The great demographer and economist Thomas Malthus was 32 when he  published his "Essay on the Principle of Population" and it would be wise to reread it today. Malthus’ key insight was simple but devastating. "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio," he observed. But "subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." In other words, humanity can increase like the number sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, whereas our food supply can increase no faster than the number sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

We were, according to Malthus, much better at reproducing than feeding ourselves.

Malthus concluded that there must be "a strong and constantly operating check on population." This would take two forms: "misery" and "vice," by which he meant not only alcohol abuse but also contraception and abortion (he was, after all, an Anglican minister).

If there were such a thing as a free lunch, you might be entitled to one for every time you’ve heard an Economics Profession declare "Malthus was wrong." Superficially, it is true, mankind seems to have broken free of the Malthusian trap. The world’s population has increased by a factor of more than six since Malthus’ time. Yet the global average daily supply of calories consumed has also gone up on a per capita basis, exceeding 2,700 in the 1990s. In France on the eve of the revolution it was just 1,848.

The conventional explanation for this is the succession of revolutions in global agriculture, culminating in the postwar "green revolution" and the current wave of genetically modified crops. Since the 1950s, the area of the world under cultivation has increased by roughly 11%, while yields per hectare (about 2 1/2 acres) have increased by 120%. Yet these statistics don’t disprove Malthus. As he said, food production could increase only at an arithmetical rate, and a chart of world cereal yields since 1960 shows just such a linear progression, from below 1 1/2 metric tons to around 3.

Meanwhile, vice and misery have been operating just as Malthus foresaw. Contraception and abortion have been employed to reduce family sizes. And wars, epidemics, disasters and famines have significantly increased mortality. Together, vice and misery have managed to reduce the rate of population growth from 2.2% annually in the early 1960s to about 1.1% today.

The real question is whether we could now be approaching a new era of misery. The United Nations expects the world’s population to pass the 9 billion mark by 2050. But can world food production keep pace? Plant physiologist Lloyd T. Evans has estimated that "we must reach an average yield of 4 tons per hectare to support a population of 8 billion." Yields now are just 3 tons per hectare, and a world of 8 billion people may be less than 20 years away.

Meanwhile, man-made forces are conspiring to put a ceiling on food production. Global warming and the resulting climate change may well be increasing the incidence of extreme weather events, as well as inflicting permanent damage on some farming regions. At the same time, our effort to slow global warming by switching from fossil fuels to biofuels is taking large tracts of land out of food production.

Some people worry about peak oil — when we reach the peak of petroleum production. Perhaps the worry should be redirected to peak grain. World per capita cereal production has already passed its peak — in the mid-1980s — not least because of collapsing production in the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, rising incomes in Asia are causing a worldwide surge in food demand.

Already, the symptoms of the coming food shortage are detectable. The International Monetary Fund recorded a 23% rise in world food prices during the last 18 months. Of course, we’re not supposed to notice that prices are going up. In the U.S., the monetary authorities insist that we should focus on the "core" consumer price index, which excludes the cost of food and fuel, and has the annual U.S. inflation rate at just 2.2%. But food inflation is roughly double that.

Order a Philly cheese steak and you will have to pay through the nose. That’s because cheese inflation is 4%, steak inflation is 6% and bread inflation is 10%. Steak is now 53% dearer than it was 10 years ago.

"The great question is now at issue," Malthus asked more than 200 years ago, "whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity toward illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery?"

For a long time, we have deluded ourselves that "illimitable improvement" was attainable. As the world approaches a new era of dearth, misery and its old companion, vice, are set to make a mighty Malthusian comeback.

The real worry? What is going to happen when the world gets real;ly hungry?

Up until last month, there didn’t seem to be a TV camera that attorney Debra Opri wouldn’t embrace.

The brash, self-professed blue-collar gal from New Jersey had secured a costarring role in the Anna Nicole Smith media circus as the attorney waging war to prove that Larry Birkhead was in fact the father of the now-deceased Playboy bombshell’s baby girl.

Her hair long, dark and stick-straight, the 47-year-old hovered perennially at Birkhead’s side, always ready to hit the Larry King-Bill O’Reilly talk-show circuit on his behalf, always filled with snappy quotes for reporters. Before Smith died, Opri routinely chastised the buxom blond from myriad courthouse steps. "Where’s this woman’s decency? Where’s her fairness?" a righteous Opri asked.

Now, her former star client is asking the same question about Opri.

In March the two acrimoniously parted ways, and in June, Birkhead sued her for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and legal malpractice. He also filed a complaint with the California Bar Assn., which is investigating. Two weeks ago, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles C. Lee gave Birkhead his first victory in what is expected to be a long skirmish — granting his request that $591,250 of Birkhead’s money Opri had sequestered in her attorney-client trust account be transferred into a separate blocked account, that could be touched only by court order.

