But our success is showing signs of overreaching itself, of threatening the key resources on which we depend. Today our impact on the planet has reached a truly massive scale. In many fields our ecological "footprint" outweighs the impact of all other living species combined.

We have transformed approximately half the land on Earth for our own uses - around 11 percent each for farming and forestry, and 26 percent for pasture, with at least another 2 to 3 percent for housing, industry, services and transport. The area used for growing crops has increased by almost six times since 1700, mainly at the expense of forest and woodland.

The oceans make up seven tenths of the planet's surface, and we use only an estimated 8 percent of their total primary productivity. Yet we have fished up to the limits or beyond of two thirds of marine fisheries and altered the ecology of a vast range of marine species. During this cent

The acceleration of human expansion can be seen dramatically in the time it took for each milestone of a billion to be reached. Our first billion, passed around 1804, took perhaps 200 000 years to reach. The second billion took only 123 years and the third, reached in 1960, a mere 33 years. Since then we have been in overdrive, adding a billion every 13 or 14 years. We passed the 6 billion mark late in 1999.

A wide range of policies is needed to encourage environmentally friendly technology. Many policies are specific to each different field or area and most are beyond the scope of this atlas.

raising the share of wastes required to be recycled;

Since our impact is already unsustainable, the Club of Rome has proposed a Factor Four improvement in resource efficiency (that is, a 75 percent reduction in resource use per unit of production)Error! Hyperlink reference not valid..

Finally we need a shift in values towards nature conservation and lower resource use. This is happening spontaneously as environmental problems mount, not just in rich countries but in many developing countries.

The ideas that Malthus developed came before the industrial revolution and focuses on plants, animals, and grains as the key components of diet. Therefore, for Malthus, available productive farmland was a limiting factor in population growth. With the industrial revolution and increase in agricultural production, land has become a less important factor than it was during the 18th century.

Malthus printed a second edition of his Principles of Population in 1803 and produced several additional editions until a sixth edition in 1826. Malthus was awarded with the first professorship in Political Economy at the East India Company's College at Halebury and was elected to the Royal Society in 1819. He's often known today as the "patron saint of demography" and while some argue that his contributions to population studies were unremarkable, he did indeed cause population and demographics to become a topic of serious academic study.

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