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Earth

Nobel Prize Winners Call For Urgent 'Moonshot' Effort To Avert Global Hunger Catastrophe (theguardian.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the grave-concerns dept.
More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for "moonshot" efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe. From a report: The coalition of some of the world's greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise research and technology to solve the "tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand." Big bang physicist Robert Woodrow Wilson; Nobel laureate chemist Jennifer Doudna; the Dalai Lama; economist Joseph E Stiglitz; Nasa scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig; Ethiopian-American geneticist Gebisa Ejeta; Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank; Wole Soyinka, Nobel prize for literature winner; and black holes Nobel physicist Sir Roger Penrose were among the signatories in the appeal coordinated by Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food prize laureate and US special envoy for global food security.

Citing challenges including the climate crisis, war and market pressures, the coalition called for "planet-friendly" efforts leading to substantial leaps in food production to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050. The plea was for financial and political backing, said agricultural scientist Geoffrey Hawtin, the British co-recipient of last year's World Food prize. [...] The world was "not even close" to meeting future needs, the letter said, predicting humanity faced an "even more food insecure, unstable world" by mid-century unless support for innovation was ramped up internationally.
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Nobel Prize Winners Call For Urgent 'Moonshot' Effort To Avert Global Hunger Catastrophe More

Nobel Prize Winners Call For Urgent 'Moonshot' Effort To Avert Global Hunger Catastrophe

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  • Soylent green... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is people ;-)

    • Only when we run out of cats and dogs.

      - Haitian illegal #847280742

    • What else do we expect to do with "9.7 billion people by 2050"??

      We do not want a world with a population that keeps growing beyond either our usefulness or our ability to care for our needs. Have you seen an African famine village? People sitting around starving and waiting to die with nothing to do but fight and fuck. Overpopulation is bad.

      In the words of Bob Barker: Spay or Neuter your SELVES.

  • Global poverty rates declining for 70 years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by will4 ( 7250692 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @01:53PM (#65088377)

    World Bank "Estimates of global poverty from WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall"

    Refer to figure 2: Global poverty rate went from 58.5% in 1950 to 8.1% in 2020, a 70 year decline.

    https://blogs.worldbank.org/en... [worldbank.org]

    The international agencies have a mission to address poverty and other social issues and will be pulled towards reframing each issue as a perpetual crisis in order to draw attention, money, government transfer payments, and media stories to promote the existence of those programs and staff at the international agencies.

    What is needed is for international agencies receiving government funding need to have publicly open budgets, spending, travel, staff numbers, staff salary lists, etc. well beyond just a 1 page summary.

    Also needed is a global discussion on priorities for addressing the issues and not just ever increasing budgets for existing programs.

    If a global social issue has been reduced from 50% to 3%, when does it, its funding, its agencies and their staffing, need to be deprioritized and those resources used to address a higher priority global social issue.

    There is a 70 year track record for multiple global social issues including the statistical data.

    • The repeated calls to action news stories, NGO, and nonprofit reports are getting in the way of

      - prioritizing the social issues to address
      - how to fund them
      - how much to fund them
      - who gets the funding
      - how do we measure success
      - how do we decide which programs get less funding due to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, bureaucratic waste
      - how to know that the organization implementing the program is actually addressing the social issue and not just existing
      - what is the money being spent on, in detail, and are

    • Refer to figure 2: Global poverty rate went from 58.5% in 1950 to 8.1% in 2020, a 70 year decline.

      Pretty much all the markers of human prosperity are improving - reduced malnutrition, increased access to clean water and sanitation, more education, longer life expectancies, etc.

      No doubt there is still much work to be done, but I'll take the half full glass to the half empty one any day.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      There is something broken with these numbers. The US alone has a poverty rate of 11% in 2023 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-283.html)

    • World Bank "Estimates of global poverty from WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall"

      When a fully functioning society that has happiness and egalitarian principles is declared in poverty, I have to kind of scratch my head and say, "What the fuck?".

