Malthusian ideas were also often invoked in the context of famine and starvation in Asia and Africa, as, for example, by Winston Churchill when he said, ‘Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits.’ Although we are unlikely to hear words of this kind in our era, there can be little doubt that there are many who believe that a Malthusian ‘correction’ is the only hope for the continuance of ‘our way of life’. From this perspective, global inaction on climate change is by no means the result of confusion or denialism or a lack of planning: on the contrary, the maintenance of the status
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