While it’s unclear how the case will end, Birkhead’s allegations have the potential to seriously dent Opri’s once-promising career as the next Greta Van Susteren or Nancy Grace, one of those tough-talking, camera-ready legal eagles on call to opine about the day’s courthouse skirmish. To journalist and author Diane Dimond, who first noticed Opri at the second Michael Jackson trial, Opri was at the vanguard of a "disturbing trend of attorneys that began to show up at high-profile trials like Scott Peterson, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson." Lawyers, Dimond explains, who essentially show up for the cameras to "get face time." With law and celebrity increasingly intertwined in a tabloid and 24-hour-news-dominated culture, the matter of Birkhead vs. Opri is more than just a nasty spat. It’s also a revealing excursion into a high-stakes world where punditry and legal representation can collide and where six-figure deals between newsmakers and the media are part of the game.

Opri got her start in this rarefied corner of the law by working for the late singer James Brown and then the parents of Michael Jackson. She made a splash giving interviews during Jackson’s molestation trial. Her career, her detractors say, is a vivid case study of how lawyers can push their way into the media circus and sometimes profit from their exertions.

Birkhead’s claims raise questions of whether she ran roughshod over her client’s interest in a quest to rack up airtime and legal bills. His suit isn’t her only problem. Opri represented actress Pamela Bach in her legal faceoff in court against her erstwhile husband, "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff. Last month, Bach fired Opri after she lost full custody of her two daughters.

Meanwhile, Hasselhoff’s lawyers have filed a motion in Superior Court to get her financial records to determine the exact sum — believed by his lawyers to be hundreds of thousands of dollars — that Bach and/or Opri allegedly received in connection with the sale to the media of the infamous video of a drunken Hasselhoff. Opri denies having anything to do with the video.

She also adamantly disputes Birkhead’s accusations and has brought on Sitrick and Co., the crisis P.R. firm, to help her quell the stirring controversy.

She believes that Birkhead was behind the leaking of her legal bill to him, which totaled $620,492, and included items such as a lobster barbecue, thousand of dollars’ worth of limo rides and $1,500 a month for her publicist. According to her legal bill placed in the court file, she routinely charged Birkhead about $119 per e-mail, not to mention the over $96,000 she billed him for her time on cellphone calls.

"The bill in and of itself is not outrageous," she said. "This is a bill he doesn’t want to pay on any level. I never agreed to work pro bono. I don’t work for free," she said repeatedly, responding to one of Birkhead’s claims. "I just don’t. I can’t afford it."

His side of the story

FOR his part, Birkhead said he’s paid the Florida and Bahamian attorneys who worked on his case. "Their fees were reasonable. I was not supposed to be charged by [Opri], and she took money she wasn’t supposed to take," said the photographer in an interview last week in the Valley, accompanied by his lawyer, M.L. Trope. Birkhead characterizes his relationship with Opri as a bad marriage that he’s had trouble shaking.

Over lunch, Birkhead outlined and detailed many of the allegations made in his court papers, which include three long sworn affidavits from him. Opri disputes almost everything Birkhead claims, but her court affidavit is a one-page document that merely states that he signed a legal retainer with her.

Birkhead said he first heard about Opri when MSNBC reporter Rita Cosby tracked him down in 2006 in a New York hotel room to try to get an interview. Birkhead said he didn’t know Cosby, but as his legal complaint lays out, he claims the reporter told him she knew an attorney — Opri — who wanted his case and would do it for free. In an interview, Cosby, who’s had Opri on her show numerous times, said it was Birkhead who solicited her advice about legal representation, and so she mentioned Opri among several names. She had no idea of the financial arrangement between the duo.

According to Birkhead, he’d been contacted by a number of attorneys offering their services pro bono; he’d interviewed others who’d asked for retainers ranging from $40,000 to $100,000. Yet none played on his emotions the way Opri did. Smith was planning to marry attorney Howard K. Stern, and Birkhead says Opri told him he was in danger of losing his child if he didn’t sign up with her immediately. Opri denies saying any such thing.

That night, he appeared on Van Susteren’s show and off camera asked the anchor her opinion of Opri. "He said that Opri was going to charge him nothing because she was going to get a lot of publicity out of it equal to her fee," Van Susteren recalled. "I said, ‘You can’t beat that.’ "

Birkhead flew back to his home in California the next day; by the time his flight was taxiing to the gate, Birkhead said that Opri had called him multiple times. She offered to send a limo for him, but he declined. When he arrived at her office, "she’s walking around like a maniac. She’s pacing," recalled Birkhead, who asked her if family law was her expertise. She told him she had years of experience.

According to Birkhead, she then proceeded to "take these papers, and like a deck of cards, she flings them on the desk." She rattled off what they were: a paternity action, a suit against Stern, another against Smith for palimony. Birkhead, who’d lived with Smith, didn’t want to file a palimony claim. She threw in a media agreement that entitled her to 10% of any of his earnings if he sold his story. He told her he wouldn’t write a book or do "anything sleazy." According to Birkhead, she told him that he was going to be rich and that she’d already lined up agents for him.