      Tribes in the Amazon rain forest are considered poverty level societies and yet the people are happy and have a fully functioning society with new people being created all the time.

      How do you measure wealth? Wealth is far more than dancing to someone else's tune.

  • bat guano (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danda ( 11343 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @01:56PM (#65088389)

    Sounds like when a bunch of scientists met because the planet was running out of bat guano then used as fertilizer. A bunch of them started working on the problem of fixing nitrogen, which led to the haber-bosch process and other processes which led to today's fertilizer industry. A good book about it is called "The Alchemy of Air:", subtitled "A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler".

    Here's the book's summary:

    A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives - including your own.

    At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world's scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch.

    Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than two billion people would starve.

    But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery - massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.

    The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of the unforseen results of a discovery that continue to shape our lives in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.

    • Sounds like when a bunch of scientists met because the planet was running out of bat guano then used as fertilizer.

      I'm not familiar with many of the names listed except Doudna. I expect she's quite familiar with GMOs and how they affect food supply. I'd be stunned if I know more about the Green Revolution of the 60s and 70s than she does.

      That said, I'm a little surprised she would sign this letter. The numbers on poverty and world food supplies are easily available and universally fantastic. Virtually no one starves today unless they're in a war zone. That tells me the solution to world hunger is straightforward: stop k

    • Sounds like when a bunch of scientists met because the planet was running out of bat guano then used as fertilizer. A bunch of them started working on the problem of fixing nitrogen...

      It does not sound like that at all. What your describe sounds like a bunch of scientists in relevant disciplines who got together to come up with solutions to a problem they had identified and then went away and got research funding to develop those solutions. This is exactly how we should, and fortunately typically do, operate in science.

      The current open letter sounds like bunch of scientists wringing their hands and calling on others to come up with ideas to solve the problem. If those who are experts

  • Wrong strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @01:58PM (#65088393)

    Endless growth is impossible.
    We need steady state sustainability, not endlessly increasing food for an endlessly increasing population

    • Education partially addresses this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @02:30PM (#65088541) Homepage Journal

      Statistics have shown that birth rates stabilize when girls receive a public education beyond primary school (so full K-12 program). And birth rates plummet when an industrialized culture expects women to work full time or obtain a college education.

      Women having opportunities that doesn't depend on men to give them everything leads to women having fewer children. It should be common sense. But the patriarchally-inclined would rather manipulate and control women instead of having the confidence to win over a potential mate by on his own merit.

      It's possible to have a world with a birth rate roughly the same as our death rate. A fairly linear increase in productivity due to technological advances.

      The system of capitalism gets a little dicey is when that stable population isn't consuming at the rate of GDP growth. Fast forward a few decades or more with stable populations. You'll find economies cooling off quite a bit, with no recovery in sight. This would mean capital to be harder to obtain for expansion of business. This is even though job rates and quality of life might stay relatively good in that situation. People are working and have the things they need. So while this might seem rosy for labor, but capitalists would point at it as an economic disaster.

      Can't really escape the class system when you look long-term. Even if recognizing that there is a class system sometimes labels me as a Marxists. Even if I'm mainly interested in finding fair results and reaching compromises that work for the most people possible.

      • Statistics have shown that birth rates stabilize when girls receive a public education beyond primary school (so full K-12 program

        What statistics show that? Sure the birth rates in pretty much every country is decreasing, any it may be the case that its because woman's education, but it might be something else or a combination of factors. Assuming that is just speculation. If you look at it buy income instead of its 1.5 children for high income vs 4.6 for low income. Countries like Kuwait that I would say have low woman's rights (I could be wrong just going by stereo types of Arab countries) have 1.5 rate.

        https://database.earth/popula [database.earth]

        • Countries like Kuwait that I would say have low woman's rights

          60% more women than men have college degrees in Kuwait.

