JOHN TIERNEY: Malthus vs. The Singularity:

Before any other readers post another comment about “overpopulation” and doomsday scenarios, I suggest they take a look at my colleague Donald McNeil’s excellent article on Malthusian mistakes. As he notes, the current forecasts of energy and food disasters sound just like the ones made during the 1970s. Similar apocalyptic forecasts were made in the 1940s (in books like “Our Plundered Planet”) and in other eras by prophets following in Malthus’ tradition.

These prophets have always claimed to be seeing the big picture, but they ignore thousands of years of history during which the prices of natural resources fell and the wellbeing of humans improved.

Yes, as Robert Fogel has demonstrated, the singularity in terms of human well-being occurred over the past couple of centuries.