Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of Nature’s tendency to balance population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. Oil, the limiting factor, is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing oil, it will not be possible to support a population of several billion for long. Without fossil fuels for fertilizer and pesticides, as well as for cultivating and harvesting, crop yields drop by more than two-thirds (Pimentel, 1984; Pimentel & Hall, 1984; Pimentel & Pimentel, 2007). Over the next few decades, there will be famine on a scale many times larger than ever before in human history. It is possible, of course, that warfare and plague, for example, will take their toll to a large extent before famine claims its victims. The distinctions, in any case, can never be […]