          I could be wrong just going by stereo types of Arab countries

          Women are more likely than men to have college degrees in most Islamic countries, even where you'd least expect it. For instance, Iran and Gaza.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Meneth ( 872868 )
            Give it another decade or so, then we can compare with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            That is really not surprising. Women are socialized to look for the longer-term stability needed for raising kids. When they see the men fucking things up, they do the best they can and that means getting the best education they can. Similar effects can be observed in basically every country where many men are lazy and think they are so superior that they do not need to work hard at anything. Usually, it is the mothers driving their daughters on when education became available.

            The impact of that is limited

        • In general statistics show correlation and not causation.

          But sometimes they are "right".

          E.g. the initial main reason for decrease of birthrates in Africa was the introduction of the TV.
          Yes, television. Instead of making love at home ... what else could you do? Depending on latitude, sunset is 6PM, 7PM, 8PM (18:00 - 20:00) - and 20minutes later it is pitch dark, but it is to early to sleep ... and you have not enough light for reading or anything ...

          So, the majour of the village has a TV. He puts it outside

      • Re:Education partially addresses this (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dave314159259 ( 1107469 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @03:39PM (#65088753)

        The system of capitalism gets a little dicey is when that stable population isn't consuming at the rate of GDP growth.

        Capitalism shines when there is excess production which goes into the creation of more capital, which results in either an increased quantity of what is produced, an increased quality, or both.

        What will happen in this case (stable quantity of consumption) is that quality goes up, price goes down, or both.

        A prerequisite for this virtuous cycle is a properly-functioning government that doesn't allow today's successful capitalists to prevent future competitors from arising, and potentially taking their place.

        Socialist economies run in the opposite direction: they punish capital creation or saving in favor of redistribution, resulting in the steady consumption of overall capital. This is the basis of the statement "Socialism seems great until you've finished eating your seed corn. Then everybody starves."

        • The system of capitalism gets a little dicey is when that stable population isn't consuming at the rate of GDP growth.

          Capitalism shines when there is excess production which goes into the creation of more capital, which results in either an increased quantity of what is produced, an increased quality, or both.

          What will happen in this case (stable quantity of consumption) is that quality goes up, price goes down, or both.

          A prerequisite for this virtuous cycle is a properly-functioning government that doesn't allow today's successful capitalists to prevent future competitors from arising, and potentially taking their place.

          Socialist economies run in the opposite direction: they punish capital creation or saving in favor of redistribution, resulting in the steady consumption of overall capital. This is the basis of the statement "Socialism seems great until you've finished eating your seed corn. Then everybody starves."

          What in the hell is this excess production to capital creation pipeline you've imagined? Excess production is waste. Excess production is literally a symptom of overinvestment. How's it going in your mind, excess production ... capital reinvestment ... increased production? Is this Tesla's strategy, produce extra Cybertrucks with flat demand, put the excess production into ... losing more money per unit? This is a virtuous cycle? A bunch of unsold inventory threatening to flood the market helps competition,

        • What will happen in this case (stable quantity of consumption) is that quality goes up, price goes down, or both.
          A prerequisite for this virtuous cycle is a properly-functioning government that doesn't allow today's successful capitalists to prevent future competitors from arising, and potentially taking their place.

          I agree. I'd go further and say, that under that same scenario but with unregulated corporatism, where there is no competition in the market, the profits go up while the price goes up and quality goes down.

          Socialist economies run in the opposite direction: they punish capital creation or saving in favor of redistribution, resulting in the steady consumption of overall capital. This is the basis of the statement "Socialism seems great until you've finished eating your seed corn. Then everybody starves."

          It's difficult to generalize what a socialist economy is. But let's say generalize about a hypothetical centralized planned economy. Maybe Marxist-Leninist or not.

          If you have a worker's council for each industry and possibly each region. But each is under a greater hierarchy of a single party administrati

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        I agree that we need to stay in a world where women have a choice of what they want to do with their lives. It will create a lot of misery (including for women) if we have the rapid population decline that is projected. That's because we depend of people in their productive years to pay into social services to support people who are past their productive years. If we're doing to reduce the population it needs to happen at a gradual rate to avoid significant hardships. What I find interesting is that if

    • Endless growth is impossible.

