Is world population a problem?
Two factors are said to be responsible for the six-fold increase in world population over the the last 200 years. One is improved public health. The other is the availability of relatively cheap, abundant fossil fuels, which until now has enabled a dramatically increased food supply. Post-petroleum-peak energy shortfalls, as described above, will pose a severe challenge to feeding the world. But the number of people that the planet can support depends largely on consumption levels. Some experts claim that without cheap energy the world could support the present 6.55 billion people only at the subsistence level of many Third-World countries, but it could not support more than a billion or two souls at the current level of consumption of North Americans! The implications, socially and ecologically, are very sobering. Again, world leaders, particularly those in the U.S., have pursued a heads-in-the-sand policy, with the result that global problems of every kind are being exacerbated by un
