggested they were behind dozens of assaults in the metro area. That same year CBS News reported that Hardliners were behind the firebombing of fast food outlets and clothing stores selling leather items, and attributed 30 attacks to Hardliners. The Hardline subculture dissolved after the 1990s.

White supremacist John Tanton and the network of organisations he created, dubbed the Tanton network, have been described as ecofascist. Tanton and his organisations spent decades linking immigration to environmental concerns.

Political researchers Blair Taylor and Eszter Szenes have identified multiple threads in alt-right discourse and ideology that align with far-right ecologism and ecofascism.

The Green Party of the United States has also long been the target of various far-right figures, such as anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, who have tried to shift the party drastically to the far-right.

In 1994, so-called "Takings" bills were introduced by the U.S. Congress to financially compensate wetlands owners who were unable to develop their land for profit due to environmental protection policies. These bills were met with resistance by "anthropocentric market liberals", who oppose any sort of market regulation or intervention of the state into private ownership. Hence, these "takings" bills were deemed ecofascist and proponents of the bills were "disparaged" and viewed as "'nature-loving' romantics for having reactionary tendencies that may be consistent with fascism". The journal Social Theory and Practice uses this instance to exemplify how growing public frustration with complex federal environmental regulations leads to rapidly polarizing opinions on environmental regulations in the United States: one is either a citizen who supports people, private property, and the U.S. Constitution, or a radical environmentalist who supports nature, communal ownership, and ecofascism.

Pejorative

Detractors on the political right tend to use the term "ecofascism" as a hyperbolic general pejorative against all environmental activists, including more mainstream groups such as Greenpeace, prominent activists such as Greta Thunberg, and government agencies tasked with protecting environmental resources. Such detractors include Rush Limbaugh and other conservative and wise use movement commentators. The term as a pejorative has been used in multiple countries.

Malthusianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

Thomas Robert Malthus, after whom Malthusianism is named

Malthusianism is a theory that population growth is potentially exponential, according to the Malthusian growth model, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline. This event, called a Malthusian catastrophe (also known as a Malthusian trap, population trap, Malthusian check, Malthusian crisis, Point of Crisis, or Malthusian crunch) has been predicted to occur if population growth outpaces agricultural production, thereby causing famine or war. According to this theory, poverty and inequality will increase as the price of assets and scarce commodities goes up due to fierce competition for these dwindling resources. This increased level of poverty eventually causes depopulation by decreasing birth rates. If asset prices keep increasing, social unrest would occur, which would likely cause a major war, revolution, or a famine. Societal collapse is an extreme but possible outcome from this process. The theory posits that such a catastrophe would force the population to "correct" back to a lower, more easily sustainable level (quite rapidly, due to the potential severity and unpredictable results of the mitigating factors involved, as compared to the relatively slow time scales and well-understood processes governing unchecked growth or growth affected by preventive checks). Malthusianism has been linked to a variety of political and social movements, but almost always refers to advocates of population control.

These concepts derive from the political and economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus suggested that while technological advances could increase a society's supply of resources, such as food, and thereby improve the standard of living, the abundance of resources would enable population growth, which would eventually bring the supply of resources for each person back to its original level. Some economists contend that since the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, mankind has broken out of the trap. Others argue that the continuation of extreme poverty indicates that the Malthusian trap continues to operate. Others further argue that due to lack of food availability coupled with excessive pollution, developing countries show more evidence of the trap as compared to developed countries. A similar, more modern concept, is that of human overpopulation.

Neo-Malthusianism is the advocacy of human population planning to ensure resources and environmental integrities for current and future human populations as well as for other species. In Britain the term "Malthusian" can also refer more specifically to arguments made in favour of family planning, hence organizations such as the Malthusian League. Neo-Malthusians differ from Malthus's theories mainly in their support for the use of birth control. Malthus, a devout Christian, believed that "self-control" (i.e., abstinence) was preferable to artificial birth control. He also worried that the effect of contraceptive use would be too powerful in curbing growth, conflicting with the common 18th century perspective (to which Malthus himself adhered) that a steadily growing population remained a necessary factor in the continuing "progress of society", generally. Modern neo-Malthusians are generally more concerned than Malthus with environmental degradation and catastrophic famine than with poverty.