      True, but given the size of the universe the issues we are running into today are limits of technology, not fundamental limits of the universe.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Meneth ( 872868 )
        Given that we can't expand the Earth, those of us who stay here will have to deal with some fundanmental limits a great deal sooner.

    • Endless growth is impossible. We need steady state sustainability, not endlessly increasing food for an endlessly increasing population

      Yes. Various talking heads assure us world population will peak "naturally (as if planned)" in coming decades and then start to decline before the negative side effects of overpopulation really start to manifest. They want to shield you from the cold hard truth of reality. I'm here to tell you a voluntary depopulation is unlikely, and at some point the global humanity load will hit a resource availability wall, and our growth will indeed be limited "naturally", as in the way nature does it for every othe

    • 100% agree. If the population were to settle at some sustainable level, it solves many global crises at once. I don't know what the right level is, but arbitrarily speaking in 2000 it was 6 billion people, 1990 was 5.3 billion, 1980 was 4.5 billion. If I tighten my Dunning-Kruger brand trousers, I feel confident in saying that the planet can easily sustain 5 billion people with all of them having access to enough food, water, shelter and energy to make for a very decent, long life.

      The pyramid scheme th

    • not endlessly increasing food for an endlessly increasing population

      Population is not increasing much longer, we are about to run into fertility rates globally that do not even meet the replacement rate [healthdata.org]!

      This also calls into question the need for some kind of food moonshot.

      • According to the link the global population in 2100 is estimated to be 11 billion with these countries making up the top 10. Does not seem like the majority of these countries will be well equipped to handle their population increases. Better to start early and avoid the human suffering.

        India 1,529,850,119
        China 766,673,270
        Nigeria 546,091,662
        Pakistan 487,017,405
        DR Congo 432,378,400
        United States 394,041,155
        Ethiopia 323,741,600
        Indonesia 296,623,475
        Tanz

    • No, your strategy is both wrong and evil. Your evil attempt at population control by starvation and economic war is what leads to famines and destabilizing population growth. Let's be clear. Prosperity leads to population collapse. We are seeing that in South Korea, Japan, Europe, basically the Western nations. People who are food insecure have more kids because they need more farmhands. Plus the women are not empowered enough to obtain birth control or assert their choice.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. All this would do is to create the illusion that we can feed even more people. That makes the crash at the end a lot worse.

  • The reason we're keeping up with food production at the moment, for the most part, is that for the last few decades we've been experiencing globalization. Specifically the ability of any nation to trade with any other nation, where the safety of your ships on the high seas was guaranteed by the United States, which has an unmatched naval force, and saw a benefit to policing the world's oceans as part of efforts to constrain the soviet union up until the 90's. But that world slowly fell apart after the end

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Now that globalization is on its way out..."
      "The American people have very clearly voted that they don't want their country policing the world's oceans anymore..."

      There is no evidence for either of these claims.

      "And there is no other superpower with the naval capability to fulfill that policing role worldwide, even if they somehow wanted to."

      Given the absurd premise that the US was doing it and was capable of doing it, and that it no longer will, there certainly could be a power to step into that gap. It

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        Here is just one piece of evidence [harvard.edu] for those two claims, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. The fact that globalization was faltering before the pandemic, and was only accelerated by COVID, is a fact that's commonly discussed in geopolitical circles. Even amongst the top navies [wdmmw.org] of the world by power, only the US maintains a fleet and the world-wide support infrastructure that can truly project power globally, and was designed to do so. "The U.S., with 11 aircraft carriers in total, owns 40% of the g

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

          No one needs nuclear powered Ford class carriers with 80+ gen5 combat stealth fighters to keep the oceans safe from a few random pirates off the African coast.

