What are your thoughts of on solving world hunger? Do you think that the earth is near reaching its carrying capacity? One view is that population growth is more in the hands of family planning organizations than in the hands of farmers because world grain outputs, etc. have not drastically increased in recent years. Do you have any resources you recommend for me looking further into possible solutions to alleviating world hunger?

Before talking about “solving” world hunger, you’re going to have to tell me what world hunger IS. Here are some tests to begin with: How will you know when “world hunger” is “solved”? And how exactly have you determined that hunger is a thing that NEEDS to be “solved”? Hunger and satiety recur
cyclically throughout the community of life – daily, even hourly. If a creature feels hunger is this some kind of “problem”? Does “solving” world hunger mean “eliminating” hunger? This, to me, is simply meaningless. You say that “one view” is that population growth is “more in the hands of family planning organizations.” This isn’t just “one view,” this is the dominant view of our culture. To say that world grain outputs have not “drastically” increased in recent years misses the point. The point is that they have increased SUFFICIENTLY to keep the world population growing catastrophically.

If you’ve read my books, you’ll know that I haven’t talked about “alleviating world hunger.” This is partly because I don’t know what “world hunger” is. Whatever it is, it’s not threatening to make our planet
uninhabitable to our own species (and many others). On the other hand, our population explosion IS threatening to make our planet uninhabitable—and this is where my attention is focused.

DATE: 15 Jun 1997
UPDATE: 15 Feb 1998
ID: 169