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Page added on December 3, 2022
Bare Cupboards
“Hundreds of millions will starve over the course of the next decade.”
Stanford professor Paul R. Ehrlich said that when discussing the world’s growing population in his book, The Population Bomb. That was in 1968, and the world population was just a bit more than 3.5 billion. The United States had about 200.4 million people at the time. (It should be noted the book was co-authored by Ehrlich’s wife, Anne, but she did not receive credit. She is the associate director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.)
Ehrlich, the professor emeritus of population studies of the department of biology at Stanford University and president of their Center for Conservation Biology, has subsequently acknowledged his dire predictions have not come to pass, though he believes his overall premise—way too many people for the planet to sustain—still holds true. And he still believes we’re ultimately headed toward a doomsday scenario and a dystopian future.
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, he said, “Collapse of civilization within decades is a near certainty.” He outlined his logic in a 2020 interview with The New York Times, saying,“We have a finite planet with finite resources and in such a system we cannot have infinite population growth.”
Ehrlich continues to believe the optimum population for our globe is about 2 billion or less. We recently passed 8 billion and, according to the United Nations, half that number now live in just seven countries—China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Brazil in descending population order.
There is significant evidence Ehrlich is mostly right.
According to the World Food Programme, a United Nations organization, 345 million people in 82 countries are facing acute food insecurity, defined as the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of nutritious and affordable food. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a slightly different definition of food insecurity—lack of access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.)
Famines or near famines already exist in nearly a dozen African nations plus Yemen in the Middle East. Haiti, the poorest country in our western hemisphere with half its population living below the World Bank’s definition of poverty, is perpetually in a state of famine or near famine. The available statistics are daunting and proof that Ehrlich’s predictions were only slightly overblown.
According to Oxfam International, 11 people die every minute from starvation or poor nutrition, more than the death rate for COVID-19 even at its peak. And the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that a staggering 3 million children a year die from starvation or poor nutrition, nearly half of all childhood deaths. Even worse, another 8 million children are at immediate risk.
And this is not a problem for just the rest of the world. While we shake our heads sadly about those poor countries that always seem to be on the verge of some sort of calamity, we should be looking right next door. This isn’t an issue that only impacts “them.” As of June 2022, according to Americanprogress.org, 24 million households in the United States, including nearly 12 million with children, reported they often or sometimes do not have enough to eat. That’s one of the many reasons breakfast and lunch programs at our public schools are so important; those might be the only real meals some children receive all day.
We’ve made little progress in slowing population growth—Ehrlich, in his darker moments, believes contraception should be free, widely available, and mandatory, and that abortion should be universally legal.
We have made some progress in developing food sources. Back in the mid-20th century, an American agronomist named Norman Borlaug led efforts to create more sustainable crops sometimes referred to as the Green Revolution. Among the accomplishments was the development of a high-yield, disease and drought resistant semi-dwarf wheat. For those efforts and others to feed an increasingly hungry world, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The Nobel Committee estimated that Borlaug’s contribution to the development of the semi-dwarf wheat, which represents more than 90 percent of the wheat grown today, saved as many as one billion lives.
(Contrary to the accusations of some, semi-dwarf wheat is not a genetically modified organism [GMO]. It was engineered over the course of decades by hybridizing wheat varieties, painstakingly matching the most desirable strains until current, hardier, and healthier varieties were developed.)
Our planet’s overpopulation has led to climate change, plastic islands in our oceans, overcrowded cities, air made difficult to breathe, and water unsafe to drink. And we can’t feed all the people already here. If too many cupboards are bare, the future will be empty for too many children.
20 Comments on "Bare Cupboards"
makati1 on Sat, 3rd Dec 2022 4:36 pm
More lies from the propaganda masters in the West. If they (the US) didn’t meddle, there would be no problem.
Duncan Idaho on Mon, 5th Dec 2022 12:04 pm
Florida Deputy Fatally Shoots Fellow Deputy While Playing With Gun: Sheriff
Pigs and Guns?
