Thomas Malthus preceded ‘The Limits to Growth’ by 150 years with his “Essay on the Principle of Population”. Since then, the idea that the capacity of the land was inadequate to meet the needs of the population has been demonstrated to be the inverse of what really happens. The more we increase the capacity of the land to feed the population the greater the population becomes. Naive I may well be. But how precisely do we address the problem? Unless you are prepared to formulate and enforce a doctrine that dictates who is permitted to live and who must die — or not be concieved — the suffering of war and hunger is bound to continue. As we finally do reach the limits that Malthus anticipated millions will die by the arbitrary selection ‘process’ of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.