... continued from above....

It's been because there has been a disruption of food production/ delivery in the local region-- a common longer disruption on a months/years time frame is war and shorter term disruption on a weeks/months time frame is flooding.

Importantly, overall the world has never been anywhere near the state that people are dying because of a world-wide shortage of food. Furthermore and most importantly it is almost inconceivable that the world will ever suffer from a global shortage of food*! The reason why is because of two factors:

Firstly: All over the world the majority of people in a given society will *only* have kids if they or their society can forseealby support them at that time for the next few years. (Birth/child control has been practiced pretty much as long mankind has been around. In times of old, if things got tough they would just kill off the babies and even eat them in some cases, these days we prevent conception or cull them before they are born-- but non-the-less across the world population control has, is and always will be routinely performed in some form across *all* cultures). The important thing to not about this is that this form of control happens pretty much automatically-- adults generally will not have kids if they can't afford them. They make this decision without needing to be told.

Secondly: there is a another feedback loop acting on a longer timescale at play that controls the worlds population: specifically, people *naturally* die from old age.

So combining the fact that people naturally die with the fact that people only produce children if they can forseeably afford to raise them gives the result that the world's population can never be more than about 60 or so years (the average lifespan) out of whack with the amount of food available. ... continued below....

... continued from above....

The result of this is, is that there can only be a global shortage of food in there is some event, or a collection of events acting together, that cause a *global* reduction of food within a 60 year or so time frame. The article tries to make out that such a threat exists and is likely-- particularly it mentions climate change and human's diverting farming land to other uses. Both of these claims in the article are baseless.
The flaw in these claims about climate change is due to the fact that the major negative impacts on food production due to climate change (if climate change turns out to be real) will occur on a 50+ year time scale. For example, with respect to sea-rise the article itself mentions 2100-- way more than 50 years.
The flaw about with respect to diverting farming land to other uses is that farming land is only diverted when it is more profitable to use it for some other activity. However if food production was to drop (averaged over longer time scales of years) then food prices would rise and land for food production would become valuable preventing it being converted to other use. Infact modern technology allows us to convert borderline arable land into healthy productive land. Infact we can even convert desert into farm land- check out the Libyan Great Man-made river irrigation scheme!

The long and short of this response of mine is that contrary to the article you really don't need to worry about over-population. The population automatically controls itself naturally and there really is no need to worry about world-wide shortage of food for the reasons given in the article.

(*An example of a world event that could dramatically reduce food supply is an asteroid impact-- conceivable, but not likely)

There ya go, what an optimistic approach thinkabit!

Upshot: overpopulation cannot happen because people will die. Don't worry about it.

How reassuring.

Bugsy wrote:

>>Upshot: overpopulation cannot happen because people will die>>

May be a distressing thought but that’s the way it is. See my post of Wednesday, 22 September 2010 12:00:15 PM on this thread.

You then wrote:

>>Don't worry about it.>>

Well that’s no longer true. When a state with a powerful military finds itself running short of food things are bound to get nasty. When that state has nukes things could get REALLY nasty.

Great article John, albeit depressing. Glad to see someone making the connections between population size, climate change, peak oil and food (in)security. We need action on a number of fronts: rapid population stabilisation and then reduction everywhere through voluntary family planning and education; stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions within five years and then 40 per cent reduction on 1990 levels by 2020 for all developed countries such as Australia; protocols to share the remaining oil equitably but ensuring supplies to farmers so that food can be produced and distributed; and investment in agricultural research such that new strains of crops can be developed that are resistant to higher temperatures and drought. I hope we can avert widespread famine in the coming years but it will take action - now.

Bugsy: you miss the point I was trying to make. (Perhaps, I didn't do a good job of it in the article).

Basically, Yes I do say that "Upshot: overpopulation cannot happen because people will die. Don't worry about it."-- however I'm also saying something more.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there are two ways you can die that are relevant to the population debate. One is from starvation, the other is old age. An event (or collection of events) can only cause starvation if people don't first die from old age. This is why people are *not* going to die on mass from starvation due to climate change, because climate change is such a long term event that the society will adjust to any negative impact it has on food production by simply not replacing those who die gracefully from old age.
The only time people have starved to death in large numbers in the last century was due events with sudden severe short term effects-- such as war. And these event have never been global, only ever local/regional.

Globally, we have *always* had enough food to feed the world's population!

With-respect-to farming land-- firstly, farm land lost so far is very minor-- take a look at google earth- plenty of it is still green and arable. secondly, the bit we lose to things like salintiy is on timescales over decades so the above argument about long time scales applies, thirdly we can actually we use modern technology and farming practices to increase food production and improve soil health- such as irrigation, breeding, salinity reduction strategies etc.