Might be best to have them use less fatal weapons– it will slow down the violence when they need to get personal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brevard-deputy-shooting-austin-walsh_n_638e007ce4b07530543c72e3
While not a dangerous job (not even in the first 10), might be best to keep guns out of Pigs hands.
makati1 on Tue, 6th Dec 2022 4:53 pm
BTW: All you EV lovers, what happens when you plug your buggy into the power grid and there is nothing because of the demand overload? Or the fact that it take humungus amounts of FFs to make your go buggy, or the roads they ride on? Or the electric you call “green”? Or the ridiculous amount of money you pay for them? No to mention hours to charge it when five minutes at a gas pump fills the tank for another 400+ miles. Fools!
Duncan Idaho on Tue, 6th Dec 2022 5:24 pm
Suspended New Orleans deacon pleads guilty to molesting preteen boy
Norman behavior for a Catholic Deacon.
A least it wasn’t 3 at a time.
Maybe they have contests?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/06/new-orleans-deacon-pleads-guilty-molesting-boy-catholic
makati1 on Tue, 6th Dec 2022 7:19 pm
Not only a Catholic activity. It occurs in the Mormon Church* and probably, other organizations where adults are looked up to by teens, like the boy sprouts, sports, etc..
*A high priest leader was apprehended in a Central American country and deported to the US for child molesting when I was in the church. He was married, had two kids and was a professor at a local college.
Débarasse moi de la police on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 1:46 pm
Débarrasse moi de la police au Québec et au Canada, et je vais te donner ce que tu veux. Je vais torture et tuer de vagin puant juste pour toi. C’est drôle de les voir shaker comment des connes avant qu’elles meurent.
Give me what I want I will share my secret with you on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 2:45 pm
Débarrasse moi de la police au Québec et au Canada, et je vais te donner ce que tu veux. Je vais torture et tuer de vagin puant juste pour toi. C’est drôle de les voir shaker comment des connes avant qu’elles meurent.
I will also do autopsy on alive sinking vagina and share with you all the secrets of the creation that I remember. Give me what I want, I will share with out some secrets of the creation.
Le vagin puant est juste un conne same importante.
makati1 on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 4:25 pm
In case you haven’t noticed, dumbasse, this is an English speaking site. English is the language of money all over the world, so I am sure you have some grasp of it. Posting in any other language only makes you look childish/insecure/psycho/etc. I would not even bother to use google to translate what is obviously garbage.
makati1 on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 5:22 pm
FYI: Religions are phony bullshit, designed to control and use the peasants…
https://www.rt.com/news/567792-mormon-cult-leader-arizona/
“Fundamentalist Mormon cult leader Samuel Bateman had 20 wives, including numerous minors, allegedly married his own daughter and believed he was “a prophet,” multiple US media outlets, including the Washington Post, reported on Monday, citing the FBI.”
makati1 on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 5:30 pm
BTW: the founder of Mormonism was also a pedophile and many of his”wives”were underage. But the church has buried most of those ‘facts’.
“… Joseph Smith was involved in polygamy, and history shows that he had up to 40 wives in total.”
https://factsking.com/historical-people/joseph-smith-facts/
Duncan Idaho on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 5:40 pm
“No doubt he had to have an extra cheeseburger and a liter of diet coke to get through it”
The Fat Boy is getting even more crazy.
https://digbysblog.net/2022/12/07/trumps-black-tuesday/
Theedrich on Wed, 7th Dec 2022 9:54 pm
The mulatto-making U.S. is a criminal nation. Its political class consists largedly of moral defectives, nihilists, scam artists, anti-evolutionists, murderers, thieves, predators, perverts, various addicts, traitors, psychotics, hypocrites, puppets, and other reptiles and vermin in human guise. This list includes the bulk of both political parties — virtually all of the Democrats and most of the Republicans.
Behind this army of rot is an international cadre of billionaire fiends aimed at enslaving the earth, starting by destroying Western Civilization through overextension.