Malthusianism has attracted criticism from diverse schools of thought, including Georgists, Marxists and socialists, libertarians and free market advocates, feminists, Catholics, and human rights advocates, characterising it as excessively pessimistic, insufficiently researched, misanthropic or inhuman. Many critics believe Malthusianism has been discredited since the publication of Principle of Population, often citing advances in agricultural techniques and modern reductions in human fertility. Some modern proponents believe that the basic concept of population growth eventually outstripping resources is still fundamentally valid, and that positive checks are still likely to occur in humanity's future if no action is taken to intentionally curb population growth. In spite of the variety of criticisms against it, the Malthusian argument remains a major discourse based on which national and international environmental regulations are promoted.

History

Malthus' theoretical argument

In 1798, Thomas Malthus proposed his hypothesis in An Essay on the Principle of Population.

He argued that although human populations tend to increase, the happiness of a nation requires a like increase in food production. "The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its poverty, or its riches, upon its youth, or its age, upon its being thinly, or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing, upon the degree in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an unrestricted population."

However, the propensity for population increase also leads to a natural cycle of abundance and shortages:

We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population...increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions, must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease; while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great, that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land; to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage; till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened; and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated.

— Thomas Malthus, 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Chapter II.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

— Thomas Malthus, 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter VII, p. 61

Malthus faced opposition from economists both during his life and since. A vocal critic several decades later was Friedrich Engels.

Early history

Malthus was not the first to outline the problems he perceived. The original essay was part of an ongoing intellectual discussion at the end of the 18th century regarding the origins of poverty. Principle of Population was specifically written as a rebuttal to thinkers like William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, and Malthus's own father who believed in the perfectibility of humanity. Malthus believed humanity's ability to reproduce too rapidly doomed efforts at perfection and caused various other problems.

His criticism of the working class's tendency to reproduce rapidly, and his belief that this, rather than the exploitation of their labour by capitalists, led to their poverty, brought widespread criticism of his theory.

Malthusians perceived ideas of charity to the poor, typified by Tory paternalism, were futile, as these would only result in increased numbers of the poor; these theories played into Whig economic ideas exemplified by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The Act was described by opponents as "a Malthusian bill designed to force the poor to emigrate, to work for lower wages, to live on a coarser sort of food", which initiated the construction of workhouses despite riots and arson.

Malthus revised his theories in later editions of An Essay on the Principles of Population, taking a more optimistic tone, although there is some scholarly debate on the extent of his revisions. According to Dan Ritschel of the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,

The great Malthusian dread was that "indiscriminate charity" would lead to exponential growth in the population in poverty, increased charges to the public purse to support this growing army of the dependent, and, eventually, the catastrophe of national bankruptcy. Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor.

One proponent of Malthusianism was the novelist Harriet Martineau whose circle of acquaintances included Charles Darwin, and the ideas of Malthus were a significant influence on the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin was impressed by the idea that population growth would eventually lead to more organisms than could possibly survive in any given environment, leading him to theorize that organisms with a relative advantage in the struggle for survival and reproduction would be able to pass their characteristics on to further generations. Proponents of Malthusianism were in turn influenced by Darwin's ideas, both schools coming to influence the field of eugenics. Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. advocated "humane birth selection through humane birth control" in order to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe by eliminating the "unfit".

Malthusianism became a less common intellectual tradition as the 19th century advanced, mostly as a result of technological increases, the opening of new territory to agriculture, and increasing international trade. Although a "conservationist" movement in the United States concerned itself with resource depletion and natural protection in the first half of the twentieth century, Desrochers and Hoffbauer write, "It is probably fair to say ... that it was not until the publication of Osborn's and Vogt's books [1948] that a Malthusian revival took hold of a significant segment of the American population".

