If everyone shifts trophic status to roughly herbivore level, and we educate all the world’s women to secondary level, we have a chance.
The difference between 12 billion and 9 billion people in 2050 is one child per woman. If all the world’s women were educated to secondary level, fertility would drop by about 1.7 children per woman. And we can probably feed 9 billion herbivorous people, if we can maintain the crop diversity of the major grain crops high enough to avoid catastrophic disease outbreaks.
Read more from Steve Carpenter at Resilience Science.
I’ve been saying this for years! So, I’ll add Black Swan to the long list of books I must read asap.
Ah, we see, it’s all up to women. Yes, definitely provide women with education but you are forgetting the other half of the equation. When men around the world start getting educated enough to take responsibility for their role in getting women pregnant (after all we can’t do it by ourselves) then perhaps we’ll get somewhere more honest and more real.
@Kealoha –
Educated women are better able to say no and mean it.