DEAR JAMES CUMES

Congratulations on raising this extremely important topic. Judging from your photo you are a very distinguished gent, reminiscent of John Pertwick who played Dr Who in one of his first incarnations.

You stated: "We are now about six billion living human beings. That number is increasing as never before. It will continue to increase until we achieve standards of living that will enable everyone to join, voluntarily, in limiting population growth to what the earth might be able to sustain".

OK you just said a mouthful. The thing that astounds me is that only 50 years ago - clearly after you yourself were born, the world population was only 2.5 billion.

Just imagine what kind of paradise humanity could be living in now if the population were still only 2.5 billion. But no, we had to go on to today's ridiculous 6.4 billion and we are destined to increase to 9-10 billion by 2050.

The United Nations saw that this would be disastrous, and held the International Conference on Population and Development (ICDP) in Cairo 12 years ago. That conference set out a program of action that would cost $17 billion a year - about 2 days US defence spending - and would help considerably to slow population growth and increase the standard of living in poor countries. So what happened? Most developed nations shirked their commitment, and STUPID George Bush in his very first action as president cancelled the US funding to this program.

Despite the existence of yourself and other lovely thoughtful people like you, I think the Bush-type people of this world will prevail. If humanity allows itself to be led by fools such as Bush, it deserves to die out and probably will in very short order. We are, as the French say, foutu.

Well... how surprising this thread has only one comment. I guess the idea of solving world hunger doesn't mean much to most Westerners. My suggestions for solutions for world hunger are as follows:

Stop being so greedy!

I think that people should find it within their hearts to donate a few bucks to starving children, rather than buy that wide screen TV.

Problem solved.

I think it will need a quick change to a bottom-up approach to development based on the formulation, expression and communication of demand of the majority of the world's population rather than the top-down supply-based approach we have followed since the Industrial Revolution.