Modern formulation

Oded Galor

The modern formulation of the Malthusian theory was developed by Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor. Their theoretical structure suggests that as long as higher income has a positive effect on reproductive success, and land is a limiting factor in resource production, then technological progress has only a temporary effect on income per capita (per person). While in the short run technological progress increases income per capita, resource abundance created by technological progress would enable population growth, and would eventually bring the per capita income back to its original long-run level.

The testable prediction of the theory is that during the Malthusian epoch technologically advanced economies were characterized by higher population density, but their level of income per capita was not different from the level in societies that are technologically backward.

Preventive vs. positive population controls

See also: Human population planning

The Malthusian catastrophe simplistically illustrated

To manage population growth with respect to food supply, Malthus proposed methods which he described as preventive or positive checks:

• A preventive check according to Malthus is that in which nature may alter population changes. Some primary examples are celibacy and chastity but also contraception, which Malthus condemned as morally indefensible along with infanticide, abortion and adultery. In other words, preventive checks control the population by reducing fertility rates.
• A positive check is any event or circumstance that shortens the human life span. The primary examples of this are war, plague and famine. However, poor health and economic conditions are also considered instances of positive checks. When these lead to high rates of premature death, the result is termed a Malthusian catastrophe. The adjacent diagram depicts the abstract point at which such an event would occur, in terms of existing population and food supply: when the population reaches or exceeds the capacity of the shared supply, positive checks are forced to occur, restoring balance. (In reality the situation would be significantly more nuanced due to complex regional and individual disparities around access to food, water, and other resources.)

Neo-Malthusian theory

Malthusian theory is a recurrent theme in many social science venues. John Maynard Keynes, in Economic Consequences of the Peace, opens his polemic with a Malthusian portrayal of the political economy of Europe as unstable due to Malthusian population pressure on food supplies. Many models of resource depletion and scarcity are Malthusian in character: the rate of energy consumption will outstrip the ability to find and produce new energy sources, and so lead to a crisis.

In France, terms such as "politique malthusienne" ("Malthusian politics") refer to population control strategies. The concept of restriction of the population associated with Malthus morphed, in later political-economic theory, into the notion of restriction of production. In the French sense, a "Malthusian economy" is one in which protectionism and the formation of cartels is not only tolerated but encouraged.

Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party and the main architect of the Soviet Union was a critic of Neo-Malthusian theory (but not of birth control and abortion in general).

"Neo-Malthusianism" is a concern that overpopulation as well as overconsumption may increase resource depletion and/or environmental degradation will lead to ecological collapse or other hazards.

The rapid increase in the global population of the past century exemplifies Malthus's predicted population patterns; it also appears to describe socio-demographic dynamics of complex pre-industrial societies. These findings are the basis for neo-Malthusian modern mathematical models of long-term historical dynamics.

There was a general "neo-Malthusian" revival in the mid-to-late 1940s, continuing through to the 2010s after the publication of two influential books in 1948 (Fairfield Osborn's Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt's Road to Survival). During that time the population of the world rose dramatically. Many in environmental movements began to sound the alarm regarding the potential dangers of population growth. Paul R. Ehrlich has been one of the most prominent neo-Malthusians since the publication of The Population Bomb in 1968. In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin published an influential essay in Science that drew heavily from Malthusian theory. His essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons", argued that "a finite world can support only a finite population" and that "freedom to breed will bring ruin to all." The Club of Rome published a book entitled The Limits to Growth in 1972. The report and the organisation soon became central to the neo-Malthusian revival. Leading ecological economist Herman Daly has acknowledged the influence of Malthus on his concept of a steady-state economy. Other prominent Malthusians include the Paddock brothers, authors of Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive?

