My year of living without money

YOU are my hero

I like your articles and appreciate your spirit.

To good_stuff:

The Malthusian argument along with populationist theories never made that much sense to me.

Let me make this premise:
Over population does not help the problem and it is certainly good to address it.
However one of the main drivers for depletion of natural resources has and is the CONVENTIONAL agriculture.
One of their catastrophic consequences is the pollution and contamination of our natural resources which exacerbates future food scarcity.
The big Ag has exploited land and people to reach high profits and satisfy their agenda of greediness and power.

The argument you brought up can be very deceiving and requires an acute perspective.

This overpopulation issue is also used to shift the blame for climate change onto the poorest people and the Third World.
It's the industrialized nations that have the highest carbon footprint with the lowest population and birth rate.

An other note to add is that overpopulation is a consequence of poverty and not the opposite.
We shall address that first, bringing economic justice.

More:
Population does not OUTSTRIP food production.
Check this data taken from FAO:
http://www.pregnantpause.org/overpop/foodfao.htm
Excerpts:
"This graph shows that the first part of the argument is essentially correct: Population does grow exponentially.
But it is absolutely dead wrong about food production. Consistently for the past 35 years, world food production has grown, not more and more slowly, but faster and faster. Indeed, food production is increasing faster than population."

From an other graph and data at the link:

"Note that in 1996 world food production per person was 24% more than it was in 1961 (105.4 divided by 84.7.) Understand, these figures do not say that the world produced 24% more food, but that the world produced 24% more food per person."

This tells me that corporatism is pushing for over consumption, needless to say why.

One more excerpt:
"We are presently using only 16% of the world's potential farmland, we surely have a lot of room to maneuver."

One more point that populationist theories fail to address is the global unequal allocation of resources which will be controlled by who's in power no matter how many people are living in this world.

This is part of the western medicine philosophy, cure the symptom not the cause.
An Organic agriculture or any other farming practice that is sustainable, more productive, more energy and resource efficient, and least contaminating gets left behind just as solar power, alternative energies, anything that threatens the big corporations profit and that would stop our dependency from them.

That is where we really are.

Being a homeless mooch is so cool. It is only too bad that the world couldn't sustain us if we all lived this way.

Read up on this. If it weren't for the industrial revolution is is no doubt that we would have reached the population limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

- By the way, I don't like it either, but that is where we are.

This is an other great example like the Dervaes family:

http://current.com/items/91245349_the-human-existence-depends-on-the-top-six-inc...

It is the one of the greatest representations of the Organic group which does not mirror the current system but goes beyond, reaching freedom and making it POSSIBLE!

This also shows me how it is in every way discouraged from the people on top of the world as it would make us free and not more dependent from their schemes of self interest, greediness and power.
Let me quote this again:
"If you can grow food, it's empowering, it's powerful, in fact I would say that growing food is one of the most dangerous occupations on the face of this Earth because you are in danger of becoming FREE"
Dervaes

Goosebumps... :)