Borlaug

More than half the country is overweight or obese, yet one in seven Americans goes to bed hungry at night. According to the FAO, the number of malnourished people worldwide rose to over 1 billion this year. That is roughly 1/6th of the world population. Meanwhile that population is on track to grow to 9 billion by mid-century. The only problem it seems, is where will the food come from?

Now that Norman Borlaug, the Nobel laureate widely known as the father of the Green Revolution has died it may be time to ponder this question. Borlaug's introduction of high-yielding plant varieties, combined with very generous helpings from petro-calories, has been credited with making Mexico a net exporter of wheat in 1963, and doubling yields in Pakistan and India. There is little doubt that the Green Revolution caused the enormous population boom that occurred in the latter half of the 20th century. As a result of that boom, both India's and China's populations passed the 1 billion mark.

Many believe Borlaug saved over a billion people worldwide from starvation. For that reason, and for his contributions to world peace through increasing food supplies, Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. One thing Borlaug certainly contributed to was to grow a lot of people.

And a lot of these people are now very fat people who are increasingly unhealthy and unhappy. When it comes to peace, it has now been amply documented that all of Africa's incessant wars, genocides, revolts and carnages are due to resource limitations and climate effects that follow directly from overpopulation.

Sadly enough, world hunger has not declined. Instead the number of hungry people has only grown. Last year millions more were added to list of the starving and millions will be added every year in the foreseeable future.

One can only wonder where the contributions to world hunger and peace lie? To say nothing of the enormous damage done the environment. The rapid population growth has led to a resource depletion of unheard of scope. Nearly every food source on the planet is at, or over capacity. It has been estimated that the world's oceans will be depleted of edible fish species around 2030. Agricultural land is likewise near capacity and only widespread rain forest destruction is staving off the inevitable, Last year's cereal crop was the largest on record. It could barely sustain the present population, let alone an additional 50%.

However, fear not. our white knight Bill Gates is coming to the rescue. Recently he addressed the first United Nations food summit since 2002. Pretty soon all aid workers around the planet who aren't yet using Microsoft OS's will be outfitted with the latest version of Windows 7. Needless to say the fabulous features of Windows 7 will enable great strides in the war on hunger.

If you think that is a silly or overly cynical statement, think again. When is it finally going to dawn on people that modern technology has yet to solve one problem it did not create? And it has created plenty.

Before we go too far off the deep end here, let me remind you that I do not oppose technology. As a matter of fact I love technology. But I also see the limitations of technology. And one key limitation is that too many people believe technology is the solution to all our problems. No doubt, Borlaug believed technology would end world hunger, when all it has done is exacerbate the problem. He probably believed it would lead to peace, when all it has done is promote genocide in Rwanda, and Darfur.

So far, technology has done nothing but accelerate things.

Technology does speed up life, but more than anything, it seems to speed up our demise.

global warming is not the problem..

and technology is not the answer.

Global warming is but one symptom of humans destroying their habitat. There are many other, equally disturbing conditions. Trash is building up, fisheries are disappearing, pollution is destroying water supplies, the list is endless. All these are due to one thing and one thing only, too many humans using too many resources too quickly. We are overgrowing our fish bowl.

The answer to these problems is quite simple: we need to cut back. We don't need new green technology, and we certainly don't need people trashing good stuff just to buy new energy efficient gadgets. We need people to stop buying new things all the time.

That will mean our economy will contract. But that is a positive thing. There will be some pain of course, but it will be much less than the pain we will inflict upon ourselves if we keep going the way we are now. Driven by out-of-control consumerism.

Consumerism has several origins. As any species, we are opportunistic. When we have plenty we quickly expand to use it all. We expand by generating more offspring, but also by increasing our individual consumption. That is all fine but we are setting ourselves up for massive losses at a later time. No species can keep growing at the rate we are.

Spending is also deeply ingrained in our brains. It is key to reproductive success. It is "sexy" as some might say. Males spend to impress females. Females choose males who have plenty as that will enhance the chances for their offspring. Both sexes are involved in a never ending quest to consume more. Nobody is keeping an eye on the future.

Unfortunately, we are on a runaway course. We have very few enemies and nothing significant to trim our numbers, other than massive disasters. And massive disasters are in our future if we keep going. 

