Melincourt

"Again, if we look back at history, we can see this isn’t the first time we’ve faced these problems. Twenty years after Malthus first published, the satirist Thomas Love Peacock wrote a novel called Melincourt to explore the contemporary situation and point out its inconsistencies and fundamental immorality. Two characters take opposite sides: one, a Mr Fax, takes the Malthusian line – surplus, luxury and even waste are morally justifiable because they provide a buffer in hard times – while Mr Forester argues that the waste of food is the most pernicious form of luxury: it deprives others of the means of existence. “In the US, more food is fed to livestock than is eaten by humans.” As the debate draws to a conclusion, Forester asks Fax what he thinks about those who don’t hold back from luxury in times of scarcity. He replies: ‘Truly I have nothing to say for them, but that they know not what they do.’ But the point is that today we do know. There isn’t much excuse for ignorance any more. If the billion of us who live in the wealthier countries wasted 25 per cent less, and I don’t mean feeding livestock, just what we throw away, that’d be enough to lift the one billion malnourished people in the world out of hunger."