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I work in a natural resources field. I work at a state University. All around me there are folks that have your beliefs, and there are also those that share my beliefs. It is my experience that Malthusians are generally wrong about their facts, conclusions and their prognostications. This does not mean that I feel there is no need for continuing conservation and improving resource use, it's just that so much of what passes for 'fact' is, in fact, factless.

From your statements...

"We have skyscrapers because cheap land in major cities is simply unavailable."

We have skyscrapers because builders and their corporate clients want status symbols. The term skyscraper was coined long before land was scarce or expensive in downtown urban areas.

"Water is expensive and getting more so."

Water is expensive for those who wish to water lawns in the cF Mediteranian climates like California and Arizona. Like energy, high use begets high costs.

"We've not yet run out of good cheap land but we're exploiting it at an incredible rate."

How so? Fact is, we're retiring good agricultural land at greater rates than has ever happened in our countries history because efficiencies of production have increased at unparalleled rates.

On forested land, we grow more biomass than we have cut evey year since WWII. On Federal lands, logging has been reduced 85% over the last 15 years. We can still boast of over 70% of the forested acreage in the US at the landing of Columbus is here today and the rate is growing each year (not all the same acres though).

In any event, I fear there is little I can say, or evidence I could show, to convince you that the sky is NOT falling.

Simon's body of work is huge. But I culled something interesting from it here;

THE "URBAN SPRAWL" AND SOIL EROSION SCAM

Quote;

...the long-run trend in the decades up to 1970 was about one million acres of total land urbanized per year - not increasing but rather constant or slowing

The jist of the article was that much of the U.S. was still not urbanized and that many were exagerating the rate at which it was being urbanized. But the rate which he accepts as valid is clearly unsustainable in a finite world. It must slow or stop. And not just in the U.S. but in the rest of the world as well.

I could attempt to refute you point by point - for example, your contention that skyscrapers were built for reasons of pride rather than economics - but I think it would just detract from the main argument.

Many point out that fertility in the developed world is below the sustainable level. True. Whether that trend will continue in the face of undiminished birth-rates in the third world (and ever-increasing immigration) is questionable.