This is a quickly fading paradigm which has held us in its grip for hundreds if not thousands of years, and has affected every aspect of our human life from politics , economics , health and religion to population migration, wars, and scientific development.

BBC: reith feed

People are fleeing the cold: there is a strong correlation between the average temperature in January and population growth, notes Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University.

ECONOMIST: The census

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.

FORBES: Commodity Prices: Why Technology and the Price Mechanism will Prove the Scarcity Pessimists Wrong

In a report for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Andrew Lilico of Europe Economics argues that the housing crisis is a myth stemming from population overestimates in 2000.

ECONOMIST: Concrete is coming to a building site near you

While the residents of Samso can take advantage of their island's blustery weather, open spaces and low-population density to be carbon neutral, the success of wind energy on a global scale may come down to simple economics.

CNN: Striking a blow for wind power