dem belly full eh:
The great population scare is mainly notable for what didn't happen: widespread deaths from famine. In the 1960s, when Erhlich penned his eloquent alert, about one out of every ten nations was having a famine at least once a decade. By the 1990s, just one country out of the two-hundred in the world had a famine. Global population did about double from 1960 to 1998, but food production tripled over the same period in both rich and poor nations. Far from us seeing increasing food shortages, food prices have fallen by nearly half over the past two decades. ...William Easterly/MIT/delanceyplace 07.Nov.07
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Something else in there, I don't know what exactly, maybe the world's on fire?
Maybe all that lack of famine is good but still somehow everything's not okay. Maybe the world's not on fire. Maybe we haven't learned how to metabolize virtually everything but granite and sand, yet. Maybe this giant barnyard's been allowed to "breed out" so the invisible farmers can pick and choose which animals their swinish little ark will carry. Docile, dumb, obedient, basically good-tempered and unquestioning, with some kind of spark plug in their brainstems for the master's fire. Maybe there's nothing there at all and everything's fine now - no famine, lots of cars, lots of people, all these computing modalities engaged, medicine's got the upper hand, and the future looks very bright indeed. Or maybe not.