What form those disasters will take is anyone's guess. But they will surely happen and they will be of enormous magnitude. Just like housing prices can't keep going up forever, or the Dow can't stay on its hockey stick curve, human populations will not be able to keep up their present expansion. Serious and devastating cutbacks will happen. 

Unless we use our brains and voluntarily cut back. Don't count on it though!

Essay

Roger Howard, the author of "The Oil Hunters: Exploration and Espionage in the Middle East," wrote an essay in the Sat/Sun WSJ. It is entitled "An Ode to Oil." It displays some fascinating reasoning. The essence is quite simple.

We, in America, are addicted to oil. But we also hold the technology to find more oil in these difficult times. Difficult because all the "easy" oil is gone and most of the existing fields are past their peak. Also difficult because the countries where those fields are,  those countries that lived of oil revenues have prospered for a long time and their populations have surged and now they need more dollars and more oil to keep feeding their own habits. 

That is one thing about oil, the suppliers are addicts too. Actually everyone is an addict including the pushers, who are the executives and investors of the big oil companies. These guys are mostly American. They hold the key to the technology. But I digress.

Let's go back to the argument. Howard says we are addicted and the suppliers need our technology to keep supplying us. They need to keep supplying us because otherwise they will starve. And that will be worse now than a few decades ago, because all this time they have benefited and now they have many more mouths to feed. Ergo, oil can be a stabilizing, peace-bringing force. Did you get that last part?

What Howard really means is we own the technology and we are the buyers so we are in the driver's seat. Our dependency is our strength. And since we are, by definition, the only and all that is good in the world, our strength means oil is the great pacifier of the 21st century. Everybody will have to listen to us -and by definition again, that is good, so he really says, everybody will have to be peaceful and happy.

Nil nove sub sole.

peak technology

We, in the West strongly believe in technology. And technology has served us well. It has enabled us to rule the world -no need to be politically correct now, we all know we won (for now) and we are proud of it- and live like kings. In many ways we are the envy of the world and everyone around us is looking up at us and trying to emulate us. The latter may not be such a great idea, but it is heady and intoxicating anyways. It appears that Coca-Cola ads work even better in the slums of the Third World.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today, Mr. Saleri, a former head of (oil) reservoir management for Saudi Arabia says it succinctly: "Technology matters. The benefits of scientific advancement observable in the production of better mobile phones, TVs, and life-extending pharmaceuticals will not, somehow, bypass the extraction of usable oil resources." Funny how Mr. Saleri thinks better mobile phones and TVs are what it is all about. Not to mention those life-extending pharmaceuticals ! Oh, the wonders of advertising.

But Mr. Saleri's piece also highlights the main problem with technology. His article by the way is entitled "The World has Plenty of Oil," and in it he reassures us that we can keep on wasting oil for at least "till the end of the century." Why me worry ?

Let's come back to the problem Mr. Saleri exposes. It is simply this: technology enables the more successful extraction of resources. It enables us to mine and use more things. And it does so very well. We are experts at extracting stuff from the earth. We can do it very cheaply -not counting some of the labor of course- and so we treat it as such too. It is cheap so why should we treat it as valuable or precious? Why conserve it?

Humans may have technology but we are like any other species. We reproduce and fill our niche. Then we strip it and when it finally collapses, we will go extinct. But before we get there, we grow and grow. And growing we have done. The world population has increased like wildfire. All of it thanks to technology. Technology that has given us oil, water in the desert, and high yield agriculture. All of it very cheap. And we have quickly produced more humans to take advantage of it all.

Unfortunately, there is one thing we always ignored. Our waste, the materials that we leave behind because we cannot use them. Our waste is growing faster than our population. That is because every human is a little multiplier. Every single one of us creates more junk. We now produce so much junk that it is starting to affect our health, and our food and energy supplies.

Greenhouse gases are warming the planet threatening our long term survival. Reservoirs are silting up or dwindling because of over-use. Our food supplies are becoming borderline. Fisheries are at capacity or in decline. Deforestation is rampant threatening land. Fertilizer and pesticide runoffs are destroying rivers and oceans. But we do have better mobile phones and TVs ! There you go. Virtual reality. We can all starve watching movies of lush forests, tranquil pastures and fish-rich seas.

Instead of peak oil, maybe we are at peak technology. Maybe we have reached a point where the harm done by technology is outweighing its benefits. Every single new invention that makes us more efficient at extracting stuff, also makes that stuff cheaper. And that compels us to use it every more wastefully and recklessly. Until we run out.