Easy solution: move the people closer to where the food is produced.

keep dreaming andrew. People will give up all their other needs for food. If we would use all our resources for the production of food we could feed tens of billions more people.

Your pessimism is unfounded.

I don't agree with this premise. People will give up other resources for their own food, (and their loved ones), but they will not willingly give them up for others. This is evidenced by the existing level of starvation.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Like all animals, we eat so we have energy to reproduce. Which means that if we stop all other activities besides food consumption and production, we will indeed feed billions of people, and those billions will have nothing to do but reproduce, which will guarantee a much higher population growth rate than we experienced all through the industrial revolution until now. There is a limit to how much food the earth can produce, im not sure what it is, but i see not point in converting all of the earths biomass into human-mass just to find out.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

Well yes, that is a solution to keeping populations manageable. That is how people lived for million of years after all. Its only recently that people have their food grown in far off places and shipped to their dinner table. Im all for people relying exclusively on local food sources, that would be beautiful. It would also mean we stop shipping food in massive quantities to poor nations.... some people think that is cruel though.....

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

Not so. Scarcity results in increased reproduction rates. Excess does the opposite, - it lowers reproduction rates.

That's observable in all organisms from maple trees to mice to humans. Same thing that governs reproduction rates in the rich and poor parts of the world.

Sure. But I was just imagining Erikv's scenario in which human beings stop all other activities besides food production and consumption. Under such circumstances i think the only thing left to do would be reproduction. (Why else we would be focusing on food production and nothing else>?)

also,

Rich nations are massive exporters of food to poor nations. This just keeps them in perpetual starvation out of charity. But it does allow them to reproduce in large numbers, making the next years famine even more severe, and so on...

So called 'poor' nations had easily manageable populations for thousands of years before colonialism. It was our conversion of their hunting lands into farm lands that screwed things up. (we decided they were not living right according to our standards.... )

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

Nothing allows reproduction in large numbers. Things like food supplies can only allow or disallow survival, it can't allow or disallow reproduction. Reproduction in large numbers is triggered, - not allowed or disallowed.

It simply occurs when there's a prospect of a large number of fatalities. The bad news - or perhaps the good news if it concerns our own species - is that it doesn't matter if there's an actual rise in the number of fatalities. It's merely triggered by the expectation of increased fatality rates. So if a level of fatality rates can be indicated by certain harsh living conditions, reproduction rates will rise no matter if the survival rate is actually on the increase. And boom, increasingly or, at least, continued bad living conditions + increasing survival rates become the engine behind an exploding population.

In the imagined situation where all we do is produce and consume food i see no reason not to expect that reproduction rates would increase. Remember, there are no other activities besides food production. That is all i meant. Is it not true for every animal that increased food availability means increased population, which in turn is necessarily countered by decreased availability (as the growing space decreases) and decreased population. And so on the cycle goes.


Food is the key though. Even under harsh conditions if there is no food availability there can be no increase in population.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown