Norman Borlaug: Saint Or Sinner ?

The father of the "green revolution" in agriculture, Norman Borlaug, recently passed away due to cancer, at the age of 95.

Borlaug didn't approve of the "green revolution" moniker, dubbing it "a miserable term" (what he would have made of "The Agrichemical Revolutionary" isn't clear) but his work has had a far-reaching impact on the course of human development.

Borlaug received both praise ("More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace", said the Nobel peace prize committee, while the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization declared him “A towering scientist” and a “great benefactor of humankind”) from those impressed by the rise in agricultural productivity he engineered, and condemnation ("Aside from Kissinger, probably the biggest killer of all to have got the peace prize was Norman Borlaug, whose "green revolution" wheat strains led to the death of peasants by the million" is a typical example from Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch) from those concerned by the impact of the introduction of industrial agriculture around the globe.

Borlaug's Life

Borlaug grew up on a farm in Iowa and then studied for a Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics at the University of Minnesota. In 1944, Borlaug took up an agricultural research position in Mexico as part of the Rockefeller Foundation project to help farmers modernise crop production, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties over a period of 16 years. The Foundation's interest may not have been entirely altruistic - the Mexican government had nationalised the country's oil supply in 1939, to the dismay of the family's "Standard Oil" company, and there were concerns that the country may align itself with Germany during the war.

Borlaug's wheat breeding program produced semi-dwarf strains as the shorter stems enabled the plant to grow larger heads of grain without collapsing - with the extra growth prompted by the application of nitrogen fertiliser. The strains developed by Borlaug were very successful - by 1963, 95% of Mexico's wheat crops were products of the program. That year, the country's wheat harvest was 6 times larger than in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived - Mexico had become self-sufficient in wheat production.

In the 1960's, Borlaug shifted to India, working on similar projects there to alleviate famine. While the situation in India and Pakistan at the time was bleak (Biologist and "Population Bomb" author Paul Ehrlich remarking "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971" and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980"), Borlaug's programs were successful - in Pakistan, wheat yields nearly doubled, from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 7.3 million tons in 1970. In India, yields increased from 12.3 million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970 - by 1974, India was self-sufficient in cereal production.

Borlaug did not appear to be interested in politics - he believed that the problems of hunger and poverty could be solved by increasing crop yields, and set out to do so by applying technology to plant science. He often advocated increasing crop yields as a way of curbing deforestation - a methodology that came to be known as the "Borlaug hypothesis" (increasing the productivity of agriculture on existing farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland).

Borlaug was worried about the limited availability of farmland to expand food production further to meet increasing global demand - "we will have to double the world food supply by 2050" he noted. With around 85% of future growth in food production having to come from land already in use, he recommended a multidisciplinary research approach - mainly through increasing crop immunity to large-scale diseases such as the rust fungus.

While Borlaug became ever more optimistic about further increasing crop yields, he did occasionally sound Malthusian style warnings about population growth, particularly in the 1970's - "future food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before".

Over time Borlaug became convinced that we could feed the world adequately (given projections that global population will eventually plateau at around 9.5 billion people), as long as the methods he recommended were adopted universally, stating in 2000 : "I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology ? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called 'organic' methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot."

Borlaug's work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and (amongst numerous other awards) the 1977 US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the US Congressional Gold Medal in 2006.

Criticisms of the Green Revolution

Borlaug's "green revolution" has been criticised for decades by a wide variety of different groups for all sorts of reasons - ranging from making farmers dependent on a range of industrial products to soil and aquifer depletion to creating a food production system that is dependent on a finite supply of fossil fuel based inputs. One memorable description of this combined school of thought came from Zaid Hassan, who noted "there are so many criticisms around the current global food system that for a while I started wondering if in fact it had already collapsed and I was studying a post-apocalyptic food system".

Input-intensive monoculture farming - The primary criticism of "green revolution" style industrial agriculture is that it results in farmers becoming dependent on a range of industrial inputs - farming machinery, fertiliser, pesticides, irrigation equipment, seeds and even capital (debt) to purchase these inputs - often resulting in small scale farmers being pushed off the land (particularly if they are unable to repay their debts during a bad season) and resulting in large scale agribusinesses that produce monoculture crops that are prone to pests and diseases unless large amounts of pesicide are applied. Critics from the developing world often note that the profits from this transformation seem to be reaped by multinational corporations like Monsanto, Dupont, Cargill and Archers Daniels Midland rather than the farmers growing the crops (who often saw crop prices fall as yields increased) - and that their national food security was now dependent on foreign suppliers.

Side effects of fertilisers and pesticides - The side effects of large scale fertiliser and pesticide use are also pointed to by Borlaug's critics, noting increased rates of cancer and other health problems in rural areas and damage to the ecosystems that these inputs drain into (for example, the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico).

Water and soil depletion - As a result of modern irrigation practices, aquifers in places like India (once Borlaug's greatest triumph) and the US midwest have become depleted. Soil depletion is also a problem - since the 1880s almost half of the topsoil of the Great Plains of North America has disappeared.

Genetically modified crops - The risks associated with genetically modified crops - the next frontier for increasing crop yields in the wake of the first green revolution, which Borlaug dubbed "The Gene Revolution" - remain hotly debated, with critics raising objections based on food safety issues, ecological concerns and economic concerns (centering on the application of patents and intellectual property rights to engineered seeds).

Fossil fuel dependence - The inputs for green revolution style industrial agriculture are almost entirely derived from fossil fuels. Production of nitrogen fertiliser via the Haber process (mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea) consumes between 3 and 5% of world natural gas production. Farm machinery like tractors and irrigation pumps consume fuel, and tractor tyres and plastic irrigation pipes are made from petrochemicals, as are pesticides. Writers like Richard Manning (The Oil We Eat), Dale Allen Pfeiffer (Eating Fossil Fuels) and Glenn Morton (The Connection Between Food Supply and Energy: What Is the Role of Oil Price?) have argued that the green revolution will prove unsustainable once we have passed their peak production point for fossil fuels.

Borlaug dismissed the claims of most critics. Of environmental lobbyists he said, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

Borlaug was also indignant about arguments in favour of natural fertilisers like cow manure rather than inorganic fertilisers. Using manure would require a massive expansion of the lands required for grazing the cattle, he said, and consume much of the extra grain that would be produced. He claimed that such techniques could support no more than 4 billion people worldwide, well under the current global population of almost 7 billion.

This point is still being debated, with researchers at the University of Michigan and University of California claiming that organic farming techniques can indeed feed the world. We can also increase food production by making better use of urban land (something "guerilla gardeners" are fond of - and similar ideas are being put into practice by large scale tree planting programs in India).

Even if we don't fully take the organic agriculture path, some of the objections based on fossil fuel depletion would seem to be solvable. If we shift completely to renewable energy sources for power production, we can eliminate a large proportion of our natural gas and coal usage, freeing the remaining reserves for agricultural applications and extending the lifespan of green revolution techniques far out into the future. Whether or not we choose to do so quickly enough remains to be seen.

Related Articles :

Peak Energy - The Fat Man, The Population Bomb And The Green Revolution

Grist - Thoughts on the legacy of Norman Borlaug

Wall Street Journal - Borlaug's Revolution

Reason - Billions Served

Worldchanging - Postcards from the Global Food System (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Cross-posted from Peak Energy.

I'm sure Borlaug did a lot of good work as a plant breeder.However,he doesn't appear to have given too much thought to the problem of population as the limiting factor to food production,no matter what the technology used to continually play catch up.He was certainly typical in this respect.

This applies to virtually all our other problems as well.Population is the elephant in the room which is being ignored by most people.That is truly a strange quirk of Homo Saps.

It is not a terribly difficult problem to solve in a relatively humane manner if we are prepared to take strong concerted action.Unfortunately we are runing out of time and I suspect nature will do the job for us.Nature - red in tooth and claw - merciless.

I think you are being unduly harsh.

He saw a problem and did something towards fixing it. That's to be commended. If you want to cast stones for the failure to recognise wider system effects and take the actions needed in the buffer time provided by Borlaug - blame the politicians. It was their job to be less myopic than they were.

Actually, blame the voters. In the end they are at fault for the failure of strategic vision.

The problem is indeed one of population and that has been evident, certainly to those who have understood energy, water and agricultural trends, for probably 5 decades or even longer. People like Paul Erhlich, Rachel Carson and the Club of Rome who were sounding warnings as early as the 1950's and 1960's became widely discredited for being "wrong". Thomas Malthus (because of his famous 1798 essay) has even become the pejorative term "Malthusian". Criticism, any criticism, of economic growth, with its in-built structural imperative of population growth, is viewed either as insane or dangerously revolutionary. Economies the world over, of what ever persuasion from one end of the socialist/capitalist scale to the other, are said to be "stagnant" or "in recession" when growth is interrupted, even for a quarter or two. People lose their jobs, companies go bust, government programs cannot be funded and general misery pervades national life.

It seems growth is core collective psychology that is buried deep within our genes. We will literally do anything to safeguard our genetic future and it forms the foundation of human altruism. Countless young men down the ages have given their lives in war for this very reason. This also means that as a species we will fail to take effective remedial action to solve any of the issues that face us. We behave as if climate change is the only problem between us and a return to the glory of ever-lasting growth, when in truth climate change is a symptom of over-population; and then only one of many. The loss of arable land, food production more generally (because it is a complex industry within a complex economy), water, peak oil, high altitude glacier loss, peak oil, dead or lifeless oceans and biodiversity loss are other problems that threaten our futures as well, some more immediately than climate change.

I think that we have entered "The Long Emergency" (JH Kunstler). Some of us know that, less are actually doing something about it; and the vast majority don't have a clue. Maybe it is better that way.

The article quotes Borlaug in part

stating in 2000 : "I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people.

Assuming that people don't mind sleeping in shifts in the same bed, and that water and petroleum are in fact endlessly available, what is to stop the population at 10billion?

People grow to the limits of their resource base, just like any other species. Isn't that what life does? It's not rocket science any more.

Then why have so many countries already had their population growth rates drop below replacement level ? And why do population projections show global population leveling off below 10 billion (not Borlaug's prediction - the ones from the UN) ?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2670820702819322251#

What you view as "not rocket science" isn't even science - its just a myth.

Are you saying that it is a myth that populations of living organisms generally grow to the limits of their resource base?

It seems to me that that is what humans have done. Being able to eat oil has pushed the limits for human population to maybe 10 billion. Which is where the planet is headed. Population growth rates are slowing for a variety of reasons including IMO a growing awareness at grass roots level that human impacts are already overloading the biosphere.

Having said that, in enabling humanity to solve the problem of being unable to feed four billion people, Borlaug set it on the path to being unable to feed 10 billion if and when fossil inputs declined.

Borlaug discovered the Holy Grail. A pity he handed it over to a system dedicated to exploiting the biosphere to the maximum possible extent by all available means, including fast-breeding humans to do the work.

Saint - Sinner? Holy Grail or poisoned chalice? Take your pick.

Are you saying that it is a myth that populations of living organisms generally grow to the limits of their resource base?

Yes.

Evolution still applies to humans. If one variety of human vacates a niche, another will colonize it.

Thirra, I totally agree with your thoughts on population (or rather overpopulation). Seems like climate change/global warming is the political fad of the day for breast beating politicians. Other pressing issues like biodiversity decline (decimation?)are in the outer orbit of the global political agenda. There was a very good article linked from the oildrum that quantified the enormous benefit that reducing population growth would have on anthropocentric greenhouse gas emissions.

Every social/economic/ecological problem that we face today can be traced back to overpopulation. It is the root of all our issues. In horticultural terms, we need to do some trimming.

Interesting post.

I think the problems in India and also Pakistan of phosphorus fertilizers, water shortages and salinity will begin to bite into these achievements in the coming decades. Little wonder why Indians are migrating to other countries in such huge numbers.

The melting of Himalayan glaciers may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Then again, they may attempt to build dams to control the flow of the water. Which would have other unintended consequences, no doubt.

Food is the limiting factor to population, not the other way around. Humans as a species haven't been hungry for a long, long time. People are literally made out of the food they eat. That our population ever grows means that the problem can't be defined as "not enough food".

Borlaug didn't realize this, just as many people still don't. Saint or sinner? Neither.

By that logic the dwellers in Stalin's gulag were doing just fine. As they died of overwork and hunger he just arrested some more.

There should be more to life than just living long enough to have 3 babies that reproduce.

There should be more to life than just living long enough to have 3 babies that reproduce.

Why "should" there be? Why should the world owe you more? If you feel that there should be more to life than that, and there isn't, who or what are you going to appeal to?

Differential reproductive success is all selection "cares" about. It's the only criterion of Darwinian fitness. It's always been that way for every organism that's ever existed. If you are the parent of three kids who are each themselves parents, then you've "won" the Darwinian lottery. Most things die before reproducing, yet every one of us is the product of an unbroken chain of successful reproducers going back to the very dawn of life itself. Not a single one of our ancestors failed to reproduce. I personally think that this is pretty amazing. I don't see how anyone can expect more from life than this.

Hello DD,

Your Quote: "Differential reproductive success is all selection "cares" about. It's the only criterion of Darwinian fitness. It's always been that way for every organism that's ever existed. If you are the parent of three kids who are each themselves parents, then you've "won" the Darwinian lottery.."

I would argue that our global human-aggregate DNA has the best chance of Darwin-adapting to the challenges ahead [and maybe avoiding extinction], is by making sure the ecosystem's degradation rate is minimized as much as possible; to aim for optimal reshaping of the Dieoff Bottleneck.

Personal DNA 'Winning' of the Darwinian lottery is no Prize if we go extinct. A keystone predator has to have a functioning ecosystem underneath him/her to provide a possible path to adaptation. Adding more people only adds to the fast-crash force of cascading blowbacks.

IMO, we already have plenty of people. We don't need to make things much worse by promoting a meme of a personal DNA contest to have more offspring. Most lottery winners end up being very sorry that they won.

First, about Darwinian fitness. Darwin spoke of Natural Selection, not 'survival' and 'fitness' until he was pretty much forced to because of the popularity of the writings of Herbert Spencer, a social philosopher of his time who is now totally forgotten. Spencer coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest', which IMHO is a gross mis-characterization of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Second, I think it is irrational to think that there is any likelihood of extinction of Homo sapiens sapiens. What is likely is the collapse of the existing World Order. A significant fact about existing WO is that a large fraction of world population depends for its survival on imported food. Collapse will make long distance, high volume transport of goods/food difficult, if not impossible. It is reasonable to suppose that this will lead to a crash in human population in a kind of patchy pattern throughout the world. But the remnant population will still be top predator in each locale where it is not exterminated by invading hordes of humans from a neighboring locale.

Anatomically modern homo s. s., has been present on Earth for about 200,000 years. During the vast majority of that time, the breeding population was vastly smaller than it is today. And yet it survived and drove other predators to extinction. I think one should not expect a bottle-neck to lead to an irreversible decline.
So, not to worry, humans will not become extinct.

My guess is that when people bother to think about these things, they worry about personal extinction or worse, discomfort. It is generally couched in the rhetoric of concern for the planet or at least some larger entity to avoid the stigma of cowardice.

On the contrary sir.
It is inevitable that humans will become extinct. We are a work in progress.
I have seen fine examples of whom I hope will be our successors. But I quail when forced to admit that a smaller brain might be benificial.

Differential reproductive success is all selection "cares" about. It's the only criterion of Darwinian fitness. It's always been that way for every organism that's ever existed.

It seems to me that in the complex interdependent societies that human beings have created, differential reproductive success is no longer a simple matter of who has surviving children. If I help help to intiate social or technolgical innovations that create new economic/social niches, then I have influence on future gene selection even if I have no offspring.

DD,

We expect more because we have it so easy that failure to reproduce is no longer a problem-we simply don't have enough natural enemies anymore.

However I expect Mother Nature to roll out some NEW AND IMPROVED versions of the various diseases and behaviors that used to keep our numbers in check anytime now.

All of them of course will not have to attack us frontally-our monoculture crops could go belly up almost any time.

Even neutron bombs are in the last analysis products of Mother's workshop.

Since you posted a time frame of five hundred years as "iminent" I am less inclined to argue with you,although I do think the odds of a few of us still beimg round for thousands of years are pretty good.

However I expect Mother Nature to roll out some NEW AND IMPROVED versions of the various diseases and behaviors that used to keep our numbers in check anytime now.

Meh, don't give Ma Nature TOO much credit - I'd not be shocked that the next pandemic has its roots in man's direct DNA meddling.

Not meaning to ignore the suffering of the relatively few people who do experience hunger and starvation, I was talking about the species as a whole.

By that logic the dwellers in Stalin's gulag were doing just fine.

They are under duress not because of some structural incapacity to get food but due to an ideological desire to restrict their ability to do so. So your example supports the previous contention.

As they died of overwork and hunger he just arrested some more.

Doesn't sound like you think the "dwellers" are doing fine, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

There should be more to life than just living long enough to have 3 babies that reproduce.

If there isn't more to your life, what has that got to do with anybody else, it's your life after all why don't you live it?

At the risk of sounding too Kunstlerich, in retrospect Borlaug was of the "something for nothing" religion. Topsoil is falling off the cliff; family planning and environmental education remain elusive to the masses...

Unintended consequences accompany all we do. Borlaug's intentions were noble yet all he actually managed to accomplish was to allow more people to be hungry, while accelerating the erosion of topsoil, combustion of fossil fuels, and chemical pollution of soil & water. Do nothing, I say repeatedly, rather than rush in with a perceived "solution" to a problem that only makes the problem worse. For saying this I receive routine criticism by TOD posters who, like Borlaug, have good intentions but only limited vision regarding the scope of the problems facing humanity and the biosphere. Borlaug was not omniscient and neither are those who advocate taking action to alleviate the AGW or PO problems they see as threats. I say again: Do nothing, least in taking action you end up with a legacy similar to Borlaug's - simultaneous admiration for his nobility of intention along with infamy over the deleteriousness of consequences accruing from unwise actions inspired by those good intentions.

True. The world is a tremendously complex place, and it is our own huberis that allows us to think that we can change things more to our liking without unintended consequences.

Sometimes what we as humanity do reminds me of a chess game. A beginning chess player can look only a move or two ahead if they are lucky. As people get better and better, they can plan further and further ahead - anticipating the opponents moves along the way.

It sounds like Borlaug saw a few moves ahead - he saw that with what we had available at the time that we could eliminate famine. Yet he couldn't or didn't see that his actions would result in a population explosion, nor did he anticipate that the resources available in 1960 wouldn't always be there for us to exploit in this way.

Yet he couldn't or didn't see that his actions would result in a population explosion

It seems that others felt he DID see that his actions had an effect and rejected it.

Via google

BrothersJudd Blog: THE ANTI-MALTHUS:
Sep 13, 2009 ... THE ANTI-MALTHUS:
Sep 13, 2009 ... Malthus wrote about food and starvation. Borlaug provided serious evidence against the inevitability of Malthus. ...

Reflections on the Life of Norman Borlaug - Sept 14 | Energy Bulletin
Sep 14, 2009 ... Borlaug lived 95 years and, through his efforts gave billions the opportunity to live their lives. The ideas of Malthus continue to live on ...
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50122

Norman Borlaug RIP: Father of Green Revolution | Spero News
Sep 20, 2009 ... Perhaps the most important by-product of Dr. Borlaug's green revolution is the shattering of Malthusian theories.

Now Energy Bulletin is the only link that even comes close to pointing out Malthus is right, or at least that given a long enough period - Malthus is right.

And yet in one link it seems that he DID understand and accept the little box of limited resources we'll call Malthus.

http://otherbird.blogspot.com/2009/09/we-are-billion-plus-and-yet-if-we-...

Borlaug admitted that use of chemicals should be limited. But he defended his reliance on technology, and warned (as per NYT):
If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species.

As long as there is resource to be extracted, the poor will be fed so that the resource can be extracted for a bowl of gruel. Desperate poor allow for strive and churn at the lower end of the class structure.

If Borlaug is not a hero, then Pasteur, Koch,Watt, Newton,Edision,and any others you may care to name are not heros either.

It is easy to go around criticizing the science,mores, and motives of people who lived in times past ,judging them by the standards of a later day.

Certainly if the rest of the scientfic community had done as much and as well to advance thier particular branches of knowledge and to put those advances into effect, we would now be living in a far safer , healthier , and more peaceful world.

Suppose bankers and economists knew as much about geology and chemistry as is usually learned by freshmen students at any good university.....

Right now we have an intense interest in a piddly little flu epidemic that might concieveably kill as many as one percent of us in the worst case and half the people on the site are obviously seriously concerned about the integrity of ther personal hides.

Some of them will condemn Borlaug as a monster rather than the man largely responsible for saving millions of little kids.

The hypocrisy is enough to make me vomit.

And ,yes, I do understand the population bomb, and the eventual demise of industrial agriculture,as well as any one on this site,as will be obvious to any one who is a regular.

(I also understand that we still have a good sized window of opportunity to make some serious changes,without widescale starvation at least in the richer parts of the world,if we can keep it running long enough.I might even go so far as to say there is theoritical hope for the worlds poor but as a practical matter I don't think the help will come thru.)

It's easy to preen one's feathers and make oneself feel nice and superior by blaming problems on particular individuals.Knocking others down ,especially when they are not around to defend themselves, is an easy way to move up the social pecking order ladder-or at least to pretend to yourself that you have done so.

My advice to all the armchair detectives and ambitious prosecutors who wish to railroad Borlaug into the penitentiary of public opinion is you need to start somewhere back in the predawn history of our kind and get yourselves all wound up about the guy who invented the club, the woman who invented the grocery bag,..........right on thru.By the time you get to Borlaug maybe you will have developed some small sense of history and a broader perspective.

Truly whoever it was that first said the source of problems is solutions was a great thinker.

Truly whoever it was that first said the source of problems is solutions was a great thinker.

Many people have come to this conclusion independently of each other.

That's why I didn't quote so and so's law.

You should have. The person who coined the term was Eric Sevareid, long time commentator on CBS.

LAWS, HYPOTHESES, OBSERVATIONS AND PREDICTIONS RELATING TO SUSTAINABILITY

Twelfth Law: (Eric Sevareid's Law)
The chief cause of problems is solutions (Sevareid, 1970).

Ron P.

Sevareid wasn't the first to come up the the idea, which is why I said others had reached this conclusion separately.

Consider H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

Absolutely correct. A big thumbs up there, OFM. Borlang said it better than I can.

some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things

To carry any cred. with me, posters need to preface their opinions with a statement of the number of months they've spent in their lives seriously short of food. (15)

To carry any cred. with me, posters need to preface their opinions with a statement of the number of months they've spent in their lives seriously short of food. (15)

This seems like an excessively high bar for commenting on environmental science.

There's no doubt Borlaug was a brilliant scientist, and genuinely had the best of intentions towards his fellow man (and woman) when he started the Green Revolution.

Unfortunately, because GR agricultural mega-projects in the Third World were not matched by equal-scale spending and effort in promoting sex education, family planning, and gender equality, it was doomed from to produce *even more* hungry mouths to feed in the long run. And let's not even start on the environmental devastation and additional 3+ billion inhabiatnts have wrought on the world since the start of the GR.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions".

We never seem to get past the confusion about population and environmental damage:

One single, average American wreaks more environmental damage than a hundred barefoot Indian peasants.

I wish I knew who said that.

Do you suppose the elephants complain about the mice stomping all over their fields?

One single, average American wreaks more environmental damage than a hundred barefoot Indian peasants.

Though we're all aware the impact spread is quite wide, it is certainly not 100:1. Scientists estimate it about 23:1. (source: http://www.ecologicalfootprint.org/Excel/Footprint%20of%20Nations%202005%20(2).pdf) Each new person added to India requires approximately 4.83 hectares of wilderness developed in order to provide food, energy, living space, a job and material goods vs. Americans' 108.95 hectares.

That said, the U.S. born population (like most of Western Europe and Japan) is already in decline. The only reason total population is increasing is due to immigration --much of it illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America. So, minus immigration, our net footprint is already in decline vs. India's 2.72 fertility rate (source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html).

And now the key question: would you prefer to live as an average Indian peasant or an American (be honest)?

Take a gander at some aerial photos of India, Indonesia or Haiti compared to 50 years ago if you don't think that large numbers of "barefoot peasants" can have any measurable impact on their environment.

Having spent time in the backwaters of the Phillipines during my time in the USMC, the primitive does not have a mystic hold on my imagination. There even the pigs were skinny, just as the residents were for the most part, except for the government hacks who always seemed to have a few extra pounds hanging around them. This sense of "rage" I blame on those sadistic mommy professors who turn out students with a talking point education, and as Orwell would describe them, "men who think in slogans and speak with bullets." Progress is possible but not in an intellectual enviroment with Monsanto facists on one side and sadistic drones on the other who in the end synthesize as Orwell wrote about in "Animal Farm."

What?

Do you imagine that the "backwaters of the Philippines" (did you just mis-type, or do you know how to spell Philippines?) were unaffected by several centuries of Western European civilization before you arrived? That the state of the pigs and people is a natural effect of the primitive state?

The older I get, the more I think like John Zerzan.

But the older I get, the more I enjoy my central heating and other civilized comforts. What a dilemma!!

what you wrote is similar to the point I was going to make.
my point:

The main reason the green revolution was a mistake is because it will make peak oil that much worse. If there’s going to be a population crash because of depletion, the green revolution made things worse by allowing us to overshoot our carrying capacity beyond what it would have been without modern industrialism. But I don’t think blaming Borlaug helps. He was just trying to feed hungry people. Blaming Borlaug for the mess we’re in would be like blaming Louis Pasteur too. After all, more babies grew up to reproduce because Louis Pasteur told doctors to wash their hands, and because he started dabbling with vaccines.
I say if we blame Borlaug for anything, then we must blame Pasteur too.

There is no reason that peak oil should lead to population crash - as I point out in the article, the amount of oil and natural gas we need for fertiliser and petochemicals isn't that large - and there are alternatives in any case.

If you made your argument base don shifting rainfall patterns, aquifer depletion or soil depletion you may have a better case.

There are many who would argue that pasteur was no hero and with good reason...
But with respect farmer mac(and i mean with respect!) People of Borlaug's and your generation have a mindset which is a product of your time. The idea of the "Battle" with Nature, pests and disease is an idea which while widespread is quite misplaced.
I've read Borlaugs biography and what was always apparent was his huge faith in technology, and focus on yields. The whole green revolution with all it's high inputs was always about quantity over quality, we had a huge surplus and still do of deficient cereals.

Yes it's easy to blame Borlaug, but he was only one man in a vast machine determined to redefine the worlds food supply. However to hold up people like him as saviours is a little naive in my opinion.

When basic things like the functions of disease are understood and not demonised we may make some progress towards a sustainable food supply. The constant thought of growth, progress and above all "improving" Nature will only lead to more diseases appearing in order to do away with and recycle defective plants and unfortunately humans!

Let's look at this materially, and discard the ideas and mind games. Borlaug and Haber are responsible, through their science, of placing several billion more people on this planet (my guess, it may be even more), and putting all of us further out on a limb that is going to break and come crashing down.
Just as missionaries may have good intentions, their actions are ignorant, and the results disastrous.
The real question:
Are humans smarter than yeast?

Then Burlaug and Haber invented the printing press, discovered the laws of chemistry, the mathematics...you reveal a rather provincial intellectual pov for a world traveler.

I suppose they also invented the boats and airplanes that carry you around from continentto continent.

Point accepted. Borlaug, I'm sure had good intentions (I'm not sure about Haber), and was imbedded into a culture that saw growth and expansion as a positive.
But, if you look at the material results of the action, it was disastrous.

The material results being?

The fact that even with double the food on the planet, still large numbers of children starve is NOT Borlang's fault, it is yours and mine! That predatory economic system which supports your auto's, highways, airline flights, supersize restaurant meals, all while we KNOW that hundreds of thousands, perhaps milions, work harder than ourselves every day yet starve. THAT's the problem.

Obviously, we can organize our political and economic systems that encourage justice and discourage sociopathic behavior (capitalism rewards sociopaths).
However, when, because of winning the energy lottery, humanity puts almost 7 billion beings in a petri dish that will support a fraction of that, there are consequences, and no amount of organizing is going to fix the situation.
Disclaimer: I spend a significant amount of time on social justice issues, and putting my body on the line in the streets.

Apology not accepted. The fact you could say publicly

Borlaug and Haber are responsible, through their science, of placing several billion more people on this planet (my guess, it may be even more)

proves that its not the rest of the world which needs to change attitudes as much as yourself. At least for a start.

The majority of "activists" are primarily responsible for discrediting legitimate views among our population. By going public wih uneducated commentary (GreenPeace on nuclear), promoting ridiculous causes (wearing leather footwear out onto iceflows to protest seal hunting), going extreme outlaw (attacking police lines at "globalization" meetings with thrown concrete building blocks on national television), etc. etc. self-appointed self-righteous ninnies force the thinking majority to turn their backs to such efforts and disown the causes. And yes, the average person really has more grasp and interest in these issues than most of the zealots.

Maybe some basic population biology, and less ideology?
Granted, with equal access to food, the greatest way, across cultures to reduce birth rate is having women have equal political and economic rights ( in general, a few Scandinavia Countries have actually increased fertility, but this is a reflection of economic equality and unique social conditions).
Are we smarter that yeast?

From your tenacious holding on to a discredited position, I'd say its clear that at least you're not "smarter than yeast".

You want to knock it off with the Ad-Hominems? It's undermining any point you're trying to make.

Ok, sorry Hightrekker. I guess three strikes and you're out should only apply in baseball.

Flag 'em, if they bother you.

sustainable-
No worries, len doesn't realize I'm actually on his side, and he just needs some basic literacy in population dynamics, and realize he is not going to organize himself out of this one.

Hightrekker is a gentleman and a scholar.

What strikes me is how difficult it will be to unwind where we are now, to a more sustainable future. I see two big issues - system resiliency and soil fertility.

1. Resiliency. We used to have thousands of varieties of plants that were cultivated, and even within those seeds, there was variety. The result was that even when it was unusually dry or wet or hot or cold or a plant pest hit, something grew. There was resiliency in the system, even if it did not support nearly as many people. Now we have lost most of the thousands of varieties of plants that were cultivated.

One can sort of make up for the loss of resiliency by storing more food for bad times, but without refrigeration and modern food storage methods this is a challenge. One can also sort of make up for the loss of resiliency by transporting food from a distance, but without much fossil fuels, this will be a challenge as well.

2. Soil fertility. Natural fertility has been depleted, and the microbes in the soil that would normally help with soil fertility have been depleted by all of the chemical fertilizer.

Borlaug should not be dismissed for some of the problems facing contemporary agriculture, but understood in historical perspective.

Above all, he was an advocate of scientific agriculture, which, thankfully, has replaced much traditional agriculture in regions around the world that have or are in the process of modernizing. Prior to the adoption of modern agriculture, famine was common, malnourishment was a reality and the human diet was limited seasonally, quantitatively and qualitatively in an unhealthy way.

In sum, there was no pre-industrial and pre-scientific “golden age” in which people ate better food in adequate quantities than now.

In fact, in areas such as Asia, where excessive population demanded constant farming of established fields, per acre yields declined over the centuries through gradual soil nutrient depletion because the only fertilizer they had was “organic” manure. This problem has been addressed through the multi-faceted approach to scientific farming of the “Green Revolution”: modern farm machinery; properly monitored irrigation; sound tillage practices; breeding crops that are suited to climate needs; the correct timing for applying fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides; harvesting at the correct time; getting the food to market in a timely manner; and, most importantly, the collection of data to adjust the entire system to meet climate variations and the evolution of weeds and pest. Add to this list the latest development in “site specific” farming techniques and you have much more reliable food production than in the days of pre-scientific agriculture.

There are examples of some farming done organically by companion planting that cut down the need for as much fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides. But, as with selectively bred crops that rely on pesticides and herbicides, these are only temporary victories, since nature adapts through Darwin’s “descent through modification.” So, today’s farming enemies will return in another form in the near future. I’ll side with the bred seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides of the Green Revolution in this war rather than rely on an organic farming that may not be able to cope with environmental dynamics.

As Borlaug put it, agriculture has always been a constant battle to stay one step ahead of Mother Nature.

Those who rail against Borlang and "Green Revolution" need instead to be flagellating themselve for having wasted the opportunity he provided to address the core problem, which is inequality and insecurity worldwide. The fact that others wasted the opportunity to implement measures which would have resulted in a significantly lower peak population worldwide is not his fault. He did his part, its the rest of us who have thus far failed! How muh longer? Is there not ONE economist, politician of the measure of Borlang among us?

..the core problem, which is inequality and insecurity worldwide.

The "core problem" is human overpopulation. Inequality and insecurity, along with anthropogenic global warming and peak oil, are symptoms of this core problem, which Borlaug contributed to significantly. The so-called "green revolution" did nothing to alleviate hunger. It merely allowed more people to be hungry, at the cost of severe environmental degradation.

You first, ok?

As you've been told several times before by myself at least, population expansion is NOT caused by food availability, therefore cannot be blamed on Borlang. Proof is that in the developed world, home of the supersize restaurant meals and 50% food waste, the population increase outside of inmigration is negative. Your proposal that we ought to have limited world population at some prior date by knowingly restricting food supplies to hungry nations is DISGUSTING!

As you've been told several times before by myself at least, population expansion is NOT caused by food availability, therefore cannot be blamed on Borlang. Proof is that in the developed world, home of the supersize restaurant meals and 50% food waste, the population increase outside of inmigration is negative.

Ridiculous. Only in technologically and socialogically advanced countries --where women can vote and have some control over their reproductive systems-- does greater food availability *not* lead to population growth. For proof, take a look at a world map of population growth rates, then overlay that with a map of mature western democracies, where women have long had the vote and right to use birth control.

Your proposal that we ought to have limited world population at some prior date by knowingly restricting food supplies to hungry nations is DISGUSTING!

I don't recall DD ever suggesting that. Straw man here? I have heard many people here --myself included-- advocating sex education for women (esp. in the third world where population growth is highest), government actively promoting smaller families (incentivizing via tax policies, etc.), and other common sense measures. Of course voluntary, common sense measures = death wish to closed-minded cornucopian fanatics.

You've defeated your position in your own response. where women can vote and have some control over their reproductive systems needs only have added and where the elderly can depend on other than large families for security Obviously, access to food does not increase population, else N America, having so much excess food we can burn it in our vehicles, would be teeming with population.

No straw-man. DD's and other's whole argument against the "green revolution" of Borlang INCLUDES BY DEFINITION the position "the added food should never have been provided BECAUSE it enabled an increase in population".

I am not a cornucopian, merely a realist who doesn't take emotionally over-hyped doomerism as proven.

Well, the green revolution should not have happened, instead what should of happened is a radical re-thinking of the path civilization was taking. Perhaps if the Green Revolution had been embarked upon with the inevitability of limits in mind (IE we can cheat for a while and feed everyone, but if they reproduce exponentially while we are doing it, we will have done no good). However, that event had a zero probability of actually happening, so we are where we are now.

