Our Daily Bread
The human race faces a far greater threat than global warming ... an inadequate food supply.
What, you say, my food store is brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and meats without bounds, whole aisles of breakfast cereals, dairy products galore. The only thing is hard to find is a simple bag of rice. Life is good.
Yet 1.8 billion people on earth -- 1 in 4 , ie. 25% of the world's population -- depend on food imported from somewhere other than where they live. Of these, some 460 million live in regions where even imports fail to make up for the shortcomings of the local food supply. Why?
The population has outstripped their water and land resources to produce enough food to feed themselves. Yes, population growth is the greatest threat to the human race.
The world population has increased from about 0.5 billion people when Europeans first came to North America in the 1500's to 7.5 billion people today. We first reached 1 billion in 1804, then doubled to 2 billion in 1927, then 4 billion in 1974 and will double yet again to 8 billion in 2024.
Indeed, overpopulation that outstrips the food supply is a common cause for the extinction of the species. Nature is cruel but always finds a way to regulate itself for achieving an equilibrium in all things. And, of course, the food supply is but another energy source to balance.
But, you say, there's a great deal of the earth's surface that is still not populated by man. Yes, but that is far greater than the available water and soil required to produce food for human consumption. We are quickly reaching the tipping point for which we have more people than we can feed.
But, you say, that's not the case in the United States. Actually, we are already there on the West Coast of the. We have reached the point in places like California where food production is limited by available water resources. There's only so much irrigation water that the snow pack in the mountains can supply farms in the flatlands.
What, you say, my food store is brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and meats without bounds, whole aisles of breakfast cereals, dairy products galore. The only thing is hard to find is a simple bag of rice. Life is good.
Yet 1.8 billion people on earth -- 1 in 4 , ie. 25% of the world's population -- depend on food imported from somewhere other than where they live. Of these, some 460 million live in regions where even imports fail to make up for the shortcomings of the local food supply. Why?
The population has outstripped their water and land resources to produce enough food to feed themselves. Yes, population growth is the greatest threat to the human race.
The world population has increased from about 0.5 billion people when Europeans first came to North America in the 1500's to 7.5 billion people today. We first reached 1 billion in 1804, then doubled to 2 billion in 1927, then 4 billion in 1974 and will double yet again to 8 billion in 2024.
Indeed, overpopulation that outstrips the food supply is a common cause for the extinction of the species. Nature is cruel but always finds a way to regulate itself for achieving an equilibrium in all things. And, of course, the food supply is but another energy source to balance.
But, you say, there's a great deal of the earth's surface that is still not populated by man. Yes, but that is far greater than the available water and soil required to produce food for human consumption. We are quickly reaching the tipping point for which we have more people than we can feed.
But, you say, that's not the case in the United States. Actually, we are already there on the West Coast of the. We have reached the point in places like California where food production is limited by available water resources. There's only so much irrigation water that the snow pack in the mountains can supply farms in the flatlands.
So here's the food supply map of the world today. Unless we do something about population growth ... and soon ... it will get much more "colorful" in the near future.
If global warming would kill off half the world's human population, we might even view it as a good thing if the continuation of homo sapiens is somehow important in the grand scheme of the universe.
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