Ever since Thomas Malthus argued just over 200 years ago that population growth would outstrip “the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man,” there has been a continuous parade of Cassandras fretting that humanity is about to exhaust the planet’s carrying capacity.

Neo-Malthusian thinking inspired such 20th-century writings as Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” and the Club of Rome’s 1972 “The Limits to Growth,” which predicted civilization would end “sometime within the next one hundred years.” In “Toward a Steady-State Economy,” published in 1973, economist Herman Daly argued that economic growth should be resisted for the sake of the environment...

“Degrowth” — the brand name for neo-Malthusianism — ignores how ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints identified by Malthus, Ehrlich, et al. Degrowthers ignore basic lessons of history: The world experienced no growth for hundreds of years. Getting ahead economically during certain periods of the Middle Ages, for example, required plundering one’s neighbor. Transactions were zero-sum. The outcome was centuries of conquest and subjugation.