On reading Jerome's diary it seemed vaguely familiar, as if I'd probably read it at Daily Kos last December.  But the comments thread here was certainly far more interesting, or at least far more thoroughly argued and annotated!  : )

Contrary to Wolf's formulation, I am not a "pessimist" who believes that economic growth will not continue, but an optimist who holds the same belief.  What Wolf and his "classical liberals and libertarians" don't seem to have grasped yet is that "limits to growth" also implies, and in fact demands, limits to population, a step that will act as a preventive to many or most or all of those "catastrophic conflict[s] and brutal repression[s]" they want to scare us with.