          There is no evidence at all that the US is going to suddenly abandon the oceans to wide spread piracy, especially as we are the #1 beneficiary of safe ocean trade.

          Is this some anti-Trump co spinach thing you got going on? Literally no one on this site is more traditionally conservative nor pro-MAGA than me (although that's a very low bar) yet I think

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward
            And yet America has been completely unable to keep the sea lanes open in that area...

      • Well, anti piracy missions, are not done alone by USA.

        Around Africa you basically have all western nations, and also Russians. No idea about China (or Japan for that matter)

  • Moonshot: Stop having kids if you don't have food security.
    More realistic: perfect fusion and run grow lights in controlled environments

  • They may sound crass.... but, wouldn't that just be natural selection and the problem correcting itself?

    Less people = less food requirement, less energy usage, less water consumption
    Less food requirement = less pollution
    Less pollution = less potential for climate change

    Just let the weak die off, the way nature intended

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      What's going to happen when hungry nations have nukes? The plans are circulating, just mine and add centrifuges.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Crass is not the word that comes to mind for that, it is far too kind.

      You are not part of "the strong", only "the fortunate", and once you let "the weak die off", you become the weak. As far as Trump is concerned, you're "the weak" already, he doesn't need your vote, so you can "die off" already. It's how fascism works, more for the wealthy that remain.

      I'd love to be a fly on the wall when you explain to your retired parents how we should "just let the weak die off", or explain to your child when he is st

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, said.

        Let me add that in real fascism, Trump would have probably be culled because he is a complete academic loss. May have gotten to be a farmhand, but that is essentially it. And after he did his first rape, he would probably just have been eliminated as anti-social.

    • Less people

      Okay, let's do that. You go first on starving to death.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        What kind of a deranged idiot are you? Ever heard of contraception?

        • Did you read the at lest the title of the post I replied to? The solution posed to "too many" people wasn't contraception, it was "let them die as nature intended". This is quite explicitly a call to do nothing to increase supplies of food, clean, water, and medical care so "the weak" would die off and bring a lowered human population on the planet.

          I'm calling out the idea as something from a "deranged idiot" as it is clearly something that they would not want done to them. If they were fine with this ha

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Oh, I see, you do not understand how this usually works: Usually it is the children, and there the youngest first, that die off. The adults are last.

            • I know how it works. It seems the sadistic knucklehead that posed the "let them die" solution also knows how it works. There's those fine with a global food shortage because they know it won't impact them or anyone they know, it's just "over there" somewhere.

              You tell the people "over there" to use contraception to address the food shortages and they will still have to go through the horrors of seeing their own children starve to death, and the children of their neighbors.

              If these morons want to see fewer

    • Does not work that way.
      As plenty of people with "no food" can just buy it.
      And the places where they can't the pollution problem is not there.
      The pollution problem are western countries - and their 'Arabic allies' - as well as developing countries like India and China (which both have no food problem).
      And no, while China is one of the biggest rice importers, they easily could plant it themselves. But: they prefer to grow vegetables, and fruits, and sell them to Europe. Kind of insane if you consider the dist

  • 1 - There's already enough food for 15 billion people. The problem is the distribution system, a lot of it rots or goes bad before it can reach the right people. Or is too expensive for them. End result: it's thrown away.

    2 - what worries me is that every 200 years on average a *BIG* volcano blows up and sends enough shit in the atmosphere to cause a global winter lasting 2 or 3 years with plenty of crop failures. When that happened in the past, there were always major food shortages and starvation. There
    • Exactly. It's not a production problem, it's a distribution problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      We will get more than just that 200 year volcano now. Nothing above about 1...2 billion or so is safe and must lead to collapse. You must seriously underuse what is there in order to have adequate reserves for catastrophes. Humans, as groups, are not smart enough for that.

  • Background info (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 )

    I highly recommend the Yale course Global Problems of Population Growth [youtube.com], which is all kinds of informative about these issues.