Asking whether or not the Green Revolution should have been prevented is essentially a philosophical question; do we feed people now or allow people who are not yet born to starve in the future in greater numbers? I think most people, despite the possible utilitarian (in terms of minimizing the number of starving people) case for preventing the green revolution would choose to go ahead with the green revolution.

do we feed people now or allow people who are not yet born to starve in the future in greater numbers?

First you must prove your hypothesis that large numbers of people WILL starve in the future. I get the sense that you are of the sort who 50 years ago would have denied the possibility that China or India could ever become self-sufficient in food.

Something more than your personally favourite desires projected into the future are of course required in answering such a significant question at a national policy level where outcomes depend on the decisions.

Or would you prefer to be nominated the ambassador to Somalia charged with responsibility for explaining why food aid from N America and Europe must be discontinued? Then obviously to become the "go to person" for all journalists requesting explanation of the reasoning of the policy?

However, that event had a zero probability of actually happening

see, that's the sort of doomerism that I find most disgusting. To just roll over and play dead in the face of Friedman's economics is disgracefull. If the drafters of the United States of A constitution, or eg. Thomas Paine, my favourite of the agitators for the 1776 revolution, had taken that attitude then N Americans would still be bowing to Dukes and Earls simply because they were born right.

"the added food should never have been provided BECAUSE it enabled an increase in population"

If you had added "unless conditionally coupled with voting and reproductive rights for women, and education for the general populace", I would completely agree with this statement. Borlaug had wonderful intentions, but in the end did the developing world no favors by enabling population to explode uncontrollably via the GR.

People are made out of food. Full stop. Conservation of mass applies to biological systems, and is part of the accepted science of ecological stoichiometry. Full stop.

Food availability is not merely a possible contributor, it is in fact required for population expansion. When talking about population growth, it's for the entire species, not a given slice of it.

There is no widespread hunger.

The population expansion is proof of that.

The proximal and localized hunger problems stem from ignorance, greed, myopia, not from food availability.

The proximal and localized hunger problems stem from ignorance, greed, myopia

Agreed, its the ignorance, greed, myopia of the elites, mostly in developed nations. If they'd had the required shreds of decency 50 years ago to begin to correct the world's problems of inequality of women, women's control over their reproduction cycles, women's right to property, elderly peoples right to security in their old age, and decent general education for all, THEN BORLANG's INNOVATIONS WOULD HAVE RAPIDLY RESOLVED THE LAST ISSUE, that of sufficient food to supply the then-existing population.

knowingly restricting food supplies to hungry nations

Let us not forget the position on GMOed food some nations have and food aid.

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2004/april/angolagm.htm

The Angolan Ministry permitted an exemption for the WFP on condition that the 19,000 tons of food aid was milled on arrival - a condition rejected by the WFP due to the late notice, the shortage of mills near the ports, their existing extreme food shortages and the unpleasant fact that they simply have no money from donors to pay a commercial milling operation. The USAID authorities are now looking at filling the same ship with sorghum or maize meal but in the meantime, people will still go hungry. Matos said the government was "looking into" expanding mill capacity at the ports of Lobito and Luanda.
Mike Sackett, director for southern Africa for the World Food Program (WFP) said the proposed ban had affected the UN's ability to fight hunger "quite dramatically," resulting in food quotas being slashed in half immediately due to low food stocks.

And let us not forget the added complexity of Nixon/Earl Butz:
http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Aid-Trade-Competition-Philosophy/dp/0521414687

The phrase "food as a weapon" is generally traced to Earl Butz

Well, it is also true that particularly in Africa, much poorly allocated food aid has in fact simply resulted in the bankrupcy of a lot of local farmers. I'd not like to hang the argument on any single event like Angola 2004, but on thorough analysis.

I think Paul Thompson's book would make a very interesting read. Wish I could afford it.

You could always go to the library.....

I'd prefer to leave the onus on the claimants of extraordinary relationships. I have useful things to do with resources.

It's available used for $35.00 http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=thompson&sts=t&tn=ethic...

It was published in 1992 -- probably those were revolutionary ideas then. Now it's just history.

"Prior to the adoption of modern agriculture, famine was common, malnourishment was a reality and the human diet was limited seasonally, quantitatively and qualitatively in an unhealthy way."

Have you any solid references for this? From my own research this is a questionable statement. What countries are you talking about?

"Prior to the adoption of modern agriculture, famine was common, malnourishment was a reality and the human diet was limited seasonally, quantitatively and qualitatively in an unhealthy way."

Have you any solid references for this? From my own research this is a questionable statement. What countries are you talking about?

I am so tired of reading the same nonsense about the successes of the green revolution. "..by 1963, 95% of Mexico's wheat crops were products of the program. That year, the country's wheat harvest was 6 times larger than in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived - Mexico had become self-sufficient in wheat production." Never mind that Mexican farmers did not grow wheat. They grew corn. They were not interested in growing wheat, but they were forced to buy Borlaug's hybrid seeds. This is a rather sordid story, and a tragic one. By 1963, Mexico may have been producing wheat - a culturally inappropriate crop -- but the mass exodus of peasant farmers from their lands had begun, a process that would be completed with the institution of NAFTA.
All the scholarship that has been done on the relationship between hunger and food production has proven that there is no relationship between the two. We should not assume that where there is hunger, there must be a lack of food. Two and a half million Irish died in the midst of an agricultural abundance. This was true of the famines in India throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It is still true today.

As a farmer in South India having produced rice, coffee and coconuts with green revolution based inputs in the past, I am now a complete organic grower. One of the dire consequences of GR rice according to one of my workers, who could not operate a manual coffee pulper was this, "well in those days we ate rice that grew for 6 months and were strong, now we ear rice that grows for 3 months only, and so we are weak and can not even run a coffee depulper"

The effect of GR food on human health and physical stamina are disastrous for folks who had to do manual labour for a living.So now we even use combines for harvesting paddy instead of village women!!
GR fed kids are now working the comps as software wizards, but who will work the fields when we cant fuel the combines!!!

If you ran you farm like you analyse the chemical makeup of food crops, its no wonder you've been booted out.

And for some reason I'd rather eat & trade crops with Kanan than analyse the chemical makeup of food crops a la Monsanto, never mind my chapati...

you forgot to add "even though his claims are purely anecdotal, unproven and highly unlikely".

In Borlaug's defense, at least he had nothing to do with the increase in livestock production/slaughterhouses.

Not directly, perhaps, but his "improved" grain variety certainly contributed to feedlot culture.

Are you sure about that, CO2? Here's the "net energy of American sacred cow." Cheap easy grains made for cheap, easy cow, in a concentrated fashion, on feedlots.

Efficiency Revisited
It takes about ten pounds of vegetable food to produce one pound of cow. Producing beef via grains and legumes is one of the most inefficient ways to grow food for human consumption. Similarly, it takes about ten pounds of rodents to increase the weight of a fox by one pound. If we assume that the inputs and outputs have approximately the same energy per pound, the efficiency of these two-step processes is about 10%.
The transformation of solar energy into vegetable matter has a an even lower efficiency, only a small fraction of 1%. These biochemical processes have evolved over many years, so their efficiencies are probably at, or near the maximum. The food chain in Fig. 5 shows that it takes one million solar units to produce one unit of Tertiary Consumer (cats, hawks, snakes)! The five-step process has an efficiency of .000001 = 1/10,000 of 1%!

Some examples of Primary Consumers (vegetarians) are rabbits, quail and mullet. Some examples of Secondary Consumers (mixed eaters) are chickens, foxes and grizzlies.

http://web.math.fsu.edu/~fusaro/DL/chapter9.html

Thanks, Iaato- I stand corrected - of course cheap grains also make for cheap livestock

Courtesy (sic) of the Borlaug institute
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2009/jul09/jul13/0625TAMUbourlagtechassistan...

You guys just refuse to "get" it, don't you? Every person born has the same RIGHT to food, shelter and security that you do. That too many are born is not an error of providing too much resources to support persons, but an error of inequitable distribution. I sincerely wonder how far you guys are from declaring that those people in Africa or Asia don't deserve to have access to food because they spring from inferior racial stock? It sure comes off that way, but perhaps that's just me.

That too many are born is not an error of providing too much resources to support persons, but an error of inequitable distribution.

Or an error in family planning. Educating women in developing nations is probably the single most effective approach we can take.

You guys just refuse to "get" it, don't you?

Yea, you like to make up stuff.

Every person born has the same RIGHT to food, shelter and security that you do.

Bull. If I go forth and convert sunlight into food, pile rocks to make shelter and make tithes to the government I have FAR more rights to said food and shelter than someone who has done no work to secure food/shelter.

As I pointed out yesterday on Gail's Heinburg key post, more food (calories) available has correlated with lower fertility and birthrate in virtually every country worldwide (even though the demographic 'shadow' keeps population growing for a while).

Might one infer that sans Borlaug's green revolution there would have been more, but hungrier people than we have now? Playing the devil's advocate here, but the data begs for explanation.

ET sorry I did not ready your post from yesterday, but my reaction to this correlation (the more food available, the lower the fertility), is that it must be some underlying co-variate that explains this. You can find all sorts of correlations, but few will lead you to a more informed view of reality. My favorite example is that people with matches in their pocket are more likely to die of lung cancer. The solution is not to warn people against matches.

So, let's see. Medically, way too much food will lead to diabetes, and lower fertility on that basis. Anything short of way too much horrendous food (sort of what we have in the US) will not medically lead to lower fertility rates. Way too little food may lead to lower fertility rates (anorexic women sometimes do not menstruate), as well as more low birth weight babies, and perhaps a lower population growth rate.

Socially, of course, food security can lead to lower voluntary pregnancy rates, but I am not sure how quickly this operates. The cultural norms of having lots of kids may not fade easily. Food security can lead to a number of other conditions that in turn result in women (and men) desiring fewer children. What if we tried to bring about those conditions without stuffing everyone with GMO foods?

Are we saying that we must stop finding ways to feed Third World countries? Might there be more effective ways to lower population growth rate? I think this is what we might want to be considering in this discussion.

So, let's see. Medically, way too much food will lead to diabetes, and lower fertility on that basis. Anything short of way too much horrendous food (sort of what we have in the US)

The health problems of the Navajo nation will make for an interesting epidemological study in the future.

Health problems of the Navajo nation are something I actually know something about.

The problem with overfeeding as an evolutionary check on populations is that the effects of overfeeding (diabetes, heart disease, maybe cancer) don't appear until well after peak reproductive years.

The children are already born and fairly well established before the parents get sick, let alone die.

I'm not that interested in overfeeding, but more on the economic cheap calories of starch in their diet.

Paranoid, I understand all that. The point (or at least one point) is that there are many correlates with the demographic transition such as education and other 'wealth' and the debate is still going on as to causal links. It is also true that the oft cited exponential population curve is not a direct effect of more food, or as people often say, more food=more people.

Yes, I know that more food is an enabler for a growing population. But so is more oxygen. How many people live at 20,000 ft.

I'm just arguing against shallow interpretations of demographic trends and equally shallow interpretations of human behavior that make these trends.

I agree with ET. It is very difficult to find any reliable statistical corelations between food availability and population. Biometrica, Oxford U has some tantalizing titles but nothing appears worth purchasing.

I found this from Sepp Hasslberger, owner of Lastrega Health Foods, Italy.

Let me add to that and say that I am equally unconvinced that the availability of food is a primary factor in current population growth. While this may well be true for animal populations, I believe that what sets apart from the animals, our intellect, may make the food factor of potentially much less importance.

In answers.com, to the question "What are the factors that affect population growth at a global scale?", food/nutrition is mentioned slightly

Factors that can affect the global fertility rate include scientific and medical advances, health and nutrition, and prosperity and financial security. Religion also plays an important but declining role.

