Starvation Number One Cause of Human Deaths Worldwide – Part One

Leading population expert Dr. Jack Alpert, www.skil.org , promotes humanity’s drastic population reductions if our species expects to survive the 21^st century.

I sat down with Dr. Alpert as he continues working on his project to educate Americans as to the end game consequences of loading human population beyond carrying capacities.  What consequences do we face in this century via exceeding carrying capacity of the planet Dr. Alpert?

“Population matters because the present global population determines your job, home temperature, and diet,” said Alpert. “Global population will determine if you die from old age, exposure, starvation, conflict, or cannibalism. These statements follow from the numbers describing the physical system and their relationship to the number of people in the world.

“The numbers tell us it’s possible to have a 90% die-off of the existing 7 billion people in this century. Why 90%?  Because 10% might hold enough dollars and power to disenfranchise the other 90% from their lunch. The resulting chaos and social conflict will speed the consumption of supporting resources, creating more scarcity, more chaos, more anarchy, etc. This causal loop produces a death spiral that ends in civilization collapse. We could be left living in a stone house heated by wood from the back fort, and lit with tallow lamps. we could have a plow pulled by a horse and travel facilitated by the same horse. Forget pharmaceuticals.

“Even if the numbers are complete, you still don’t want to believe it. Predictions of the future are abstractions and their uncertainty leaves room for doubt. So let me call your attention to conditions that already exist. Last week I had a mind opening discussion with David Pimentel (700+ published papers, Cornell University) He a true scholar by almost any criteria.”

Pimentel said:

1. The UN has reported that the number one cause of death in the world is starvation.
2. according to the UN and FAO 66% of the world’s population is so malnourished
   4.5 billion people cannot fully develop their minds and bodies.
3. 2 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day and a billion on less than a dollar.

“The industrial dream, being able to turn the raw into the produced, and with the profit improve one’s wellbeing is the only thing keeping the malnourished from anarchy,” said Alpert. “The problem is the dream is fading even in countries where it has been successful. For example, college tuition rises faster than salaries. A college education is no guarantee of well paying job. A job is no guarantee of steady income. Fast fading is affordable health insurance, home, and car.

“The optimists believe the bottom half of the 7 billion are experiencing improved wellbeing. If the Chinese factory worker lives better, the system is delivering and our children still have a chance.

“Few of us realize (everyone’s) existence depends on energy slaves — the flow of fossil fuels. The food we purchase in the market is energy based. Energy plowed the ground, created the fertilizer, pumped irrigation water, allowed the harvest, transported the product to the city, processed it, transported it to market, and cooked it. If the price of fuel increases and it surely will, the lowest wage earners many not be adequate to purchase it.

“Billions will not be able to afford lunch and will be on track to starve to death. Urban riots will be inevitable. Cities will be closed to migrants. Migration, met with constraints, means more riots. Civilization declares migrants terrorists. They are driven over boarders into refugee camps where they die or fight with the original residents. This time donations will not prevent conflict. There are just too many in need.

“People fall into two groups, those rising in well-being — the few, and, those with decreasing wellbeing – everyone else. Those who think they are holding their own share an illusion. The losers of well-being hope for a “turn around” that is not coming. When that hope is gone many are just a few missed meals from attacking your grocery store or your pantry. When your grocery store is empty, how are you going to feed your kids even if you have money?

“Defense consumes resources, makes goods and services scarcer, pushes more people toward the margins of society, and creates more chaos. When society collapses it loses the higher production created by work specialization, protected commerce, and economies of scale. These losses result in a loss of technology and all together create in a large die-off.

“This is not a pretty picture of the human condition. We are like big ship at sea with no propulsion to make harbor. The lights are on and the showers are hot on some of the decks. The big nets pull in fish to feed people.

“The ship has raised its population for centuries. But the fuel in the tanks is running out, the thinning fishery makes putting fish on the table more difficult each day. The catch is going to the passengers, who can pay the most. Most are hungry and expectations are that people will starve to death.

“There is no captain, and the market dictates who gets what. When the remaining fuel becomes valuable enough the very rich will eat fully and the very poor will starve to death. Since reproductive choice has been solely the domain of individuals and most do not see the severity of the condition, population on the ship continues to rise. There is no confusion among the people who add and subtract that the production processes (without some unforeseen breakthrough in technology) will feed only a small fraction of the ship’s company.

“There will be less people on the ship in the future, the only difference in the declining population scenario is will most die horrible deaths from starvation and anarchic violence or will some be saved that experience. Will the ship be ruined and sink or will it float? At what level of wellbeing will small ships company maintain? Will the current level of technology and civilization produce goods and services or will technology and civility be lost and production diminished?

“If this ship is a good analogy for earth, we could have 4 billion people perish sometime before 2030 and 2050. And 80 to 99% by end of this century. If there is even a small chance that this is a scenario for our earth, it would be irresponsible to limit any proactive means for lowering our population.

“Obviously, the means we are using to slow population growth educating woman, providing them with birth control, even if vastly more successful and even if fertility dropped below replacement it does not look like the small rate of population decline will prevent a severe die off and civilization collapse.

“Like the ship, the earth has created a huge overshoot condition. It has more people than can be supported with existing resources. With supporting resources declining the degree of overshoot is increasing. The potential for an ever bigger die off is increasing each day.

We need a program of proactive population decline. Two central concepts define these plans.

1. A definition of the world’s sustainable “population/civilization” and
2. A transition path from where we are to that state.

Everyone wants good ever improving wellbeing. Even more they don’t want to lose ground. Wellbeing is both the physical aspects of life and the difference in those aspects relative to one’s peers. Emotional aspects exist but are not included in this analysis

To define the sustainable “population/civilization,” we have to define:

1. global population
2. level of wellbeing, and
3. level of stratification of that wellbeing,

that could live on our earth, and not deplete the resources that support it or cause the social fabric to disintegrate into chaos and conflict.

Here are three end sustainable “population/civilization”:

1. Hunter and gatherer pre agricultural groups, 1-50 million
2. 1750 frontier farming groups, 1-2 billion
3. our present high tech existence, 30-40 million

If we don’t take some proactive population decline measures I see two destinations from our present course.

The starving and killing may shake out to a 1750′s agriculture based farmstead living groups explained in the introduction 1-2 billion or worse hunter and gather groups something like the plains native Americans. 1-50 million the latter group might rebirth of agriculture but lacking easy to access to coal and other fossil fuels there would be little chance for a progression toward a modern world with technology.

If we can initiate a faster decline in population I have computed a third sustainable population/civilization. It is a high tech, universal highly-educated, high levels of health care, symphony levels of entertainment. The population location is limited to areas where hydro power is abundant and in place. The community is 96% urban, 4% agribusiness, and contains only 30-40 million people in three areas on earth. 6-8 million Pacific Northwest North America — 9-11 million in Brazil, South America, and 13-15 million in China in Asia. There are no other areas on earth according to my initial calculations that will support this third kind of sustainable population/civilization. Each of these communities will have to develop ways to maintain a stratification of wellbeing inside limits which if exceeded will initiate a scarcity conflict death spiral. 

Now let me discuss various transition paths to these three sustainable “population/civilization conditions. How do we get from our present social organization and 7 billion population down to the number of people that exist in sustainable communities at various levels of wellbeing? In this paper I all focus only on population aspects.

Part 2:  I outline these paths below, 1 passive and 2 proactive plans.

Dear reader, yes, this is serious information.  You are reading the cutting edge information from one of the top world researchers in Dr. Jack Alpert.

Must see: Rapid Population Decline, seven minute video by Dr. Jack Alpert-

Contact Dr. Jack Alpert at www.skil.org