2025/07/03 by Iason Zarikos · 1 voice
Energy · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
paper · doi:10.1080/27708888.2025.2596546
openalex publication_date 2025/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/11/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
This essay explores the legacy of the neo-Malthusian movement in contemporary politics. While criticism of neo-Malthusian ideas comes in many shades, this essay focuses on Anglo-American neoliberalism with its long and uninterrupted legacy of rejecting the rise of population as a political issue. Taking as examples the three most important political reviews of the Right—The Economist, National Review, and Reason—the essay examines how the legacy of the Sixties comes under explicit negotiation in these journals’ anti-Malthusian tracts, through their persistent criticism of Paul Ehrlich’s works and broader critique of ecologism as a backward, misanthropic movement that aspired to obstruct liberal progress. In these texts, the Sixties emerge not as a period of liberation but as an incubator of anti-liberal norms and practices. Building on this rejection of neo-Malthusian ideas, neoliberals reformulated their criticism in light of accelerating climate change, revealing the (heretofore neglected) historical roots of contemporary climate politics.