, but the core conclusion is

The long-term, global solution to overpopulation is prosperity. In country after country, it has been found that rising incomes and greater financial security have led to falling fertility rates. In fact, some of the wealthiest countries in the world already have fertility rates well below long-term replacement levels.

It's not the direct relationship between food and fertility. One part of it is that high income, contraception and rights for women enable a culture of leisure where the 20s become an extended adolescence. Lots of single, childless 20-somethings taking their time to settle down and get married = low fertility rates. You're correct about cultural norms not changing easily, and that's precisely why the 60's were a time of such huge social upheaval.

Alas, we do not know as we can not run the experiment with different parameters.

Note: I write nextbigfuture.com.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/agriculture-and-science-hero-norman.html

Opponents of high-yield agriculture "took the numbers for water pollution caused by fertilizer runoff in the United States and applied them to Africa, which is totally fallacious," David Seckler says. "Chemical-fertilizer use in Africa is so tiny you could increase application for decades before causing the environmental side effects we see here. Meanwhile, Africa is ruining its wildlife habitat with slash-and-burn farming, which many commentators romanticize because it is indigenous."

In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." He insisted that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."

Since Ehrlich's dire predictions in 1968, India's population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold.

1997, Privatization and dwarf rice have enabled China to raise rice yields rapidly to about 1.6 tons per acre -- close to the world's best figure of two tons.

In 1997, Lester Brown, the head of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental organization, fears that China may soon turn from an agricultural success story into a nation of shortages.

In 2008, Modern rice grows in 110-140 days, produces 100 seeds per panicle, and yields between 2.4 and 4.0 tons per acre.

By the year 2020 it is believed the world's rice crop will increase by an additional 60 percent. Current dwarf varieties have 15 productive panicles, or seed clusters per stalk (out 25 or so total stalks) that produce about 100 grains (seeds) each. New strains will have fewer, but stronger and thicker, stalks that will yield 200 or more grains each. These new plants are expected to account for most of the increased productivity.

================
Africa is getting wealthier. there is progress being made to lift most people out of extreme poverty by 2020 and further progress beyond that seems likely as Africa and India follow China to reasonable per capita prosperity (as China followed Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and other southeast asian countries.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/technology-and-economic-growth-enter.html
Africa Has Had About 6% Annual GDP Growth and 3% per Capita GDP Growth Since 2001.

In 2009, the economic crisis has hurt growth but much of Africa is heading back to 4-5% growth in 2010 and probably back to 6% growth in 2011 onwards.

====
http://nextbigfuture.com/2006/10/adapting-plants-to-be-survivable-on.html
The same methods for make plants tough enough to grow on the Moon and Mars can be used to make plants that can grow in the desert. Waterproof sand helps conserve 75% of the water used for irrigation. Genetically engineered plants and waterproof sand can transform the deserts of the world and the lives of people who depend on water and food from currently inhospitable land.
====
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/07/project-to-re-engineer-photosynthesis.html
An ambitious project to re-engineer photosynthesis in rice, led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) through a global consortium of scientists, has received a grant of US$11 million over 3 years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As a result of research being conducted by this group, rice plants that can produce 50% more grain using less, fertilizer and less water are a step closer to reality.

===
topsoil solutions

biochar

topsoil, fertilizer and water improvement

Wonder tree
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=594&Ar...

Dennis Garrity, the Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, highlighted some of the centre's most recent research, which is designed to increase maize production in Africa by up to four times by planting trees that act as organic fertilizers.

The congress also emphasized how tree-planting can provide farmers with everything from nuts and fruits to windbreaks, erosion control, and fuel for heating, timber for housing and fertilizer to improve much needed food security.

===
Borlaug led team at the National Academy of science that had three part study that cataloged the diversity of native african crops that could be used for further agricultural productivity

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11879#toc

====

Bottom line: 10+ billion is sustainable based on the technology.

For those who said we should have limited population or should limit population -- how do you propose to implement this in some detail ? It seems like this would take a world war 3 to achieve. Population limitation is a messy business. China did it as a temporary several decade measure, but those limitations are being lifted and were not strictly followed for a while.

Prematurely killing people or reducing population because you fear that it can't be handled is wrong. You are going "Lord of the Flies" mode proposing to fight or kill for feared scarcity when it does not happen. Erlich was wrong in the 60's. Brown was wrong in the 90's and most of the people on this thread are wrong now. Brown at least now admits he was wrong in the 90's.

Advanced nano. Is anyone here proposing killing people? The fact that we may not have a solution does not mean there might not be a problem. There is an old folk tale about a man who owned a donkey. He fed it very little, and it went on carrying heavy loads for him. He fed it less, and it carried on working. So every day he fed his donkey less. His neighbours pointed out that the donkey looked thin, but he said no, the donkey is fine, mind your own business. He fed the donkey less and less and it carried on carrying on. One day it dropped down dead. The man looked puzzled, and said to himself - If my donkey hadn't gone and died on me, I could have fed it nothing at all!

I don't think anyone has proposed such - but I know I've pointed out it seems to be a logical conclusion - given Man's nature.

I asked first. How does anyone who is against current and future population levels propose to address the issue ?

People are lamenting high population. Well population is people. People are lamenting Borlaug's work. So what is the case ? That 4 billion people should not have been born ? now they have been born. So now what ? Population is at nearly 7 billion now.

China implemented the one child policy on itself nationally. Is this something that those who are against population are proposing ? If so how against nations that do not want it ?

Also, I had put out the evidence that feeding the people of the world is being solved and looks like it will continue to not be a problem. the hunger in the world is not a matter of failure of agriculture but of wars and corruption.
I had also put forward the wonder tree as an alternative to fertilizer in many cases.

So, I also do not see where there is a clear case that population increase is heading to a catastrophe.

India's prime minister is proposing 470 GWe of nuclear power in India by 2050.
China is also building to those levels and higher. China is also building to 300 GWe of Hydro power by 2020 and about 400 GWe by 2030. The dams will deepen rivers and enable 10,000 ton barges to go into the interior.

Africa has had 6% GDP growth since 2000 and 3% per capita and is heading back to those levels. By 2050 Africa could be where China is at now or even further ahead.

Genetically engineer a sterilizing food. You can eat, but you can't reproduce...

Are you volunteering to eat this ?

What is the moral case for this approach ?

also, in your plan would you be letting people know that the food has a sterilizing component ? Eating the food is voluntary and people would know that they had the choice of sterilizing or non-sterilizing ? Or you are proposing that only sterilizing food be available ? Everyone can know that is the case but no other food is available from the sources under the control of you and those who agree with you ?

How are non-sterilizing food sources dealt with ? How many do you expect to go along with the plan.

How are you proposing to introduce it and where and over what timeline ?

How do you determine who does not get it so that after introduction this is not the last generation ?

Are you proposing a planned Children of Men (movie) scenario ?

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/

BTW: there is $200 Invitro fertilization in Africa
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25573669/

Are you volunteering to eat this?

I'd be the first.

Eating the food is voluntary

No.

How do you determine who does not get it

Everyone gets it.

Are you proposing a planned Children of Men scenario?

Yes.

So if you were to succeed then all people would be sterilized and there would be no humans in say 2140 ? the benefits are what ?
It seems like a moral abomination.

You obviously would not tell people because very few would agree to do it and it would have the same effect on world population as the Jonestown massacre.

So who else in the anti-population group is with Barrett808 ?

It seems like a moral abomination.

There's nothing immoral about not reproducing, and there's no moral imperative to perpetuate the human species.

"moral abomination"??

There's something *extraordinarily* immoral about the human species wiping out (and polluting to death) thousands of other species, simply because the 7 billion we already have just isn't "enough". That alone --ignoring mass malnutrition or starvation-- is reason enough for humanity to stop and reverse population growth right now.

What's so "moral" about allowing human population growth to continue unabated, destroying ecosystems, and driving thousands of species to extinction? Don't other species have a right to exist too?

Does the world revolve around human beings? Is the world our toilet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization
Compulsory sterilization (or sterilisation) or also called forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. In the first half of the twentieth century, many such programs were instituted in countries around the world, usually as part of eugenics programs intended to prevent the reproduction and multiplication of members of the population considered to be carriers of defective genetic traits. Forced sterilization has been recognized as crime against humanity if the action is part of a widespread or systematic practice by the Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum, which defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_against_humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape and political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion

Attempts or acts of mass sterilization would be considered an act of war.

Yes, the world revolves around human beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights

Reproductive rights are rights relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organisation defines reproductive rights as follows:

"Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence."

Reproductive rights were first established as a subset of human rights at the United Nation's 1968 International Conference on Human Rights. The sixteenth article of the resulting Proclamation of Teheran states, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

Sterilization and genocide
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/documentary/hadamar/sterilization.html

Yes, the world revolves around human beings.

There you have it, folks! :)

It's a tough choice alright; weigh all this against the morality of bringing children into the worst mass extinction in Earth's history.

In the first place, as I've said before, I don't expect Anthropogenic Mass Extinction (AME) to rival the end-Permian event as "the worst mass extinction in Earth's history." And in the second place, events that are transpiring, dire as they may be, are no reason not to have kids. In fact, social meltdown may be a good reason to have as many as you can. It will be groups of brothers & first cousins that have a selective advantage over lone individuals in the near future. In a time of increasing mortality having many children may ensure that at least a few survive to pass on your genes.

I don't expect Anthropogenic Mass Extinction (AME) to rival the end-Permian event as "the worst mass extinction in Earth's history."

Would you accept "one of the worst mass extinctions" instead?

In a time of increasing mortality having many children may ensure that at least a few survive to pass on your genes.

I couldn't care less about my genes. I just don't want to watch my children starve to death. Since I don't (and won't) have any, no worries!

Hello Advancednano,

Please read this:

http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/future_of_humanity.html
--------------------
The Future of Humanity: a Lecture by Isaac Asimov

..No species in the history of the Earth has ever voluntarily lowered it's birth rate in order to control it's population, because they didn't know what birth rate was, how to control it, that there was a population problem. We're the only species in the history of the Earth.

There is no need to decide whether to stop the population increase or not. There is no need to decide whether the population will be lowered or not. It will, it will!

The only thing mankind has to decide is whether to let it be done in the old inhumane method that nature has always used, or to invent a new humane method of our own. That is the only choice that faces us; whether to lower the population catastrophically by a raised death rate, or to lower it humanely by a lowered birth rate. And we all make the choice. And I have a suspicion that we won't make the right choice, which is the tragedy of humanity right now.

..I mean, people think of that [birth control], instantly they think of race suicide. "Oh my goodness! We're all going to vanish!" We will have billions of people on Earth, more than we have ever had prior to this century! And through all of history before, we've had lower populations. No one worried that we'd vanish from the Earth!! And besides, if it looked as though we were going to vanish from the Earth, all that has to happen is the word goes out: have babies. And you'd be surprised how fast we can make it up.

[group laughs]
------------------
We are more likely to go extinct from acting Stupid + wrecking the ecosystem beyond our ability to adapt, than from acting Smartly + Optimal Overshoot Decline.

I asked first. How does anyone who is against current and future population levels propose to address the issue ?

The best "cure" for overpopulation is reproductive and voting rights for women. A close second would be a literate and educated populace. Nothing inherently communist or coercive about that.

What is the delta for your plan versus what is happening now ?

We are at 7 billion and likely going to 9-10 billion and then based on current projections leveling out.

There is already work to spread literacy and education and womens rights.
So what is the difference in terms of effort and in terms of projected results ?

2040 2050 2100 ?

also, would not the furthered enhanced productivity rice, casava, grains etc... be needed anyway ? The genetically engineered crops, the fish farming expansion etc...

There is already work to spread literacy and education and womens rights.