The neo-Malthusian revival has drawn criticism from writers who claim the Malthusian warnings were overstated or premature because the green revolution has brought substantial increases in food production and will be able to keep up with continued population growth. Julian Simon, a cornucopian, has written that contrary to neo-Malthusian theory, Earth's "carrying capacity" is essentially limitless. Simon argues not that there is an infinite physical amount of, say, copper, but for human purposes that amount should be treated as infinite because it is not bounded or limited in any economic sense, because: 1) known reserves are of uncertain quantity 2) New reserves may become available, either through discovery or via the development of new extraction techniques 3) recycling 4) more efficient utilization of existing reserves (e.g., "It takes much less copper now to pass a given message than a hundred years ago." [The Ultimate Resource 2, 1996, footnote, p. 62]) 5) development of economic equivalents, e.g., optic fibre in the case of copper for telecommunications. Responding to Simon, Al Bartlett reiterates the potential of population growth as an exponential (or as expressed by Malthus, "geometrical") curve to outstrip both natural resources and human ingenuity. Bartlett writes and lectures particularly on energy supplies, and describes the "inability to understand the exponential function" as the "greatest shortcoming of the human race".

Prominent neo-Malthusians such as Paul Ehrlich maintain that ultimately, population growth on Earth is still too high, and will eventually lead to a serious crisis. The 2007–2008 world food price crisis inspired further Malthusian arguments regarding the prospects for global food supply.

From approximately 2004 to 2011, concerns about "peak oil" and other forms of resource depletion became widespread in the United States, and motivated a large if short-lived subculture of neo-Malthusian "peakists".

A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization study conducted in 2009 said that food production would have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years, and food production in the developing world would need to double to feed a projected population increase from 7.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050. The effects of global warming (floods, droughts, and other extreme weather events) are expected to negatively affect food production, with different impacts in different regions. The FAO also said the use of agricultural resources for biofuels may also put downward pressure on food availability. The more recent emergence of bio-energy with carbon capture (BECCS) as a prevalent "negative emissions" strategy for reaching Paris Climate Accord goals is another such pressure.

Evidence in support

Research indicates that technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living during the time period 1–1500 AD. In addition, scholars have reported on the lack of a significant trend of wages in various places over the world for very long stretches of time. In Babylonia during the period 1800 to 1600 BC, for example, the daily wage for a common laborer was enough to buy about 15 pounds of wheat. In Classical Athens in about 328 BC, the corresponding wage could buy about 24 pounds of wheat. In England in 1800 AD the wage was about 13 pounds of wheat. In spite of the technological developments across these societies, the daily wage hardly varied. In Britain between 1200 and 1800, only relatively minor fluctuations from the mean (less than a factor of two) in real wages occurred. Following depopulation by the Black Death and other epidemics, real income in Britain peaked around 1450–1500 and began declining until the British Agricultural Revolution. Historian Walter Scheidel posits that waves of plague following the initial outbreak of the Black Death throughout Europe had a leveling effect that changed the ratio of land to labor, reducing the value of the former while boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making employers and landowners less well off while improving the economic prospects and living standards of workers. He says that "the observed improvement in living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations." This leveling effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population pressure."

Robert Fogel published a study of lifespans and nutrition from about a century before Malthus to the 19th century that examined European birth and death records, military and other records of height and weight that found significant stunted height and low body weight indicative of chronic hunger and malnutrition. He also found short lifespans that he attributed to chronic malnourishment which left people susceptible to disease. Lifespans, height and weight began to steadily increase in the UK and France after 1750. Fogel's findings are consistent with estimates of available food supply.

Evidence supporting Malthusianism today can be seen in the poorer countries of the world with booming populations. In East Africa specifically, experts say that this area of the world has not yet escaped the Malthusian effects of population growth. Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005), for example, argues that the Rwandan Genocide was brought about in part due to excessive population pressures. He argues that Rwanda "illustrates a case where Malthus's worst-case scenario does seem to have been right." Due to population pressures in Rwanda, Diamond explains that the population density combined with lagging technological advancements caused its food production to not be able to keep up with its population. Diamond claims that this environment is what caused the mass killings of Tutsi and even some Hutu Rwandans. The genocide, in this instance, provides a potential example of a Malthusian trap.

