The Relationship Between Population Growth and Abundance

There are now 8 billion people living on the planet. Is there enough room for all of us? Aren't we going to run out of natural resources? How are we going to feed everybody? These are not new questions. In 1798, an English economist named Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay on the principle of population. He claimed that population grew exponentially while resources needed to feed that population grew at a linear rate.