The following excerpts are from "Body Count: Population and its enemies," by Stephen Moore, which appeared in the October 25, 1999 issue of National Review

"...In a rational world, Malthusianism would not be in a state of intellectual revival, but thorough disrepute. After all, virtually every objective trend is running in precisly the opposite direction of what the widely acclaimed Malthusians of the 1960s--from Lester Brown to Paul Ehrlich to the Club of Rome--predicted. birth rates around the world are lower today than at any time in recorded history. Global per capita food production is much higher than ever before. The "energy crisis" is now such a distant memory that oil is virtually the cheapest liquid on earth. These facts, collectively, have wrecked the credibility of the population-bomb propagandists.
Yet the population-control movement is gaining steam. It has won the hearts and wallets of some of the most influential leaders inside and outside government today. Malthusianism has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry and a political juggernaut."

"...Other Malthusian worries are similarly wrongheaded. Global food prices have fallen by half since 1950, even as world population has doubled. The dean of agricultural economists, D. Gale Johnson of the University of Chicago, has documented 'a dramatic decline in famines' in the last 50 years. Fewer than half as many people die of famine each year now than did a century ago--despite a near-quadrupling of the population. Enough food is now grown in the world to provide every resident of the planet with almost four pounds of food a day. In each of the past three years, global food production has reached new heights."

"...Millions are still hungry, and famines continue to occur--but these are the result of government policies or political malice, not inadequate global food production. As the International Red Cross has reported, "the loss of access to food resources [during famines] is generally the result of intentional acts" by governments."

"The greatest threat to the planet is not too many people, but too much statism."

"The problem with trying to win this debate with logic and an arsenal of facts is that modern Malthusianism is not a scientific theory at all. It's a religion, in which the assertion that mankind is overbreeding is accepted as an article of faith. I recently participated in a debate before an anti-population group called Carrying Capacity Network, at which one scholar informed me that man's presence on the earth is destructive because Homo Sapiens is the only species without a natural predator. It's hard to argue with somebody who despairs because mankind is alone at the top of the food chain."

"At its core, the population-control ethic is an assault on the principle that every human life has intrinsic value. Malthusian activists tend to view human beings neither as endowed with intrinsic value, nor even as resources, but primarily as consumers of resources. No wonder that at last year's ZPG conference, the Catholic Church was routinely disparaged as 'our enemy' and 'the evil empire.'