Friday, July 30, 2010
This question was on the cover of yesterday's Nature. It was asked in the
context of an estimate by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that to
accommodate a projected population of 9 billion in 2050 world food
production must increase 70%. Will they use the same calculus in 2050 to
plan for a projected population of 12 billion in 2090? This is the
catastrophe that the unfairly maligned Thomas Robert Malthus foresaw in his
1798 Essay on the Principle of Population: Species have far more offspring
than are needed to maintain their numbers. Its an observation that Darwin
would cite as one of the keys to natural selection. When the numbers exceed
the available food supply there is massive suffering. Bob Malthus called
for abstention from sex. It's 100% effective, but strongly selected
against. Although a lot of people starved, remarkable advances in
agriculture and transportation bought us a couple of hundred years to look
for a better solution. It came in 1960 in the form of the Pill, the
combined oral contraceptive. It offers an effective, if not quite perfect,
technological solution to the population problem. Malthusian catastrophe
had been averted - well sort of.
Responding to the question on its cover, "Feeding a hungry world" says the
real challenge in the coming decades is to "expand agricultural output
massively without increasing by much the amount of land used." How can
this be done? "What is needed is a second green revolution an approach
that Britains Royal Society aptly describes as the "sustainable
intensification of global agriculture." In his acceptance speech for the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution,
said: "There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger
until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that
fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they
may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and
lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive
civilization for the benefit of all mankind." Which leaves me deeply
puzzled about why, in a special dealing with population, Nature left out
any mention of population control?
Researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia say
phytoplankton are disappearing from the ocean. Strictly speaking it's not
really a science story -- yet. Theres no independent confirmation, and
until that happens scientists don't get too excited. But Dalhousie is a
respected school, and you can bet a lot of scientists are looking at sea
water today. Phytoplankton are tiny plants that don't bother any other
living creature. Using energy from sunlight, they take inorganic stuff,
like water and carbon dioxide, to make new molecules as well as new
phytoplankton. They scarf up CO2, which is good, and dump oxygen, which is
also good. Their problem may be global warming,
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