Editor’s Note: Malthus Was Right!

Some readers may recall director Christopher Nolan’s 2014 science fiction movie, Interstellar. A global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. A NASA physicist, played by Michael Caine, tries to save humanity by transporting people to another galaxy. In the meantime, billions die off in the world depicted in this movie, because population increases in the Third World outpaced food production.

As the two leading articles in this issue of The Social Contract affirm, resources are finite while human potential isn't infinite. As Professor Smail observes, what is “increasingly likely…[is] a global ‘synchronous failure,’ a cascading political, economic, social, environmental, and demographic breakdown (or generalized collapse), stimulated by the mutually reinforcing convergence of multiple ‘inconvenient truths.’”

Chris Clugston follows by critically assessing four popular myths about mankind’s ability to exempt itself from natural limits. He explains that the earth’s resources cannot support the current 7.5 billion humans, much less the 8.5 billion projected by 2030 nor 9.7 billion by 2050.

Globalism is touted as a solution, by redistributing wealth from First World countries to the Third World, and by encouraging Third World residents to migrate to the First World. “Diversity” and “tolerance” are proclaimed to be the highest virtues, despite Islamic terrorism and generalized criminality by newcomers from Africa and the Middle East. In a collection of articles assembled by John Vinson, the contributors consider how the Global Elite’s grand experiment in remaking the world has led to our current crises. We invite you to share this issue of The Social Contract with your friends and associates.