Yes, but not nearly enough --especially in countries with political/religious ideologies hostile to the very idea of educating and empowering women. I wish I had a good solution to *that* problem, but I don't. I was just pointing out that, given some political will and courage, brute force & coercion is not always the only option.

So, I also do not see where there is a clear case that population increase is heading to a catastrophe.

And what exactly are the parameters you'll be willing to accept so a case can be attempted to be developed to match your biases or to establish that, given your critera, no case can be made?

You do not have to use my criteria.
Present evidence and the logical flow.

No need to go into history unless you desire to do so. We are already at 6.8 billion and have 130-140 million births per year.

Distribution of population and birth rates are as they are this year.

FYI: Something that I will be quoting in terms of measures to avoid/mitigate collapse scenarios.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/sorry-collapsitarians-doomers-and.html

My basic case is that things have been getting better in general and food security is improving. Oil is an issue in terms of oil probably not getting cheap again. But that new supply, enhanced recovery, energy efficiency, more natural gas, nuclear and biofuels will allow for an orderly transition. I believe that oil could drop in half and agriculture issues and starvation would not be the result.

You sure you want to stick with your prediction of Africa looking like China by 2050 (instead of a total hell hole, which is the trendline?)

I am projecting Africa 2050 to look like china 2010.

Africa's total population is about 1 billion. The ten largest countries have about two thirds of the population.


Country        2009   2010  2011  2012  2013  2014   Population  
Nigeria      1,108 1,200 1,264 1,334 1,405 1,480    155 million 
Ethiopia       427   442   459   475   500   538     85 million 
Egypt        2,456 2,610 2,860 3,130 3,337 3,634     81 million 
Congo          173   182   194   205   220   246     66 million
South Africa  4,943 5,014 5,207 5,456 5,744 6,031     49 million
Tanzania        538   568   600   643   690   740     44 million
Sudan         1,334 1,511 1,690 1,847 2,026 2,160     42 million
Kenya           829   993 1,148 1,256 1,356 1,474     40 million
Algeria       3,640 4,064 4,357 4,630 4,893 5,073     35 million
Morocco       2,655 2,802 2,991 3,211 3,449 3,689     32 million

Africa 1.28 trillion GDP nominal in 2009
Africa 1.5 trillion GDP nominal in 2008
Africa population 1 billion 2010

PPP per capita
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
China 6,379 6,786 7,413 8,202 9,089 10,044

nominal GDP per capita
China 3,622 3,915 4,301 4,756 5,260 5,913

Africa 3% GDP per capita improvement over 40 years
24 years double per capita. next 16 years another 60%. so 3.2 times 2009 level.
3.2 * $1300 per capita = $4160 per capita. (about China 2010/2011)

Africa 6% GDP per year improvement over 40 years
I expect Africa population to slow the pace of population growth.

The trendline has not been total hellhole.
Look at the trends since 1994.

Yep-the place is a paradise on the rise. Looking at the life expectancy rankings for 224 countries, Afghanistan is the only one in the bottom 34 (31-55 yrs) NOT in Africa. Africa isn't even up to the third world level e.g. Cambodia

My basic case is that things have been getting better in general and food security is improving.

Whether or not you agree with a Die-off/Olduvai scenario (obviously not), how is it that mass extinctions, GW, and trash gyres the size of the U.S. are indicative of things "getting better in general"? We're all born anthropocentric to some extent, but still...

Hello Advancednano,

Your Quote: "I believe that oil could drop in half and agriculture issues and starvation would not be the result.

Respectfully disagree. Global oil production has merely plateaued roughly [2003-today] with rich countries now refusing to provide sufficient cash to UN FAO, WFP, and other orgs. Feel free to google lots more info besides my links upthread.

If oil flowrate decreases by half you could easily see 70% of US on Food Stamps, or much, much worse. According to Duncan's Olduvai Re-equalizing plus WT's ELM: much of the rest of the world will be even worse off.

The global supply chains for I-NPKS and food are very fragile. Kjell's EB article yesterday estimates that 40% of our oil goes for food alone. Also, I have much earlier posted a weblink where I-NPKS at a African seaport can multiply the cost 6X when being moved inland and up in elevation. As FFs deplete: expect this to go to 8X, 10X,...

http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSLU512532._CH_.2400

Development aid from the world's biggest donors rose to a record level in 2008 but they will need to make substantial efforts to meet targets for 2010 because of the economic crisis, the OECD said on Monday.

The 22 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development gave $119.8 billion in development assistance - which includes funding for programmes to boost education, healthcare and economic growth - in 2008. That represented a rise of 10.2 percent from 2007 in real terms.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/maximizing-economic-growth-and-aid-to.html
USD 119.8 billion represents 0.30% of members’ combined gross national income (GNI). Private aid (About $40 billion) and voluntary transfers by people working in the United States (and developed countries) to family living abroad was about $122 billion. The official aid, private aid and transfers to family totalled to about 0.7% of GNI.

China could have an economy of 90 trillion RMB by 2025 and if the exchange rate was 4 RMB to 1 US dollar would be $22.5 trillion. Per capita GDP would be $15,000 per person. China would likely be increasing international aid as its own economy continued to improve. 0.7% of $18 trillion [the increase in GDP from now] is $126 billion.

==
The best hope for the poor of Africa and the rest of the world is for the countries to adopt pro-growth policies and follow China into becoming developed countries. 0.7% of GNI is a reasonable expectation of what they will get from the rest of the world.

Toto ,I tend to agree with your estimate of the difficulty of obtaining food in this country in the event of a major reduction in the supply of oil -some sort of welfare program would be the only possible solution.

I would add however that this inability to buy food will have a lot more to do with unemployment than with actual shortages of food.

The poor of most countries are in a hopeless situation and the rich have only one real hope-emigration.There are now too many small arms in the world for a truck load of groceries to make it from a dock to a rich man's fortified compound.

I try to make my site the doomiest on the web: Desdemona Despair.

Hope to see you there!

You should have something similar to TOD "comments" on your blog, Barrett808. Your site isn't as single focus as here and would be of interest to a broader group of posters.

Hmm, that's a neat idea. Would you like to write a guest comment? That would be cool. Please make it as doomy as possible!

Great site Barrett but I cannot read most of the links on your site. They are very pale blue on black. The only way I can know what is written on most of them is to mouse over them and have them pop up in a highlighted block. This is extremely frustating. But great site anyway.

Ron P.

Thanks for visiting and for the feedback! People keep telling me the links are too dark, and I keep putting it off. Must. Fix. Tonight.

Okay, I brightened up the Label Cloud and the visited links. Hopefully, it's somewhat more user-friendly now!

Barrett808 is proposing forced sterilization on every human. How does that sit with you, the man and his donkey ?

Works for me!

Hardly an optimal solution, but it sure beats massive Die-Off and the accompanying anarchy. Of course, I'd prefer better choices.

Are the more moderate critics of Borlaug separating themselves from these four who are pro-mass sterilization of all humanity and therefore genocide of humanity ?

HARM: massive but partial die-off + anarchy better than attempt at forced (99.999%) involuntary homo sapien species suicide ? No anarchy with involuntary sterlization program ?

Are the more moderate critics of Borlaug separating themselves from these four who are pro-mass sterilization of all humanity and therefore genocide of humanity ?

Technically speaking, mass sterilization is not "genocide", as all you are doing is preventing nonexistent humans from being born. As I said before, I find this 'solution' a tad extreme. I would prefer that the great mass of humanity wake up and voluntarily cooperate to reduce world population now, while there's still (possibly) time to avoid a catastrophic die-off. I am not very sanguine about the odds of that happening though.

Unfortunately, if and when the earth's econsystems degrade to the point where mass die-offs become inevitable, I can guarantee that most world governments will begin instituting some form of 1-child or "no-child" policies, and the enforcement methods they will use are not likely to be gentle.

Let's go with "one and done" forced sterilization.
This is win/win for everybody, especially the children.

Borlaug deserves appreciation for his accomplishment, which involved original thought and scientific experimentation. That there was an unintended consequence of the Green Revolution is no different from any other productivity enhancing technology.

Having adequate fertilizer would go a long way to reducing world hunger at present population levels. Organic farming methods existed for millennia before chemical fertilizers arrived in the 18th century. One only needs to read “The Conquest of Gaul” by Julius Caesar to hear about barbarian tribes warring over fertile soil with the footnotes telling of the low yield potential of the soils. We also have the Cullars Rotation experiments, conducted for over 100 years at Auburn University, Alabama, USA that show what happens to continuously cropped soil. And then there is the recent experience of China, where chemical fertilizes dramatically increased yields over the organic methods.

There is also the issue of land ownership by the wealthy in poor countries, which goes back to ancient times and was well noted in Rome at the time of Julius Caesar, who wanted to grant land to his veterans at a time when the elite owned practically all of the land.

Henry George is worth reading for his views on community or government ownership of land, which would be leased to users, with rent funding the government. Although George thought and wrote in agrarian terms without foreseeing the Second Industrial Revolution, his ideas still have merit, especially in developing countries. Today’s equivalent of land rent would perhaps could be a tax on non-renewable resources.

There has been a historical tendency for land values to increase exponentially, leveraged in comparison to population and economic growth. For example, rural land outside the small town where I live sold for $1/acre in 1900 and now sells for $10,000 to $25,000/acre because it has value for subdivisions. Rural farm land in the US is valued around $2100/acre, including farm buildings. In 1900 this land could have been purchased for a few dollars per acre, while inflation since then is a factor of about 20.

One under addressed problem is that zinc deficiency affects 50% of cereal crop soils world wide and that this is causing sever nutritional deficiencies in humans and livestock.

The Fertilizer Institute website had lots of good reading:
http://www.tfi.org/

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5796#comment-543391
Now on a different site I remember hearing this:

small scale nitrogen production using sharp sand mixed with titanium dioxide as a catalyst.

Alas, the 1st link spelling it out is here and not much positive info backing it up.

So anyone know something new/better?

(http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/OG/OGv54n04.pdf says "Some zeolites selectively absorb nitrogen" so if there is a way to cause Nitrogen to be transfered from Air to Water other than the energetic spark-gap in saturated water vapor air to produce Nitric Acid there may still be a Techno-fix this time 'round for the Nitrogen Fertilizer problem)

The obvious solution is to ?selectively breed/genetically modify? crops such as cereals so that they could host the same or similar nitrogen-fixing bacteria that legumes do. Must be a very difficult proposition since it hasn't been done yet?

Ahh, but now you are getting to the heart of why 'greens' don't like Norm - GMOs.

The food crops we now have are vetted in the sense man has eaten them for years. The GMO's don't get that vetting.

Examples of concerns over GMO would be the recall of StarLink contaminated corn products or the GMO potatoes-fed-to-rats issue.

Are you condemning Mr Borlaug on the basis of GMO crops? Because if you are, you're way off base. And I can see no problem in using well-tested cereal crops which may be genetically modified to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria on their roots. To reject such an advance and demand mass starvation as the alternative is IMHO grotesque, but that may just be me. Perhaps I fail to comprehend the efficacy of mass starvation, as you prefer?

And I can see no problem in using well-tested cereal crops which may be genetically modified to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria on their roots.

Define "well tested". Once you've defined that then a discussion can occur VS your present path of making inflamatory claims.

Perhaps I fail to comprehend the efficacy of mass starvation, as you prefer?

Are you just LOOKING for a fight?
I'm sure a verbal fight can be arranged - a fine way to 'memorialize' Mr. Borlaug - but hey this site is driven by the users.

You are correct, you have failed. Your failure is in understanding, as you are making claims that are not there. But do go ahead - show the statement that backs your claim.

And do come back and respond to the original request - the use of Titanium Dioxide to somehow add Nitrogen to water.

