steam_cannon, no one has told me they wished population stabilized "before" the Green Revolution arrived, they simply said they wished it did not arrive. If the Green Revolution had not arrived, millions of people would have starved. I hope this is not in dispute. The world's population had already started growing rapidly before the Green Revolution had arrived, and there is little anyone could have done about it. So, the choice was to either have a Green Revolution and feed them, or not have a Green Revolution and not feed them. Personally, I am glad the former happened.
As for the present, there are 6+ billion people on the planet. As was the case just prior to the Green Revolution, no one can change this fact. You cannot just wish these people out of existence. So, either you try to feed them, or not. I choose the former.
About your fertilizer shortages and rising grain prices, the world has already been there and gotten through it. This too will pass. Read up on the history of rising commodity prices in the 70's, if you're interested. These things come and go in cycles.
To put the current situation in perspective, right now in front of me I have a book called
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. It's a fascinating read, essentially an economic history of Chicago. On page 60 it says that the price of wheat in 1847 was between
70 and 85 cents per bushel (depending on the grade). Now, please enter that 70 cents at
this inflation calculator, and use 1847 as the starting year. Do you know what 70 cents is in 2006 dollars?
$15.17.
In other words, the $10 wheat in your article is still cheap by historical standards.
This is the kind of thing peakers don't really grasp (economics and history). They see rising wheat prices and think it's a portent of doom. Sorry, no. If you look at the long term, commodity prices have gone down, down, down. That doesn't mean they won't occasionally go up, but when they do it's almost always temporary. Even the current $90/barrel oil isn't a historical high, in spite of the widespread rumor that its production is about to peak.
Now, in a broader sense, what peakers don't seem to grasp about my views and ones like mine is . . .
we don't believe the things you fear will come to pass. It's that simple. There will not be mass starvations (aside from an occasional local, usually politically-induced, event). There will not be fertilizer shortages (aside from an occasional short-term problem). The price of grain will not become unaffordable (aside from temporary periods). And so on.
Why do we believe this? Simple: Because we believe that energy and other natural resources are abundant. And we also believe that human ingenuity can make our use of them more efficient, thereby stretching out our use of them even more. In the occasional instance where a particular resource might in fact become scarce, we believe that human ingenuity can think of other things to use for the same purpose. The technology (THAI) and the resource (oil sands) which were supposed to be the topic of this thread are a great example. The size of the resource is HUGE (according to this
here there are 2.2 trillion barrels OIP in the Athabasca oil sands, and other 1.2 trillion barrels OIP in the Venezuelan oil sands) . . . and with technology like THAI and several other alternatives, it is possible to extract that oil, and at a historically reasonable price. So no, we aren't going to run out of oil any time soon. And - since you believe that the end of oil also means the end of fertilizer - we also aren't going to run out of fertilizer any time soon.
Incidentally, if you're interested in agriculture and peak oil, I would highly recommend reading
this at TOD. Beware of what you ask for, you just might get it. And regarding soil erosion, be sure to read
this particular comment in that thread.
And last - but certainly not least - the other problem with the doomsday crowd is . . .
they're always wrong! It's that simple. Malthus has been wrong for over 200 years! I mean - gosh! - one would think that such a poor record would dissuade people from continuing to believe him, but it appears not. More recently, Paul Erlich has been wrong for 40 years. Seriously - with such a poor record, it would seem the whole concept of doomerism would be dead in its grave by now, but I guess some people are just addicted to the concept.