How will we feed a doubling population, vis-a-vis environmental degradation?
For example: while soil erosion in some parts of the U.S. has been stabilised – “some cropland in the eastern three fifths of the country was eroding excessively in 1992 – most notably in southern Iowa, northern Missouri, parts of western and souther Texas, and much of eastern Tennessee and the Piedmont region. (Still, all these areas were averaging less erosion in 1992 than they were in 1982.)” — Roger Doyle, “By the Numbers: Soil Erosion of Cropland in the U.S., 1982 to 1992,” Scientific American (October 1996), 34. And remember: because of overfishing, many of the world’s important fisheries have collapsed, resulting in smaller catches (since their peak in 1989) and higher prices for fish (see Carl Safina, “The World’s Imperiled Fish,” Scientific American (November 1995), 46-53. What we also know: “the environment” is global: U.S. sulfate aerosols create acid rain in Europe – even after the Europeans have made substantive reductions in their own sulfate emissions (In Europe, fish s
