function of food availability. An increase in food availability for a species means growth. A reduction in food availability means decline. Always. Because it‘s so important let me say that another way: invariably. An increase in food availability for a species means growth. A reduction means decline. Every time, ever and always. Semper et ubique. Without exception. Never otherwise. More food, growth. Less food, decline. Count on it. There is no species that dwindles in the midst of abundance, no species that thrives on nothing. This is the B of the ABCs of ecology.
He asserts that our culture takes food so much for granted that we have a hard time seeing the connection between the availability of food and population growth, and proceeds to describe a laboratory experiment with mice to demonstrate his assertion. Imagine if you will a cage with movable sides, so that it can be enlarged to any desired size. We begin by putting ten healthy mice of both sexes into the cage, along with plenty of food and water. In just a few days there will of course be twenty mice, and we accordingly increase the amount of food we‘re putting in the cage. In a few weeks, as we steadily increase the amount of available food, there will be forty, then fifty, then sixty, and so on, until one day there is a hundred. And let‘s say that we‘ve decided to stop the growth of the colony at a hundred. I‘m sure you realize that we don‘t need to pass out little condoms or birth-control pills to achieve this effect. All we have to do is stop increasing the amount of food that goes into the cage. Every day we put in an amount that we know is sufficient to sustain a hundred mice—and no more. This is the part that many find hard to believe, but, trust me, it‘s the truth: The growth of the community stops dead. Not overnight, of course, but in very short order. Putting in an amount of food sufficient for one hundred mice, we will find—every single time—that the population of the cage soon stabilizes at one hundred. Of course I don‘t mean one hundred precisely. It will fluctuate between ninety and a hundred ten but never go much beyond those limits. On the average, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, the population inside the cage will be one hundred. Now if we should decide to have a population of two hundred mice instead of one hundred, we won‘t have to add aphrodisiacs to their diets or play erotic mouse movies for them. We‘ll just have to increase the amount of food we put in the cage. If we put in enough food for two hundred, we‘ll soon have two hundred. If we put in enough for three hundred, we‘ll soon have three hundred: If we put in enough for four hundred, we‘ll soon have four hundred. If we put in enough for five hundred, we‘ll soon have five hundred. This isn‘t a guess, my friends. This isn‘t a conjecture. This is a certainty. Of course, you understand that there‘s nothing special about mice in this regard. The same will happen with crickets or trout or badgers or sparrows. But I fear that many people bridle at the idea that humans might be included in this list. Because as individuals we‘re able to govern our reproductive capacities, they imagine our growth as a species should be unresponsive to the mere availability of food. In Eating Fossil Fuels
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, Pfeiffer, Dale Allen clearly spells out the future ramifications for Peak Oil on Food Production, and its impending consequence: Population DieOff: Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.
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http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
Last Update: 22-12-2010: Original English Translation Other Translations Available from: www.african-white-refugees.co.nr
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