I read an article by podcast guest Elizabeth Kolbert about running out of food. Like nearly everyone, she takes for granted that our population will keep growing and we have to feed them. Like nearly everyone, she figures we have to keep producing more food.
She quoted Norman Borlaug’s Nobel acceptance speech. He won the Nobel Prize for the Green Revolution so is a reasonable person to learn from. She left out the most important part of what he said, what set his direction for much of his career, which said that making more food won’t solve the problem. Only curbing population does.
No one values humanity, technology, innovation, and markets more than he did. I wrote a letter to the editor clarifying what she left out. I figure by now they’ve chosen not to post it, so I’m sharing it here.
To the editor,
Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece Do We Need Another Green Revolution? left out the part of Norman Borlaug’s Nobel acceptance speech that answered that question. Nobody knew the potential, but also the limitations of that direction more than he.
He said: “The frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the ‘Population Monster’ … Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth”
For the rest of his life he used the term “Population Monster” and worked to focus on it, not the tempting but counterproductive siren song of another Green Revolution. He knew of well-documented, voluntary, noncoercive programs that were nearly the opposite of China’s One Child policy and brought nations health, peace, stability, and joy.
I began learning of such programs from Alan Weisman‘s wonderful book Countdown. I would hope the New Yorker would publicize them too.
The Green Revolution and subway rats The Green Revolution saved over a billion people from starvation, according to many. I don't think that's the only way…
