I think that a huge amount of people within the modern world have had their eyes open of late to this truth. There has been a lot of talk about the world being overpopulated the past few years, and I've talked with a number of people who want to know: just where in the world did this idea of overpopulation of the planet come from?

The answer?

A dry, old, dusty piece of philosophy written back in 1798.

Thomas Malthus' essay "An Essay on the Principle of Population" was the first and foremost paper that led to this idea beginning to take root in human minds across the globe.

Malthus said that because the global population increases exponentially (in a curve) while food production increases linearly (in a straight line), there would come a time where there were too many mouths to feed and not enough food. Mass starvation would be the end result.