From: Julien Pierrehumbert
>Tom,
>
> >Yes. More food means more people. *no matter what*! You have to break
>that
> >cycle.
>
>Not sure what cycle you're talking about. But more food doesn't always mean
>more
>people. You live in a country with huge amounts of excess food and
>fertility seems
>relatively low.
More food does mean more people, Julien, unless it is fed to some other
species or it rots in the fields. (Or fed to a couple of really fat guys in
Paris)
You are forgetting what you know about the global marketplace (borders mean
nothing for some phenomena), about bioregional concepts (natural features
control more behavior than we perceive or plan for), and demographics (one
population group may "transfer" stresses to another population group.)
If I am a farmer in Idaho (god forbid!) and I grow excess wheat, Idaho is
not suddenly going to experience a population boom. ADM will sell the excess
wheat and the population boom will be in India or Botswana or some place
(Chandler, Texas?).
The fertility issue is only separated out as long as you draw lines on the
map in youir mind and fail to realize that there is a kind of bioregional
and demographic linkage between the US and, say, Bangladesh. In 2000 for the
purposes of food production Bangladesh could be considered to be part of
Idaho's population-expansion demographics, without Idaho having to suffer
the dislocation of October's monsoon floods. (Pretty cagey the way those
global capitalist bastards export the negative side of their folly, eh?
That's why they don't see overpopulation coming at THEM!) If we (US) have a
crop failure, some guy who only speaks Swahili is the likely corpse. The
effects of food production are obscured by the global nature of population,
not to mention what the inequity of food distribution obscures.
The food-overpopulation cycle?
Here it is in its most simplistic form: People are made out of food. (and
water).
More food = more people.
That's why feeding the world's hungry doesn't work to control hunger. (as
weird as that sounds!) It just increases the numbers.
Milton T. is correct to call our attention to infant mortality, but one
would assume that after feeding everybody population would level off to the
replacement rate because healthy babies mean fewer births where there is any
feminine justice/equity. Yes, adequate food does slow things, locally,
regionally and in the short run.
But step back and look at what you know about evolution. Every species�
population will expand until it reaches the limits of its niche. We are a
species, we are NOT immune from this law. It�s just that our niche is not
the US nor Bangladesh, or some microclimate; it is the planet. By
overlooking our connection to nature and to evolution we�ve temporarily been
able to forestall the normal population controls all other species endure.
For how much longer?
Tom
"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day."
-- Dr. Jacques Cousteau
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