They suggest that limiting human population growth is also necessary to preserve the earth's limited store of fossil fuels, metals, and minerals. To prevent starvation, shortages, and ecological disasters in the future, they recommend that governments discourage population growth and enact conservation measures. Critics of Neo-Malthusian Theories Critics of these theories dispute Malthusian population projections. They point out that the growth rate of the world's population peaked in the mid-1960s and is slowing in both industrialized and poorer nations. Thus an S-curve is a more accurate representation of future population trends.
Critics say that limiting population growth is unnecessary, as well as repressive.
They argue that people do not have to forage for survival as animals do, but are problem solvers with demonstrated abilities to increase the quantity and quality of the food they grow. They dispute the claim that the world is running out of land for agriculture, citing billions of acres suitable for crop production. Critics challenge the Malthusian assumption that large populations cause poverty, although they agree that population size may exacerbate the problems that bad political and economic policies create. They cite many reasons for the famines in Africa and other countries, including the use of food as a weapon to subjugate dissident factions. They emphasize that the absence of property rights and free markets depresses economic growth by preventing people from benefiting directly from their own labor.