There is an old American saw that he who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. In accordance with this saying, the American public at large could not care less what vast crimes its government is committing, just so long as it can live its accustomed life of ease. But in Ukraine, the pawns of the American crime syndicate are paying an enormous cost. One of the few honest reporters, John Helmer, in his blog, “Dances with Bears” at http://johnhelmer.net/general-patience-and-the-pause-that-refreshes/, reports just a tiny bit of it:
The fantasy of creating some Brave New World by Building Back Better after the carefully engineered collapse of the West is a hallucinogenic delusion of achieving heaven through suicide. Heavily involved in this project are the Jews, a culture of paranoia masked as a religion. Christianity is enlisted as a self-proclaimed holiness cult combining guilt neurosis with Stockholm Syndrome (all based on the tale of a talking snake) aimed at self-immolation for the sake of low-IQ races and primitive cultures.
Last in the saga of the entire death spiral is the fact that the mentally diseased Yankee leadership is converting homo sapiens into a criminal species. Unless this leadership and its ideology are extinguished, the earth will be finished.
𝖁𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖆𝖘 𝖑𝖎𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖙 𝖛𝖔𝖘.
Dredd on Thu, 8th Dec 2022 5:04 am
“Hundreds of millions will starve over the course of the next decade.” -northernexpress
Never set dates eh?
But, that is the least of it (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization).
Sea level rise is slower, but more powerful in the long run, and it is more of a threat to the elite 1%.
Duncan Idaho on Thu, 8th Dec 2022 2:56 pm
GOP lawmaker behind ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill indicted on fraud charges related to COVID-19 SBA loans
Pretty minor for a repug–
Fraud? Repug business model
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/8/2140731/-Florida-lawmaker-behind-infamous-Don-t-Say-Gay-bill-indicted-on-fraudulent-PPP-loan-charges
makati1 on Thu, 8th Dec 2022 4:15 pm
Duncan, the “repugs” are not even in the same league as the Dumbocrats. The current corrupt, mentally psychotic, dumbocratic government is finally so obviously corrupt that the rest of the world sees it and is turning away. It is blatant and getting worse.
Audit the military where $1,000,000,000,000.+ gets pissed away every year? NEVER!
Audit the Fed, who also pisses away trillion$ as they destroy the US economy. NEVER!
Audit the supposed gold reserves, that is “claimed” to be 8,000 tons? NEVER!
Audit the billions that are being sent to Ukraine? NEVER!
Prevent an honest election? YES!
Cover up the corruption of the president and the Congress? YES!
Pretend the Bill of Rights and Constitution don’t exist? YES!
Use insider trading to get rich? YES!
And on and on. So fucking obvious to the people outside the box called Amerika. Sigh!
Fuck china on Fri, 9th Dec 2022 8:10 am
Fuck china and fuck asia.
Duncan Idaho on Fri, 9th Dec 2022 2:13 pm
Repug or Dim?
Both capitalist whores.
Repugs sometimes have an advantage– Dims often have to hold their nose, and can only operate with one hand.
Repugs love the stench, and can use two.
makati1 on Fri, 9th Dec 2022 4:32 pm
Fuck China, you do know that most of what you have, buy and use comes from China and Asia, or are you just a dumbed down, brainwashed Amerikan? Better start reading labels on the stuff you buy, including food, clothing, meds, electronics, furniture, toys, etc. and try to do without them. If the stupid US starts a war there, you will find out what comes from there very quickly.
makati1 on Fri, 9th Dec 2022 4:41 pm
Duncan, if the “elections” actually meant anything they would be outlawed. The same Deep State dictates what the “elected representatives” do and say, no matter who is reading the prompter. That is why I stopped voting over 20 years ago, pre Bush Jr. All are corrupt, bought, government whores.
Real elections ended when they made corporations equal to people and dropped the amount of “contributions” they could make to buy your “representatives”. Your dollar “contribution” when you filed your income tax every year does not equal the million dollars Facebook “contributes” to buy your rep.
So be it. I watch the circus called Amerika from far shores. It is now a country of brainwashed serfs and government clowns. I’m glad I no longer support it financially or physically.
Steven M. on Wed, 29th Mar 2023 8:47 am
Yes we’re already seeing the results of rising energy prices effecting food for families. We’ll see a lot more than just bare cupboards in the next few decades, like you said, with millions perhaps starving. This is precisely why I’m urging my neighbors to order irrigation and start planting crops on their yards. I already spoke with my local drainage company at Perimeter Drainage Victoria to see if I can turn my yard into a small farm. Now’s the time to get started on home grown farming!