With great respect to Voltaire's opinions, there are some serious errors in his post, that then put his conclusions in doubt.
The chart he presents to as as parabolic is not a parabola at all. The curve is known as exponential growth. Exponential growth in population is not very good for the planet with limited space. However it does not add to the clarity of the debate if a carpenter refers to his hammer as a screwdriver.
"As a farmer I have seen mouse plagues etc. They soar in numbers till they are decimated by disease or lack of food etc."
So the plaques crashed but the species survived and are doing quite well, thank you very much, plenty of mice and other vermin about, no threat of extinction. If anything, this statement would support an argument that there are automatic stabilizers in nature that take care of excesses and return thing to normal or sustainable levels.
"The biggest parabola of all time is the human population."
I think by this Voltaire means that human population numbers are out of control or about to become out of control.
In my opinion, there is plenty of everything ATM, to sustain us all, but the distribution is grossly unequal and unfair.
As an example, we in the developed world are throwing away tons of food every day, while people in Ethiopia or Bangladesh are dying of starvation or malnutrition.
There are very good reasons to keep world population at sustainable levels. Levels that our ecosystems can comfortably cope with. Limiting the population growth and stabilizing the population are goals we should praise and applaud. Those goals should be achieved by humanitarian means.
At the moment the developed world seems to rely on natural disasters, famine and plagues to reduce the population threat. Not a very humane way to go about it, IMO.
