Peak Everything? NZ needs a population policy.

I spent a good chunk of this evening trying to get to the bottom of the growing food shortages.

Biofuels have come under fire for shifting grain grown for food into use as fuel. That means less food to go around so prices go up. The US farmers who were persuaded to grow corn for biofuels are happy about being paid well for a change and are moving to defend their new-found incomes. The "National Corn Growers Association" says "corn is not the culprit" and points the finger at higher oil prices and the big margins added to food prices by processors, distributors and retailers after it leaves the farm gate. They use an almost comical example of a box of corn flakes to illustrate the point. Yes, that must be it. People all over the world can't afford boxes of corn flakes any more. Admittedly, their press release is intended for domestic US consumption. In a global context, it comes across (to me) as myopic and self-serving.

There is a spider's web of side-effects and unintended consequences radiating out from almost every measure related to food or fuel. We could spend all day fascinating ourselves with how growing more corn in the US has reduced soy production there, creating opportunities for Brasilian soy farmers who are themselves displacing cattle in the Mato Grosso. The owners of the displaced cattle are felling more rainforests and the cycle repeats. Up to a point. Two years after the trees are cut down, the rain seems to stop falling. No more rain if there's no more rain forest. Not just in Brasil, but everywhere downwind of the declining forest cover. Apparently, those forests seeded rain clouds for places as far away as Europe. The effects of human activity cascade on and on, touching pretty much everything because we are now numerous enough that almost anything we all do can and does have global consequences. We have scale, as they say.

This very brief vid on human population growth and the role oil has played is well worth watching.



What does all that mean? To me, it sounds like the feeling you get when you hit a sharp curve driving at too high a speed. You have reduced your margin of error to a razor's edge and almost ANY perturbation or pebble on the road can turn your finely balanced transit of the corner into disaster and see you through the guard rail and over the edge. Ooops. No 'replay' button in the real world. We have grown used to not being prudent.

Except in our case, speed is actually the increasingly intense pressure our growing population is placing on every system we touch. Water, air, soil, forests, fisheries, energy....all of it...and more. On one level, the core problem behind most others is staringly obvious. There are roughly 70 million more mouths to feed each year than there were last year. The human population of the world continues to rise and that is affecting everything one way or another. We need more food every year this remains the case.

Problem. Soils are degrading. Energy and fertiliser to produce food are rapidly rising in price. Demand is outstripping supply. Water is becoming insufficiently available in more places as rains stubbornly refuse to fall or there just isn't enough of the stuff to grow people as well as their food.

The whole picture adds up to a level of human activity that isn't sustainable. The core reason is human population, with a supporting cast of myriad subsidiary effects that are in turn causes of other effects.

Kelpie Wilson of Truthout.org has written an excellent article ("More food is not the answer") on the the present situation. The article is prompted, in part, by a recent United Nations report by the IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development).

Ever heard of "Peak Phosphorous"? Read the article.

New Zealand doesn't have a population policy that I'm aware of. If it does exist, it is rarely talked about. We should begin that debate as soon as possible and take the time to have a real debate about it and let people think on it. How many Kiwis would be enough? Almost everyone I've talked to says somewhere between 5 and 6 million. Is that reasonable?

As it is, the issue of population rarely comes up and when it does some idiot or other automatically assumes any move to look at population consciously will lead to forced sterilisation or other nonsense. Another idiot will then tell you to "off yourself if you're so worried about it". Not much rational debate to be found in that sort of atmosphere. But it does need to begin.