[AnimalMuppet]

"Feed it right now" is true. "Feed it sustainably" - that is, be able to keep feeding it - is also something we care about. And there are some worrying signs about sustainability - the Ogallala Aquifer, the collapse of ocean fish stocks, and so on.

Does that prove it's unsustainable? No. The way to prove it's unsustainable is to have a massive die-off, which is not a way I'm interested in proving anything.

[ntsplnkv2]

A catastrophic failure in any food chain can make ANY population have a massive die off.

> that is, be able to keep feeding it - is also something we care about.

This is disingenuous. In general, no one cares about the famine in Syria except starving Syrians. When's the last time you heard that on the news over a Trump tweet?

Enforcing population limits in theory sounds like a great idea - in human practice, it will just be an excuse for genocide. The only ethical way to do it is to bring all of humanity out of poverty - which rich people do not want to pay for.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't know where you got the idea that I was talking about famine in Syria. I'm not. I'm talking about world-wide famine. If the way we feed the world isn't sustainable, then there's going to be a global problem eventually.

Nor am I talking about enforcing population limits.

Bringing all of humanity out of poverty isn't going to do it either, if they all want to have an American diet.

[ntsplnkv2]

I didn't get that idea - I posited that idea. No one is talking about the famine in Syria. If people don't care that people are starving now, they won't care when a few billion more from poor countries are either.

> I'm talking about world-wide famine. If the way we feed the world isn't sustainable, then there's going to be a global problem eventually.

That's not how it works - the world has enough food for current population P + x offspring. Whenever food supply starts to dwindle P+x will go down. Less people will survive at the fringes - the poor will die, much like they do now, hence I brought up Syria, which no one on here talks about, because they don't care.

A worldwide famine would be the result of catastrophic failure. Catastrophic failures you're suggesting will impact any population size regardless of its sustainability. Sustainability is about maintaining resources without depleting them - it's inherently different than catastrophic events destroying most of the system. No amount of sustainable farming matters if, say, a meteor impacts the earth, or global warming renders most land un-farmable. There is no sustainability fix here.

> Bringing all of humanity out of poverty isn't going to do it either, if they all want to have an American diet.

It's the only proven way to reduce birthrate without war and disease.