    In particular this lecture [youtube.com] gives a good overview of all the issues currently facing humanity.

    All of the problems, issues, and potential catastrophies we face, including climate change, can be mitigate a great deal by reducing the human population, and this means reducing the fertility rate. We're currently growing our population by 1 billion every 13 years, and the ecological footpri

    • Western subsidized universal free access to long lasting birth control would probably reduce birthrates massively and cost next to nothing, but I don't see it happening. Governments in developing nations with high fertility might from a technocratic point of view agree, but religious leaders would object and even more liberals would whine about neocolonialism. Birth control has to be a grass roots effort in those nations, the west can not be visibly involved.

      That said, 50 years too late ... pray AI saves us

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That said, 50 years too late ... pray AI saves us, or things will get messy.

        Indeed. But AI? Not a chance. The current artificial morons will not do it.

      • And exactly would "an AI" do there?

        Humans have to do it ... with or without AI.

        Human: AI what to do to save the world?

        AI: be more specific.

        Human: Just solve one problem!

        AI: oki, getting rid of the nukes. Launching now. Nuke problem solved. ....

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 )
      First comment - you want population control? Fine, but only if you go first. I'll be right behind you. Pinky promise. Well, maybe next week. Or next year. Or next generation. Actually, why don't you just evolve yourself out of the population without me.

      Second comment: global emissions in Africa are negligible.

      https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]

      And most of the other relevant variables scale with emissions. So, exactly how is population control in Africa going to solve the world's problems? I don't wan

      • The consumption per capita in developed nations and population in developing nations are mostly orthogonal problems, neither is sustainable. Developed nations using less fossil/mineral resources for conspicuous consumption might reduce emissions but they don't increase the food/water supply.

        • There are other posts here discussing the fact that we produce way, way more food than we need. The problem is distribution.

          After carefully thinking about it and reconsidering, I’m going to double-down on my original post. The population-control argument pretty much boils down to “this town is overcrowded, so let’s shoot 2/3 of the people (the ones I don’t like).

          And you’re singling out Africa as the problem. Really. Really?

          • For now. High population growth African and Asian nations becoming increasingly dependent on developed nation high productivity agriculture is dangerous for them. In a crisis there won't be triage in an unified world, there will be mass starvation.

            Their population growth is in their hands, developed nation charity is not.

      • You are mostly right, but: low emissions in Africa has nothing to do with resource efficient.
        They have no resources ... big difference.

        And if you want to top it: those who have a car and burn gasoline/diesel, have the oldest and dirtiest trash on the planet.

  • Two ways (Score:3)

    by gwjgwj ( 727408 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @02:27PM (#65088523) Homepage
    There are two ways to match supply and demand: increase supply or decrease demand.

    • I vote decrease demand (through birth control). It solves the food problem and sooo many other global problems at once. We had 6 billion people in 2000 and got along fine. With the increases in technology, automation, science, etc in that time we can easily support 6 billion people with access to enough food, water, shelter and energy to make for a very decent, long life for all. And bring the ecological environment back to health.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Here is a really immoral idea: Free food for anybody that wants it, but it comes with birth control in it. Would be interesting to see how many people would rather starve.

        That said, unless we get the religious fuckups managed, this problem is not solvable. They would rather have people starve than not being born.

  • all our aid to africa has only resulted in an extra billion africans dependent on aid. we tried to teach them farming and nearly all the farms collapsed once we turned them over to africans.

    we need to worry about our own countries and let the 3rd world reach equilibrium. they never developed the methods to support their own population, and now our countries are being flooded with 3rd worlders who can't even take care of their own countries. white people are only 7-8% of world population, why is it our job t

    • It may not be your job but helping others is a human prerogative that most people, thankfully, feel. It wasn't white people’s jobs to go purchase/kidnap over 10 million slaves and colonize multiple continents either.