Well-tested would be a crop which is accepted for growth and sale in the EU or Canada, for example just a quick google turns up many such as GLIP: EU scientific leadership on nitrogen-fixing crops 14 December 2006. GRAIN LEGUMES project provides the EU with scientific leadership on nitrogen-fixing crops

Press release by GLIP consortium, Brussels, 14 December 2006.

Legume crops are essential for environment-friendly and sustainable agriculture, but are under-used in the EU: we are harnessing genomics to legume biology to redress the balance” say GLIP consortium members.

....

Genomic platforms to understand plant physiology

GLIP has enabled the EU to provide leadership in legume plant models (especially with Medicago truncatula, a wild lucerne) and crop species (especially pea): it provides modern high-throughput tools and intellectual energy to favour efficient progress in genetics and breeding for EU crop legumes.

To date, the genome sequencing of Medicago truncatula is nearly complete, and functional genomic platforms have been developed for both the legume model M. truncatula (JIC Genome Lab, UK and INRA Dijon, France) and the pea crop (URGV Evry, France and INRA Dijon, France). These mutant collections help to throw light on the function of individual genes. Geneticists and physiologists in GLIP use these platforms to study key genes involved in disease resistance, plant architecture or seed composition.

So, they haven't YET learned to make cereals into legumes, but that's no doubt coming soon to a field near you. At 25% reduction in total energy input to a crop cycle, it's simply going to happen.

(I may get back to you on that Titanium thing you reference if I every discover the relevance)

Well-tested would be a crop which is accepted for growth and sale in the EU or Canada

Accepted for sale as "well-tested"? With that as a bar - where's the thalimide for morning sickness? Where's the Vioxx? How about Raptiva?

Your trust in Corporations and Governments is refreshingly nieve, like a 5 year old's trust and wonder about the world.

I may get back to you on that Titanium thing you reference if I every discover the relevance

Go find your local native English speaker so they can explain it to you. Ask them to speak slowly so you obtain understanding.

So in your opinion there can NEVER be anything such as a sufficiently tested modification of a cereal crop to enable nitrogen fixing, eh? Just can't be done, because LOOK AT THALIDOMIDE. You remind me of a magician using missdirection to try to mystify the rubes.

I note how your original accusation you did not back up.

But, to show that I am a far better person than you, I shall answer yet another attempt to put words in my mouth.

So in your opinion there can NEVER be anything such as a sufficiently tested modification of a cereal crop to enable nitrogen fixing, eh?

A nitrogen fixing cereal crop can be sufficiently tested.

You established a bar of 'if its for sale, its tested enough'. Not only did I debunk that position, I so totally trashed it. You are a brave soul to show your face again.

Yet, not brave enough to back up your past claim with evidence.

You remind me of a magician using missdirection to try to mystify the rubes.

Better than making up positions, then responding to the fever-induced delusions of made up positions.

"And then there is the recent experience of China, where chemical fertilizes dramatically increased yields over the organic methods."
-yep quantity over quality

World food aid at 20-year low, 1 billion hungry

LONDON (Reuters) – Food aid is at a 20-year low despite the number of critically hungry people soaring this year to its highest level ever, the United Nations relief agency said...

More links on how Nature bats last:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/09/29/world/international-uk-eastafr...
-----------------------
East Africa Drought In Fifth Year, Millions Hungry
-----------------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8256031.stm
-------------------
The World Food Programme (WFP) is closing 12 feeding centers for mothers and children in Somalia.

The WFP says it has simply run out of money and now has to make cuts.

One child in five in Somalia is acutely malnourished, the UN says.
--------------------
The mothers cry while their babies die...

...while the banksters pick out their latest yachts and private jets. Malthus? Hell no! Shhh, let's keep it a secret, but let's continue to BAU-ram Adam Smith's hand down their throat in lieu of food. 35 million 'Murkans on food stamps [12% of US pop]--that is just good business versus warning them about Overshoot & Collapse through top-down Peak Outreach. Pampers{Tm} are Pure Profits, Baby!

IMO, the point of this discussion would be to outline the pros and cons of the Borlaug revolution, in detail, so we can learn from them and go forward. Gail's comment upthread is the most relevant to me. How do we now extricate ourselves from the aquifer depletion/topsoil erosion/small farmer disaster story we have created?

But first, what have we created?

The post mentions but does not detail the destructive results of the Borlaug revolution. When we measure everything by the yield, we make ourselves blind to the other important characteristics of a crop. Crop effects on water, biodiversity, nutrition/health of the consumer, CO2 emissions and their eventual feedback effect on the ability to grow crops (when climate chaos hits), breeding super-pests and super-weeds, topsoil erosion, financial ruin, farmer suicides - we can't simply brush all those aside as being entirely unpredictable.

In his book, "In the Absence of the Sacred", Jerry Mander argues that when you look at the innate characteristics of a technology, you can reasonably well guess its effect on society. A technology that is centralized, that requires large loans from banks, inputs from halfway around the world, an ongoing updating - cannot possibly make a poor Indian, or Mexican farmer more "self-sufficient". By definition, it will destroy him and destabilize his society. If in addition to this, this technology fails to solve the problem of phosphates, water, atmospheric CO2 and ocean health, sorry ya'll, it's got to be wrong.

I think Borlaug was a scientist with blinders on. Reductionism at its best.

I'll bet you've never farmed in your life.

Here's a take on farming in the Third World by someone who works for Oxfam. It's a letter from a man living in Tanzania to his friend in the UK who sent him the Transition Handbook. Having lived (2 months) in Tanzania in 1986, I am amazed by how much of what he describes sounds familiar. (http://transitionculture.org/2009/09/29/a-letter-from-a-friend-in-africa/)

@ lengould:
Having personally seen and held Tanzanian children suffering from marasmus and malnutrition, I actually do have sympathy for a scientist who imagines their bellies filled with affordable calories. What I don't see is a way forward in the Borlaug vein. That is because I don't believe that more of the same genetic modification and fertilizer/pesticide paradigm can lead anywhere but to more water, soil and small farm depletion.

You appear to disagree and it appears you have personal experience, so please share what it is you think we aren't understanding. Your comments sometimes come across as though you are more interested in belittling than in informing.

I simply do not agree that Borlaug's green revolution is to blame for all those problems you and others describe. IMHO its caused by greedy elites locally and foreign, who perpetuate systems of exploitation.

And I have a deep distaste for purveyors of unproven theoretical solutions, often to non-existent problems. I'm trying to work "ivory tower" and "artsy fartsy" in there somehow as well, with no success.

Hello TODers,

Great keypost for discussion!

Full disclosure: I have zero offspring and I am 54.

Malthus' writings have been available for 200 years. Asimov, and many other Overpopulation writers have been warning that continued population growth will lead to disaster. IMO, it is blatantly obvious, yet our global leadership, at every level, including down to the tribe and family level, has been more concerned with exploitation versus making Malthus' concepts the Global Bible, the Global Koran, and so on.

Sad to say, but I bet that global recognition of Michael Jackson's name, or Tiger Woods, or Britney Spears, totally dwarfs those that were apprised of Malthus' commonsense writing. Our DNA compels us to overpopulate at the base mental level [primitive brain], but we have had the mental powers to not procreate excessively for a very long time--if only we individually, then culturally decided to use it [higher brain function].

Jay Hanson Thermo/Gene Dieoff Quote: "Trapped in obsolete belief systems, we will have no understanding of why everything fails. The best the poor can hope for is a quick and painless death."

The WFP has been in Nepal for 45 years, yet did nothing to spread Malthus, now the problems are even worse as the pop. grew even larger. I haven't done the research, but they, and other food and agricultural orgs, may have been in other countries for even longer.

For all these wasted years: it would have been so simple to show True Compassion by handing out a properly translated Malthus-booklet [with easy to understand graphics or pictures], with the food and/or fertilizer & seeds. Then, have mandatory classes, in exchange for continued, but slowly decreasing supplies [to keep the cultural change pressure high], whereby the native people discuss this until it is inculcated throughout their society. Something simple: ask them to prevent a bottle of grape juice from turning into wine, then expand it to our Little Blue Marble. Lather, rinse, repeat: everywhere across the globe.

Make condoms and other birth limiting technology free for the asking everywhere on the planet. This should have been done long ago. IMO, once the WFP enters a country: it should broadcast far and wide that continued aid levels is dependent on how quickly they can reduce the birthrate, plus that they can expect the emergency aid to yearly decrease [not increase]. No progress--No aid. Nature bats last, and her Grim Reaper lacks any compassion.

Where is it written that we have to choose Stupid, when it is so very easy to choose Smarter?

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Nature bats last, and her Grim Reaper lacks any compassion.

It likewise lacks any malice.

Where is it written that we have to choose Stupid, when it is so very easy to choose Smarter?

Everywhere, apparently. From the catholic church condemning condoms/family planning on pain of eternal damnation, to the US government withdrawing all assistance from every NGO who includes any mention of same in their literature. Multinational oil companies negotiating sweetheart deals for countries resources with payoffs only to the few local elites. The list just goes on and on....

Saint or Sinner? Why do humans always have to assign blame to something that is better assigned to the system at large? I see autocatalytic processes reaches their end points everywhere I look. And it is the ignorance of autocatalytic processes that has become our downfall. This guy was an acolyte worshipping at the altar of technology and growth, with little big picture thinking or self-awareness, or courage to step outside the mainstream. And he was probably also a victim of what those in the business world are calling "IBG."

While Borlaug became ever more optimistic about further increasing crop yields, he did occasionally sound Malthusian style warnings about population growth, particularly in the 1970's - "future food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before".

IBG is "I'll be gone." I get my Congressional Medal and my easy lifestyle, and who cares about the next generation?

This is a sad hoax, for industrial man no longer eats potatoes made from solar energy; now he eats potatoes partly made of oil.

Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society, 1971

According to the Odums, the myth of American agriculture was predicated on a common belief that increasing crop yields were the result of more efficient use of solar energy. This belief, the basis of the Green Revolution, claimed fertilizers and pesticides had allowed any natural disasters and nutrient bottlenecks to be overcome, while hybrid seeds allowed for increasingly efficient use of all the solar energy received in a field. Both Odums referred to these common conceptions as "energetic fallacies" for, like perpetual motion, they seemed to imply that something could be constantly increased without any compensatory costs. The only way to combat these misconceptions involved detailing all the agroecosystem's energy inputs and outputs. . . .

Howard's "Ten Energy Commandments" to replace anthropocentric religion, reflected the growing environmental belief in "the rights of nature." The final commandment declared "Thou must find in thy religion, stability over growth, organization over competition, diversity over uniformity, system over self, and survival process over individual peace." . . .

Ecologists were the first to pull back from some of the more unorthodox speculations of the Odums. These speculations were a natural outgrowth of the Odums' type of ecosystem analysis which constantly spoke of natural ecosystems having "strategies" and "goals" which were achieved via "feedback loops" in the system. If natural ecosystems did indeed have such strategies then it made perfect sense for human ecosystems to be brought into accord with similar goals; especially agriculture which was perceived by the Odums as an ecosystem in which all natural feedback loops and controls had been eliminated in order to maximize productivity.

http://training.fws.gov/History/Articles/PotatoesMadeOfOil.html
From a paper by Mark Madison

I gotta say, that is a fairly suspicious-looking map. The "degraded" yellow category passes right up to Duluth, MN. I drove through there last month and there isn't a farm within a 100 miles of it. And is that red/very degraded over all of Southern Ontario? And only Seatle and the state of Florida have stable soils in the US? Really! Perhaps it's just approximate guessing, eh?

If you don't like that map, there are plenty of others:

http://www.isric.org/UK/About+ISRIC/Projects/Track+Record/GLASOD.htm

http://www.fao.org/nr/lada/index.php?/Land-Degradation-Maps.html

GLADA reports [pdf]:

Land degradation is cumulative – this is the global issue. The 1991 GLASOD assessment indicated that 15 per cent of the land surface was degraded; the present assessment identifies 24 per cent of land as degrading but the areas hardly overlap, which means that new areas are being affected. Some areas of historical land degradation have been so degraded that they are now stable - at stubbornly low levels of productivity.

