About are we fated to our future…. I’m guessing that this is one of those discussions where it depends on the balance of how much society pulls on a person and how much the person pulls on society. Depending on a person’s skills and goals it can be a strong pull each way. I think something important you are doing is trying to make a less polluting future-which goes back to my last post.

Also the argument that although there are more people the level of poverty has not risen dramatically is a flaud way of thinking. Quality of life is much more than just having food and lives nessecities/material things. For humans to be happy they need a sense of space, possibilities and nature. To live in a world where there are no undiscovered places to travel to, where there is no real place where you can be alone, and where there on all sides there are other people, makes us nothing more then rats in a cage with all the depression and violence that goes with being locked up. I do not find it strange that so many people suffer from mental diseases. We might have enough food and adequate housing but in the future we can only be free in our dreams or by reading and watching programmes from the past. This is not a good life or the world I would like my kids to grow up in. To spare them this I will not have them for their own sakes and for my clear consious.

Good luck with the things that are keeping you busy. Also I have to say that I think you did a very good job on your blog (trying to include a fair amount of detail and points of view).

Myth 1:

Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods – ­vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs – enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

Myth 2:

Nature is to Blame for Famine

Reality: It’s too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature’s vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it – starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in South Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn’t lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.

Myth 3

Too Many People

Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition – when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Or we find a country like the Netherlands, where very little land per person has not prevented it from eliminating hunger and becoming a net exporter of food. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates – China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala – prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.

I think the people * individual consumption is consumption equation is too simple. Not everyone consumes at the same rate plus individual consumption rates are changing rapidly (in part because of the increased development we talked about earlier. Thus I think the equation doesn’t note the changes and variability in consumption that relate to our prior discussion.

Thanks for the book recommendation and I’ll see if it is at the library next time I’m there.