re: Time for a Malthusian catastrophe to fix this

"His error was the earth's carrying capacity."

Wouldn't you also agree that he was wrong--and persistently-so--regarding human adaptability? He was not only wrong about overall carrying capacity vs. that of a given locale, he was wrong about what the carrying capacity of a given biosphere could be. According to some now forgotten source, Malthus had some of the information showing how wrong he was even in his lifetime.

I recall hearing years ago at a hunter's safety course that the Malthusian approach has never worked in predicting human population declines but has been helpful in the field of wildlife management. Kinda makes sense. Principles of geometric population increases apply to animals just as well and mitigating technological (or cultural) advances are out the window.