G'day all,
>The food-overpopulation cycle?
>
>Here it is in its most simplistic form: People are made out of food. (and
>water).
>
>More food = more people.
People are made of atoms, but would more atoms equal more people? And they
are made of social relations, too. As Milton told us, certain sets of
relations encourage lots of babies, and certain ones do not. So let's not
hint at not feeding starving people, and let's start affording women control
over their bodies, pushing for a rise in the importance of female offspring
in cultures where they are currently daunting expenses with few pay-offs
(meaning Mum and Dad have to have more children to get that boy),
encouraging debt 'forgiveness', opposing IMF 'restructuring' traps, and
start pushing for some social security in countries where people's only hope
for a tenable retirement lies in surviving male children. The trouble with
impoverishing the countryside of the third world is that this can create
more people rather than less, I think.
And let's remember, too (again, as others here have also said), that we in
the 'west' or 'north' have ecological footprints incommensurably out of
proportion to the three billion people I talked about above.
And also, let's not think we poor few are the teachers - there's a bloody
great movement abroad! As usual, it's a spontaneous, unexpected backlash
from a myriad people, organised into a myriad groupings. We gotta feed it,
get our nourishment from it, and help it grow. Democracy must be the
answer, I think. If it ain't, we're dead meat fershure ...
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