Theory of breakout via technology

See also: Industrial Revolution § Causes, and British Agricultural Revolution

Industrial Revolution

Some researchers contend that a British breakout occurred due to technological improvements and structural change away from agricultural production, while coal, capital, and trade played a minor role. Economic historian Gregory Clark, building on the insights of Galor and Moav, has argued, in his book A Farewell to Alms, that a British breakout may have been caused by differences in reproduction rates among the rich and the poor (the rich were more likely to marry, tended to have more children, and, in a society where disease was rampant and childhood mortality at times approached 50%, upper-class children were more likely to survive to adulthood than poor children.) This in turn led to sustained "downward mobility": the descendants of the rich becoming more populous in British society and spreading middle-class values such as hard work and literacy.

20th century

Global deaths in conflicts since the year 1400

A chart of estimated annual growth rates in world population, 1800–2005. Rates before 1950 are annualized historical estimates from the US Census Bureau. Red = USCB projections to 2025.

Growth in food production has historically been greater than the population growth. Food per person increased since 1961. The graph runs up to slightly past 2010.

After World War II, mechanized agriculture produced a dramatic increase in productivity of agriculture and the Green Revolution greatly increased crop yields, expanding the world's food supply while lowering food prices. In response, the growth rate of the world's population accelerated rapidly, resulting in predictions by Paul R. Ehrlich, Simon Hopkins, and many others of an imminent Malthusian catastrophe. However, populations of most developed countries grew slowly enough to be outpaced by gains in productivity.

By the early 21st century, many technologically developed countries had passed through the demographic transition, a complex social development encompassing a drop in total fertility rates in response to various fertility factors, including lower infant mortality, increased urbanization, and a wider availability of effective birth control.

On the assumption that the demographic transition is now spreading from the developed countries to less developed countries, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that human population may peak in the late 21st century rather than continue to grow until it has exhausted available resources. Recent empirical research corroborates this assumption for most of the less developed countries, with the exception of most of Sub-Saharan Africa.

A 2004 study by a group of prominent economists and ecologists, including Kenneth Arrow and Paul Ehrlich suggests that the central concerns regarding sustainability have shifted from population growth to the consumption/savings ratio, due to shifts in population growth rates since the 1970s. Empirical estimates show that public policy (taxes or the establishment of more complete property rights) can promote more efficient consumption and investment that are sustainable in an ecological sense; that is, given the current (relatively low) population growth rate, the Malthusian catastrophe can be avoided by either a shift in consumer preferences or public policy that induces a similar shift.

According to Malthus, population doubled every 25 years. Population sat at less than 17 million people in the U.S. in the 1850s and a century later, according to the United States Census Bureau, population had risen to 150 million. Malthus overpopulation would lead to war, famine, and diseases and in the future, society won't be able to feed every person and eventually die. Malthus theory was incorrect, however, because by the early 1900s and mid 1900s, the rise of conventional foods brought a decline to food production and efficiency increased exponentially. More supply was being produced with less work, less resources, and less time. Processed foods had much to do with it, many wives wanting to spend less time in the kitchen and instead work. This was the beginning of technological advancements adhering to food demand even in the middle of a war. Economists disregarded Malthus population theory because Malthus didn't factor in important roles society would have on economic growth. These factors concerned the society's need to improve their quality of life and their want for economic prosperity. Cultural shifts also had much to do with food production increase, and this put end to the population theory.

Criticism

See also: Club of Rome § Critics, and Limits to Growth § Criticism

One of the earliest critics was David Ricardo. Malthus immediately and correctly recognised it to be an attack on his theory of wages. Ricardo and Malthus debated this in a lengthy personal correspondence.

In Ireland, where applying his thesis, Malthus proposed that "to give full effect to the natural resources of the country a great part of the population should be swept from the soil", there were early refutations. In Observations on the population and resources of Ireland (1821), Whitley Stokes, invoking the advantages mankind derives from "improved industry, improved conveyance, improvements in morals, government and religion", denied that there was a "law of nature" that procreation must outrun the means of subsistence. Ireland's problem was not her "numbers" but her indifferent government. In An Inquiry Concerning the Population of Nations containing a Refutation of Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population (1818), George Ensor had developed a similar broadside against Malthusian political economy, arguing that poverty was sustained not by reckless propensity to propagate, but rather by the state's indulgence of the heedless concentration of private wealth.

