Two hundred years ago one of the pioneers of modern economics, Thomas Malthus, was warning that population was growing faster than food production and the only remedy, if you are willing to accept a lot of dead people as a remedy, would be that population would eventually be held in check by famine.

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Keith Clarkson, regional reserves manager for the RSPB, said the puffin population was the hardest hit with more than 200 dead birds found.

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The conflict has left more than 70, 000 people dead and two million internally displaced, of a pre-conflict population of 20.7 million.

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All in all, close to 10 million soldiers had converged upon a demoralized German population of 70 million that had suffered more than four million dead and 10 million wounded, captured, or missing.

WSJ: Our Blindness

The traffic accident survey was designed to establish whether the level of Bovine TB infection in dead badgers, collected from road accidents, reflected disease prevalence in the badger population in the area.

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The situation in Japan was much the same: a country with a disciplined, homogenous population, no allies, sealed borders, its cities half burnt, more than three million dead, a million wounded, missing, or captured, its revered emperor having capitulated, and nearly half a million troops in occupation.

WSJ: Our Blindness

Far from dead, our manufacturing sector is the world's largest, with 5% of the world's population producing five times their share in industrial goods.

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