In sum, one emerges from reading both of these books with a sense of intense frustration. The questions which revolve around the Malthusian fare of population levels, resource usage and climate change are of enormous significance. Politicians and the general public deserve and should demand discussions of the topic which are driven by evidence, not sensationalism, optimistic or pessimistic. 

And here, perhaps, both Dorling and Emmott should look to their predecessors, Dorling the optimist to Godwin and Emmott the pessimist to Malthus. After their initial spat in the 1790s, both Godwin and Malthus devoted years to bolstering their arguments, Godwin publishing a massive treatise, Of Population, in 1820 and Malthus a version of the Essay in 1803 which was four times longer than the original edition thanks to dense statistical argumentation. 

Both Godwin and Malthus matured to realise that population was too politically important to be the plaything of scandal. One can only hope that Emmott and Dorling  come to the same realisation and stage their argument anew with more respect for both the evidence they marshal and the audience to whom they speak.