Analysis of 23-year GIMMS NDVI data reveals a declining trend across some 24 per cent of the global land area. Spatial patterns and temporal trends of NDVI and rain-use efficiency are analysed for the period 1981-2003 at 8km resolution. Degrading areas are mainly in Africa south of the Equator, SE Asia and S China, N-Central Australia, the Pampas, and swaths of boreal forest in Siberian and N America.

Almost one fifth of degrading land is cropland - more than 20 per cent of all cultivated areas; 23 per cent is broadleaved forest, 19 per cent needle-leaved forests, 20-25 per cent rangeland. Cropland occupies only 12 per cent of the land area and forest only 28 per cent, so degradation is over-represented in both cropland and in forest globally.

23 per cent ..(of degrading land).. is broadleaved forest.

definition please.

Over time Borlaug became convinced that we could feed the world adequately (given projections that global population will eventually plateau at around 9.5 billion people), as long as the methods ...

Where did this projection of population plateau come from? If Borlaug was his own (amateur) demographer, then he is somewhat culpable. But if the projection is the work of others, and those others were in some legitimate sense socially authoritative, then I see little to fault in him. His work was good plant science research. He did live among the people that he was intending to help. If he relied on others who were authoritative on the issue of world population growth, his fault is that he did not question authority enough. This is a VERY common fault in us all, and particularly among common scientists. Why single him out for opprobrium? Pity him for spending his life working on an unsolvable problem, because he was misinformed, and be done with it.

My recollection of that time was that there were many authorities making optimistic projections. I didn't pay much attention at the time, because I was involved in a totally different kind of research and I had no inclination to abort that research and try to establish a reputation in demography. (I was doing particle physics, which, to me, was 'hard science' and far more interesting than the 'soft science' of demography.)

So where do you get your projections that 9.5 b is incorrect? Seems you should have a greater requirement to provide backup than someone as effective as Mr. Borlaug. He provided the 40 year breather to correct the real problems (social and economic inequality), what did YOU do with that time?

He provided the 40 year breather to correct the real problems (social and economic inequality), what did YOU do with that time?

Wow. You really *ARE* iching for a verbal fight.

But as you said:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/5806#comment-545832

I'd prefer to leave the onus on the claimants of extraordinary relationships. I have useful things to do with resources.

I'd ask you to PROVE your incredible claims above....lets see if you are true to your own words.

his fault is that he did not question authority enough

I still fail to see in what way Borlaug can be "faulted" for anything he did. Its no different than faulting that philosopher in Galilee 2000+ years ago for (reportedly) providing loaves and fishes. As I've been saying repeatedly above, the fault is OURS for burying our heads in particle physics when we should have been working full time to develop an equitable and sustainable economic system for ALL people worldwide while Borlaug was providing the loaves and fishes he did.

eric blair:

I'd ask you to PROVE your incredible claims

It is very difficult to address such a poorly presented challenge. As near as I can tell, the only "claim" I've made above is that "providing excess food to people does not (inherintly and automatically) cause their population to increase". The proof, already provided, is that here in Canada we have so much excess food we can burn it in our vehicles and still export huge amounts to other countries, yet our "natural rate of increase" is negative, at 1.5 births per woman, well below replacement.

Population growth is economics and politics, not agriculture, so stop the unfounded attacks on Mr. Borlaug, who did more for the world than any thousand particle physicists.

It is very difficult to address such a poorly presented challenge. As near as I can tell, the only "claim" I've made above is that "providing excess food to people does not (inherintly and automatically) cause their population to increase".

Do visit the local English as second language program at your local educational facility.

You have once again made up a quote. Your actual quote is:
"He provided the 40 year breather to correct the real problems"

You made the claim. Back it up with actual proof and stop wasting the readers time with questions you claimed were asked with answers you claim are correct.

I got that quote from the initial posting that started this discussion. I was questioning whether or not Borlaug had anything to do with creating that estimate. My recollection is that several so-called authorities were making such estimates at about the time of Borlaug's major advances. I really don't know where the projections came from. Maybe they were all the work of the Vatican. Paul Erlich was respected, but ignored, I believe. With that as the context, I hold that Borlaug should not be criticized for his work. On the other hand, if he were the actual source of the leveling off projections, he is, IMHO, more culpable.

The whole thrust of this discussion is opinion, not fact. IMHO, most of the opinion is hindsite devoid of awareness of the context of his time.

Of course, moral judgments ought not to be dependent on the situation. They should be derived from universal principles of right and wrong. But that is a serious problem with moral judgments, the number of universal principles of r&w that are universally agreed upon is, IMHO, vanishingly small. Their universality is - not so much.

UN population projections (released every year) for 2050 show a plateau around 9.5 billion people - this number seems to be the most commonly cited - if you can find a "better" one, feel free to provide some references to it.

As for singling Borlaug out for opprobrium, I don't believe i took a stand in the article - he helped feed a lot of people, but his solution has a lot of drawbacks.

how things work out in future remains to be seen.

Of course Borlaug is neither saint nor sinner. He differs only in degree from all others who have built up our industrial society. James Watt, Einstein, Newton? Who's innocent?

Clearly though, monoculture is perhaps the most disastrous offshoot of the industrial age, and is where the biggest reversal is going to be necessary, not simply a reversal though, else we'll have an even greater disaster.

No, neither saint nor sinner. Well meaning possibly, but profoundly misguided certainly. That's us meddlesome apes all over. What's new!

How about a poll to see where TOD readers stand on the issue of timing:

Approximately when will modern civilization start to collapse with a significant percent (perhaps 20% or more) of world population dying as a result?

A. Within 10 years
B. Between 10 and 20 years from present
C. Between 20 and 50 years from present
D. Between 50 and 100 years from present
E. More than 100 years from present

Will the conditions leading toward collapse trigger a catastrophic world war that far surpasses WWI and WWII?

A. Yes
B. No

F. Already started.

B. No. Humans will lose the capacity for world war almost immediately, if we haven't already.

Additional question:

Assuming there is a collapse of civilization, how long will the die-off phase of the collapse likely take?

A. Less than 5 years
B. 5 to 10 years
C. 10 to 20 years
D. 20 to 50 years
E. More than 50 years

E over 100 years >> not collapsing, will not collapse and E no die off

I vote for E and E too.

E without a push of war.

There will be a total collapse, then undershoot, and then a slow rise to the level of long term survival rate. The collapse will most likely come sudden with chaos almost everywhere. I believe B is the most likely and C the next most likely.

Ron P.

..and then a slow rise to the level of long term survival rate.

..and then a period of oscillation for several generations with relict populations going extinct one by one due to genetic & demographic stochasticity until with the extinction of the final isolated population Homo sapiens comes to an end. I find this scenario much more likely, based on everything known regarding population biology, than a limited recovery to the vicinity of a much reduced carrying capacity. To my mind, carrying capacity will be so thoroughly degraded that relict populations will be unable to attain sufficient numbers to avoid Allee effects.

In reply to your first question above:

A. The collapse has already started. And as to another world war, not likely but there is just no way of predicting what crazy politicians will do.

Ron P.

Ironic, perhaps, that it was cancer that finally got him. Very fractal.

The only reason Borlaug's legacy is at all debatable is that we aren't seriously into the dieoff yet. In another 200 years, if there's anyone left to debate it, he'll probably be seen as the patron saint of unintended consequences.

We humans have a very dysfunctional relationship with time and death. There was no a priori reason (aside from homo not being very sapiens) that a population of 50-100 million humans could not have inhabited the earth for millions of years without a mass extinction of other species or serious resource limitations.

Thus, even if you ignore the destruction of other species - a large thing to ignore - the capability probably existed to have trillions upon trillions of human lives lived in a quality environment, in parallel with the many other interesting species lines which have survived.

Those trillions have been put at grave existential risk by our ability to rationalize breeding like bacteria. And we do both very well - breeding and rationalizing.

Those trillions of humans - and indeed trillions of other species' lives - are the casualties. They are unreal to us, when they should be the overriding consideration to any non-sociopathic member of a sane species. We probably trade a million lost future lives for each single life lived now in overshoot in "real" time, and count ourselves clever for so doing.

Borlaug's error - and it was a grave one - is the self-fulfilling fetish that the future is less real than the now.

Commenting late, I realize which posters will violently disagree, but I want this said. I hold no ill will towards Borlaug, but he played a large role in laying waste a functional world, and should have been - was - smart enough to know better.

We humans have a very dysfunctional relationship with time and death.

So who should have not been born in order to hold species H Sapeins to a maximum of 50 to 100 million? Yourself for instance? (No of course not, you're among the enlightened).

Certainly I shouldn't have been. If it was within my power to make that swap, I'd do so gladly. Since it isn't, I've done my best to remediate the ongoing harm.

And your withering sarcasm is noted, though I didn't claim enlightenment.

Two links posted recently during a discussion at debunkers.org. I read the interesting Atlantic article when it was published. Borlaug was concerned about population and suffering. The later Ronald Bailey essay from Reason, referenced above, claimed a chamge in Borlaug's perspective but may have benn influenced by Bailey's usual cornucopian bias.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Two decade old links. 1. Atlantic Momthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/borlaug/borlaug.htm
2. Ronald Bailey interview:
http://www.reason.com:80/news/show/27665.html

The "green revolution" was a tool --

It could have been used, together with other tools (contraception) to enhance life.

It was instead used to enhance profit while very stridently claiming a humanitarian purpose. Very confusing.

The number of people suffering from hunger reached one billion this year, and many farmers in the world’s poorest areas still don’t have access to the tools and knowledge they need to grow enough food to feed themselves and their families. Throughout his career, Norman Borlaug championed the cause of smallholder farmers in the poorest parts of the world to get access to the tools they needed to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. Plant science has an important part to play in providing a sustainable agriculture for a growing global population. Plant biotechnology can do more than help farmers grow more on less land - it reduces the need for natural resources like land and water. Drought- and flood- tolerant plants are being developed through plant biotechnology – these developments can contribute towards ensuring global food security for the future, as we face the threats posed by climate change. There is no single solution however, and farmers need access to the knowledge and tools and inputs they need to farm sustainably. We should focus on giving farmers the necessary tools and knowledge they need to farm sustainably, and access to essential resources. This can be achieved by recognising the contribution Dr. Borlaug’s work has made not only to the advancement of science in agriculture, but also to the livelihoods for millions of people.

The problem of people not being able to eat has largely being due to inequality of distribution, not lack of available food.
This was the case for the irish famine, ethiopia, etc. During these famines, food was still being sold to other countries.

With 15+ years of GM crops we have yet to see any real gains. How many times do we hear about "golden rice"? it's been launched how many times now? The idea that you can improve the nutritional content with new patented plants is a red herring, it's access to food which is the problem.

Farmers in America were using hoes on their cotton crops for the first time in 40 years due to the resistance of pigweed to herbicides http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/aug/09/the-perfect-weed/
Are these the tools to offer? how "peak oil proof" are inputs such as these i wonder...

I would highly recommend http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/frontpage as an informative look into the worlds food system, the parts about food aid as a foreign policy tool are quite interesting.

"inputs they need to farm sustainably"
-A true sustainable farm needs little or no inputs, and despite the sometimes condescending claims from over developed countries, Small Farmers are doing quite well in producing food, with innovative, appropriate techniques and tools.

I came upon this discussion late and started a commentary on topic, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought a question would be more in order:

The Oil Drum: Saint or Sinner? Is it a well-meaning forum for informing and discussing critical energy issues, or is it just a patsy for the energy industry, diverting people's attentions away from meaningful action and into endless discussions on-line?