      God forbid you have to work a little bit extra to help your fellow human. You still get to live a modern lifestyle, have family, vacations, and things like that.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yep, "help" now, feel good and virtue-signal heavily, and, oops, be the reason why in the next generation many more starve. If you feed people for a longer time, you become responsible for doing it for them and their children forever.

        Yes, that is a bitter pill. But remember that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

        • That is baloney. The number of people in extreme poverty is reducing globally — which means it is no bloodline’s curse to starve. Reference: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org] It is not about creating a dependency, but about reducing human suffering. When I say suffering I am talking about a pain you have never felt, if you did you would never allow anyone else to face that. That is why you can't relate to what its like to go through seeing yourself and your closest people endure starvation and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And you know what? There were people in the 1980s that pointed out exactly this problem: Help one person now, be the root cause and morally responsible for 4 starving in the next generation. Helping can be deeply immoral, and here it was and is.

  • In fact, capitalism derives more profit from world hunger not being solved. If this world hunger catastrophe is to be avoided, capitalism must be eradicated.

    • In favor of what, Marxism? More people starved to death under Stalin than were killed by Hitler. People are starving to death right now in the DPRK, Venezuela, and China.

      And, were you to remove your head from your posterior and think, there is massive profit to be made by feeding people! Do you have any idea how many fortunes were made by shipping food?

      • Yeah,
        plenty of people starved to death under Stalin.

        Stupid argument against "insert ideology".

        Starlin killed them intentionally. And to spare the ammunition or gas or whatever: he cut them of from all supplies.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        The wiki article says it is "debatable" if it was intentionally. Here in our schools it is considered intentionally. Especially if you consider the most grain rich regions got hit the worst, e.g. Ukraine.

        It is not "insert ideology" that kills people. Bad people with po

  • There is no "food shortage" globally.

    There is a distribution problem born (mostly) from political failures of repressive or incompetent governments.

  • It's called a condom.

    Use it.

    • It's also called "fertilizers, pesticides, and GMO crops". Use them.

      It's also farm machinery. US agriculture is insanely productive in part because we have tractors, harvesters, and other wonderful, special purpose machines [youtube.com]. But, while they're astoundingly expensive, they also allow farmer Bob to harvest a lot of potatoes at very little cost.

      And then let's not forget "shipping containers". Part of why food is so cheap and available in the first world is it's just jaw-droppingly cheap to ship things around t

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by boulat ( 216724 )

        Hey degenerate.. do you think there is an infinite supply of water? Arable soil? Oil for fertilizers and tractors, harvesters? Landfills for waste?

        You should've been flushed in aforementioned condom.

      • It is not Yaw-dropping-cheap to cheap food etc. around the world.

        I suggest to check actual fright costs. What is cheap is something like an oil tanker. Or a cargo vessel that only contains sand like goods (grains, fleur, soy beans) which can easy and quickly be loaded and unloaded.

        80% of the price in the super market is shipping costs, if you ship it to the other side of the world.
        E.g. if I package rice in Thailand (as a more or less private person) and ship lets say 10tons to France, the only bonus point f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Askmum ( 1038780 )

        It's also called "fertilizers, pesticides, and GMO crops".

        That all costs money. You need to develop yourself as a country to move ahead in agricultural advances. Most of the western world did. Most of Africa did not. And now it is all available and we are helping Africa with their devastating infant mortality so their population booms but they do not have the means to develop their agriculture in the same pace, nor have the money to buy into the advancements.
        And so you have hunger. And the western world has to give aid mostly in food and money.
        It doesn't work. S

  • Helping to feed the hungry is racist (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @06:24PM (#65089241)
    Last time I checked whether attempts to help feeding the hungry are appreciated, I learned that such help "reinforces racism and colonial attitudes that strip people of their dignity and agency" [bond.org.uk].

    So I guess we better leave it to Wakanda to avert the hunger catastrophe.

  • Do you know what happens if you double the amount of food you give rabbits? Yup, you get double the amount of rabbits.

    Maybe these geniuses should be thinking about birth control.

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