Actual starvation has been relegated to a few isolated corners of the globe usually beset with civil strife. Deliberately created famines have been used several times as a weapon in this century; for example, Stalin starved the Ukraine in the 1930s, Ethiopia’s General Mengistu halted food aid to rebel regions of his country in the 1980s, and war lords in Somalia created famine throughout that country in the 1990s. But these tragedies must not be confused with apocalyptic claims that humanity is about to overrun its carrying capacity…
Africa could easily produce more than enough food to feed its people, so why don’t Africans have enough to eat? Often, because Africa’s governments swindle their farmers. Deliberate government policies impoverish the rural sectors at the expense of the urban centers…
—The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse Ronald Bailey, Cato Institute
Paul Ehrlich deserves special attention…. In The Population Bomb, Ehrlich predicted that the “battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer…”
He predicted global famine in 1985, and was wrong. Now he says that the population of the United States will shrink from 250 million to about 22.5 million before 1999, because of famine and global warming.
He still recommends reducing population by force…
More from David Brower of Friends of the Earth: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license…. All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing”…
It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves that in 1910, 25 percent of a farmer’s land had to be used to raise feed for farm animals. One farmer produced enough food to feed 7.1 persons a year. Today one farmer feeds 59 people instead of 7.1. In 1910, one farmer with a team of horses could plow one acre of land a day. Now, with tractors, he plows 35. In 1910, one acre yielded 26 bushels of corn, while today that same acre yields 97 bushels.
—Trashing the Planet Dixy Lee Ray, Ph.D. University of Washington
