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I'll let you know when they start showing up...
— David
Mother Nature is not fooled, I suppose, and knows what it means to mother Nature..... not to ravage her.

Dear Herb Gart,

Thanks for all you are doing.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/population-overshoot-is-determined-by-food-...

Population Overshoot Is Determined by Food Overproduction

Even after more than ten years of trying to raise awareness about certain overlooked research, my focus remains riveted on the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population and scientific evidence from Hopfenberg and Pimentel that the size of the human population on Earth is a function of food availability. More food for human consumption equals more people; less food for human existence equals less people; and no food, no people. This is to say, the population dynamics of the human species is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other living things. UN Secretary-General Mr. Kofi Annan noted in 1997, "The world has enough food. What it lacks is the political will to ensure that all people have access to this bounty, that all people enjoy food security." Please examine the probability that humans are producing too much, not too little food; that the global predicament humanity faces is the way increasing the global food supply leads to increasing absolute global human population numbers. It is the super-abundance of unsustainable agribusiness harvests that are driving population numbers of the human species to overshoot, or explode beyond, the natural limitations imposed by a relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably damaged planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth. The spectacular success of the Green Revolution over the past 40 years has "produced" an unintended and completely unanticipated global challenge, I suppose: the rapidly increasing supply of food for human consumption has given birth to a human population bomb, which is exploding worldwide before our eyes. The most formidable threat to future human well being and environmental health appears to be caused by the unbridled, corporate overproduction of food on the one hand and the abject failure of the leaders of the human community to insist upon more fair and equitable redistribution of the world's food supply so that "all people enjoy food security".

We need to share (not overconsume and hoard) as well as to build sustainable, human-scale farming practices (not corporate leviathans), I believe.

For a moment let us reflect upon words from the speech that Norman Bourlaug delivered in 1970 on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize. He reported, "Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas." Plainly, Norman Bourlaug states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction, but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}. Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food. According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is most similar to the population dynamics of other species. Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life as we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic, large-scale overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years.

Recall Dr. Bourlaug's prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the "Green Revolution" and to the extraordinary increases in the world's supply of food. Please consider that the sensational increases in humanity's food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug's great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers. We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing large-scale food production capabilities (as opposed to small-scale farming practices) on human population numbers worldwide between now and 2050. If we keep doing the "big-business as usual" things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world's food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the fairly near future. It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the large-scale corporate production of food; for providing broad support of small-scale farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present overly abundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for immediately, universally and safely following Dr. Bourlaug's recommendation to "reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely".

Carefully examine the idea that a primary cause of the recent precipitous rise in carbon dioxide emissions and other human-driven global challenges is the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers and rampaging human greed.

Just for a moment please consider that the global increase in industrial production of food could have unanticipated and deleterious consequences for life as we know it in the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit. What we can readily observe is the sensational growth in the large-scale production of food secondary to a temporary, human-induced increase in the primary productivity of Earth. At first sight the astounding increase in food productivity for human consumption looks like a good thing. But upon further analysis a forbidding, unanticipated ecological predicament appears to be fulminating.

If human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species and the planet on which we live has the well-established size, make-up and environs of Earth, then increases in the food supply negatively affects other species in Earth’s ecosystems. The artificially stimulated growth of absolute global human population numbers resulting from the unrestricted increase in the human food supply could have reached a point in human history when “human mass” decreases the resource values in the oceans, lakes and rivers; depletes the always finite and occasionally rare resources held by the land mass of the planet; and increases CO2 emissions, other air pollutants, and solid wastes derived from the production of material artifacts. The synergistically occurring effects of global overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities of the human species are also a primary cause of decreased biodiversity… the “sixth major extinction event” of life on Earth but, it appears, the first species-driven extinction event. Because many too many human organisms result in decreased biomass and shifts in the composition of remaining biodiversity, there is a case to be made for limiting increases in the dramatic growth of the human food supply such as has been produced in spectacular quantities by industrial agriculture during the past fifty years.

From this perspective, the current gigantic scale and growth rate of human population numbers poses a problem for humanity. Reducing increases in the growth of the human food supply and increasing equitable redistribution of bountiful harvests could be made key considerations of future policymaking. Perhaps these options, when taken in conjunction with the establishment of universal health education and voluntary family planning programs, can be examined as elements of a worldwide program of action that moves humankind toward a sustainable future on a planet fit for human habitation.

Humanity has a food distribution problem not a food production problem. If we exercise the political will to equitably feed people by providing basic sustenance, there is food sufficient in the human food supply to meet human needs. People with too much will have to share with those who have too little to eat. As Mohandas Gandhi reminded all of us: There is plenty of food for the needy if others are not greedy. One of the stiffest resistances to sharing our bountiful harvests (in Gandhi’s time and now) is human selfishness. Somehow greed has to be eschewed rather than regarded as virtuous behavior and subsequently legitimized, institutionalized and legalized.

As I see things, there is no easy way to transition from the unsustainable ‘trajectory’ of human civilization as we know it today to another way of being and living in the world that could sensibly be described as sustainable. Blind, unconscionable, indefensible, wanton greed rules the world in this moment in human history; but I dare say, not much longer. The current sensational scale and conspicuous growth rate both of per-capita overconsumption and spectacular individual hoarding of resources are fairly soon to become patently unsustainable on a finite and frangible planet with size, composition and ecology of Earth.

— Steve Salmony