Following the same line of argument, William Hazlitt (1819) wrote, "Mr Malthus wishes to confound the necessary limits of the produce of the earth with the arbitrary and artificial distribution of that produce by the institutions of society".

Thomas Carlyle dismissed Malthusianism as pessimistic sophistry. In Chartism (1839), he denied the possibility that "twenty-four millions" of English "working people[s]", "scattered over a hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of space", could collectively "take a resolution" to diminish the supply of labourers "and act on it". Even if they could, the ongoing influx of Irish immigrants would render their efforts redundant. Associating Malthusianism with laissez-faire, he instead advocated proactive legislation. His later essay "Indian Meal" (1849) argued that maize production would remedy the failure of the potato crop as well as any prospective food shortages.

Karl Marx (who had occasion to cite Ensor). referred to Malthusianism as "nothing more than a school-boyish, superficial plagiary of Defoe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace". Friedrich Engels argued that Malthus failed to recognise a crucial difference between humans and other species. In capitalist societies, as Engels put it, scientific and technological "progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population". Marx argued, even more broadly, that the growth of both a human population in toto and the "relative surplus population" within it, occurred in direct proportion to accumulation.

Henry George in Progress and Poverty (1879) criticised Malthus's view that population growth was a cause of poverty, arguing that poverty was caused by the concentration of ownership of land and natural resources. George noted that humans are distinct from other species, because unlike most species humans can use their minds to leverage the reproductive forces of nature to their advantage. He wrote, "Both the hawk and the man eat chickens; but the more hawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens."

D. E. C. Eversley observed that Malthus appeared unaware of the extent of industrialisation, and either ignored or discredited the possibility that it could improve living conditions of the poorer classes.

Barry Commoner believed in The Closing Circle (1971) that technological progress will eventually reduce the demographic growth and environmental damage created by civilisation. He also opposed coercive measures postulated by neo-malthusian movements of his time arguing that their cost will fall disproportionately on the low-income population who are struggling already.

Ester Boserup suggested that expanding population leads to agricultural intensification and development of more productive and less labor-intensive methods of farming. Thus, human population levels determines agricultural methods, rather than agricultural methods determining population.

Environmentalist founder of Ecomodernism, Stewart Brand, summarised how the Malthusian predictions of The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth failed to materialise due to radical changes in fertility that peaked at a growth of 2 percent per year in 1963 globally and has since rapidly declined.

While short-term trends, even on the scale of decades or centuries, cannot prove or disprove the existence of mechanisms promoting a Malthusian catastrophe over longer periods, due to the prosperity of a major fraction of the human population at the beginning of the 21st century, and the debatability of the predictions for ecological collapse made by Paul R. Ehrlich in the 1960s and 1970s, some people, such as economist Julian L. Simon who wrote The Ultimate Resource which it contends is human technology and medical statistician Hans Rosling questioned its inevitability.

See also: Simon–Ehrlich wager, The Ultimate Resource, and Factfulness

Wheat yields in developing countries since 1961, in kg/ha Largely due to effects of the "Green Revolution". In developing countries maize yields are also still rapidly rising.

Joseph Tainter asserts that science has diminishing marginal returns and that scientific progress is becoming more difficult, harder to achieve, and more costly, which may reduce efficiency of the factors that prevented the Malthusian scenarios from happening in the past.

The view that a "breakout" from the Malthusian trap has led to an era of sustained economic growth is explored by "unified growth theory". One branch of unified growth theory is devoted to the interaction between human evolution and economic development. In particular, Oded Galor and Omer Moav argue that the forces of natural selection during the Malthusian epoch selected beneficial traits to the growth process and this growth enhancing change in the composition of human traits brought about the escape from the Malthusian trap, the demographic transition, and the take-off to modern growth.