You mention that if the all of the world's *PRESENT* population had the consumption rates of the USA or Australia then we wouldn't be able to feed them with the current food supply. However the (obvious) point to make about this is that the present *don't* have the consumption rates of developed countries-- and consequently the world's food supply can currently easily feed them (obviously it can feed them because otherwise they would be dieing from starvation). *Nobody* in the world is currently dieing from starvation due to a global lack of food-- for those that are dieing from starvation it is due entirely to local/regional disruptions of the food supply. The world currently has more than enough food to feed the world!

When the developing nations start to consume more and catch up with our first world consumption you will notice something-- their populations will stabilize or even decrease-- the reason why is because it costs a *lot* more to raise a child in a developed country than in a developing country-- this is the main reason why couples generally only have 1 or 2 people in Australia (contrary to what feminist will tell about the womens rights and the pill). The thing to note about people having small families in developed countries is that *nobody* told them/made them have a small family-- they do it automatically due to the laws of economics.
Whereas as in developing countries it doesn't cost as much to raise children-- in fact having a large family can actually *make* you money because you can use the child's labour to produce food/goods.
Basically, when the cost of raising a child to the standard excepted by the society it lives in increases, the average number of children born per family decreases.

In short the world doesn't have an impending a global food crises due to depleted resources/environmental degradation-- simply because we have plenty of time react naturally to act any such scenario. Also, as the consumption rates per person of developing countries increases in the coming decades, the reproduction rates in those countries will decrease.

thinkabit
Well said, you are right.

We are frequently told that population growth exceeds the earth’s “carrying capacity” as if this were some incontrovertible positive datum. But this assumes that the speaker knows all the production possibilities in the world, now and in the future, including all people’s subjective relative values, the relative scarcity of all resources, all possible innovations and so on. It is an absurd false pretence of knowledge.

It’s literally as stupid as someone saying, 100,000 years ago, that population growth is exceeding the world’s carrying capacity because there aren’t enough caves to house six billion people. Their confidence in their own opinion is completely misplaced.

The neo-Malthusians are wrong because they have the same static mindset as Malthus and Ehrlich. The irrationality of their beliefs is shown by the fact that they regard the disproof of their predictions as even greater proof of their theories: - Malthus and Ehrlich predicted certain catastrophe within a certain time, it hasn't happened, *so that means it's even more certain now*.

Since the concern of the catastrophists is scarcity, and since scarcity is the subject matter of economics, I wish they would have the humility to try to educate themselves on a subject on which they are, so far, more voluble than thoughtful.

I respectfully commend the following as a good start for the curiosity of our readership.

(ridiculosity of Dick Smith’s population alarums)
http://economics.org.au/2010/08/population-puzzle-solved/

The Malthusian Trap
http://mises.org/daily/1675

Earth Jurisprudence
http://economics.org.au/2010/09/earth-jurisprudence/

(the anti-human environmental movement)
http://mises.org/daily/4725

Thinkabit,
You are not taking into account the approaching elephant in the corner of the world, peak oil.
I realize that you will not accept that there is such a thing but it is a fact that world oil production has reached a plateau since 2005 and is unlikely to ever increase.
The reason for this is the steep decline in oil finds for the last 30 years, leading to the position where the demand has outstripped the supply. Even if there were new Giant oil fields waiting to be found and that is a most unlikely scenario, it takes at least ten years to bring them on line.
Why is oil so important to the food crisis?
Without oil there can be no “green revolution”.
Food production, distribution, storage will all decrease dramatically as in your “sudden decrease “ theory.
Not just in 60 years but perhaps in 10 years. Would that be “sudden” enough?
Oil companies are not even building new refineries to process the amount of oil that will be need, because they know the oil will not be available to process, leading to a shortage of refinery processing space as well as a shortage of oil.

You say. Running out of farmland is bogus because it is simply not true-- we are actually creating more productive land each year and increasing yields each year.

With the increase in the amount of good farming land being taken up by expanding cities catering for the blow out of bigger populations no increase is at all likely in fact a net decrease is more probable.

You say. *Nobody* in the world is currently dieing from starvation due to a global lack of food-- for those that are dieing from starvation it is due entirely to local/regional disruptions of the food supply. The world currently has more than enough food to feed the world!

If there are no ways to distribute the “more than enough food to feed the world (which I dispute) it has the same effect as dieing from lack of food.

Samian
Governments are shutting down the production of fossil fuels in more ways than can possibly be counted.

There is loads of fuel. For example there is enough black coal alone to keep the world going for hundreds more years at current rates of consumption, and that's not counting all the shales, nor any undiscovered resources. At present, mining can go down depths measures in hundreds of feet. But mining technology is improving all the time, and would improve even faster if governments would stop bleeding the mining companies to pay for idiotic pinkbattism. Each increase in depth makes new reserves viable. The very rises in the price of oil make new reserves viable.

Talk of 'peak oil' contains the same error of static thinking as Malthus's. People don't try to use uneconomic resources, precisely because they are uneconomic. That's why they prefer to use up all of a resource that, at the time, is economc. Whether they are economic or not, changes over time relative to scarcity and demand. It is simply fallacious to judge the availability of energy by what oil is currently being produced: it is the Malthusian error all over again.

But even if peak oil is true, the idea that governments would be better at predicting the future and rationalising scarcity is mere culpable idiocy. The only viable conclusion of evidence and reason is that governments should get the hell out of the way, and stop killing large numbers of people with their meat-axe approach to solving problems of scarcity.

We had better hope that global warming kicks in quick time.

Looks like we are going to need all that Siberian, Mongolian, & Green/Iceland land in production ASAP.

Close down those fool windmills, & get burning coal you lot.

Thank you hasbeen, a breath of fresh air at last.