The Coming Global Famine: Part I

            Biologists see the world differently than other people. My interest in biology started with an interest in birds because I simply enjoyed being able to identify many species in the world around me simply by listening to their songs. That spark of interest quickly evolved into an interest in ecology. In the late 1960s I read the book titled "The Population Bomb" which made it clear the planet has a problem.

             As an undergraduate student studying biology I quickly learned the principles of what biologists call "population biology." In short, if any population of any species finds a way to exploit new resources the size of the population will increase until a shortage is created in some critical resource, which causes the population crash. That's not the only premise of population biology that is one of the primary ones.

             Many children in the United States in my generation, the baby boomers who include children be born between 1946 and 1964, were told by their parents, "You better eat your vegetables, think of all the starving children in [a specific unnamed country] who don't have anything to eat." The saying became apocryphal with other sayings we heard from our parents such as, "When I was a kid I had to walk 10 miles through the snow every day to go to school" and "You should be glad you don't have to [insert some phrase here commonly used by parents] like I had to when I was a kid."

             In college, it became clear to me the world was on an unsustainable path. I've seen it in many aspects all my life. For example, United States Congress continually talks about reducing the national budget deficit and reducing dependency on foreign oil while at the same time constantly voting to increase the budget deficit and use more foreign oil without taking any realistic effort to do what there say they're trying to do.

             In the next few days, I like to write a series of blogs which I will call, "The Coming Global Famine.” I will deal with a variety of issues along these lines and discuss why I believe such an occurrence is as inevitable as the melting of all the ice on Greenland which rural raise global sea levels by roughly 6 meters. Stay tuned.