Divergence, I'm not sure I understand your post enough to comment, so I apologise if I am misinterpreting you. As I understand it, it's one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. That you could depict the turnaround in Indian society as "buying time" is quite appalling. I doubt that's how the millions of people whose lives have been so improved would see it - they would call it food, shelter and life. Anyway, I have to go buy some time, or as I call it, eat.

Richard,

Obviously by "buying time" I mean that the Green Revolution gave India and other countries breathing space to solve the problems that created the crisis in the first place. India currently has a 1.6% population growth rate. Using the figures on land area and current population from the CIA World Fact Book (on the Web), I calculate that at this growth rate they have 490 years to standing room only. (Divide the land area in square meters by the current population, take the natural log, and then divide by the population growth rate as a decimal fraction.) Buying time is a fair comment until they get their population growth rate down to replacement level, assuming (unlikely) that they aren't also doing other unsustainable things besides growing the population. There have been a number of reports on the World Watch Institute site claiming that they are pumping dry the aquifers under some of their best agricultural land.

Growthists like to claim that Ehrlich was an idiot because he predicted big famines in the 1970s. (They never give him credit for predicting emerging diseases, long before AIDS.) My point was that his prediction was reasonable, given the information that they had at the time.

Yeah, that's the problem with prophesiers. There's usually something they don't "anticipate". What they are good at is justifying themselves after the event - 'well, of course, I couldn't have predicted that such and such would happen.' Erlick was wrong on numerous other counts, so having a stab at new diseases and hitting AIDS doesn't impress me a bit. It's like giving credit for someone picking the queen of clubs once in 52 calls. What amazes me is that the man's work is still brought up. Affluence is a better way to slow population growth than writing people off as beyond hope.