Of Food Prices, Population Growth, Climate Change, Biofuels and even Malthus!

A very interesting article from FinFacts covering, well, just about everything you could care to mention! And some fascinating facts........

"we now consume about fifty thousand times as much energy as our ancestors once did" Wow!

And have you heard of Norman Borlaug? They reckon that he has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived." Gosh! And I've never even heard of him before!

"US stocks of wheat are at a 60-year low and world rice stocks are at a 25-year low."

"The rise in the price of oil has resulted in the US diverting 20% of its maize/corn production for biofuels and the European Union 68% of its vegetable oil production."

Meanwhile, looking at the world's population figures:-
AD 0001 ~300 Million
AD 1000 ~310 Million (Yes, that's a 10 million increase in 1000 years!)
AD 1500 ~450 Million
AD 1804 ~1 Billion
AD 1927 ~2 Billion
AD 1960 ~3 Billion
AD 1975 ~4 Billion
AD 1989 ~5 Billion
AD 2000 ~6 Billion (Yes, that's a 1 Billion increase in 11 years!)
Today ~6,662,731,966 (At midday today - probably several 100 thousand more in a few hours!)
AD 2010? ~7 Billion?
AD 2050? ~9.2 Billion+?

From a 10 Million increase in a thousand years, to a 10 Million increase over a matter of days! Maybe Malthus wasn't so crazy after all, simply a little ahead of his time. It doesn't look too good really, does it?

Addendum:
At least it looks as if the EU is going to revue the biofuels targets - from the Guardian.