Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism, warn scientists

[AlecBGreen]

132. I havent heard of him or his book

but I am familiar with the causes & effects of overshooting the carrying capacity of an environment. At the risk of oversimplifying I can envision 3 possibilities re: earth and humanity.

#1) We crash and burn. Almost (but not total) devastation. I think we have a slightly less than 50/50 shot of causing this.
#2) We keep growing indefinitely, with perhaps a "minor" die-off of "only" a few hundred million/a few billion in the upcoming century. This scenario assumes technology will eventually "save" us from ourselves. In other words, we make it as a species and move off this rock. I give this a slightly more than 50/50 chance of happening.
#3) We slow growth to reach 0% then start slowly reducing down to a few billion people. I think this is unlikely.

I think we disagree on the ability of this planet to provide a western-style level of comfort for all humans. I think it is possible even with our current global population (and even more) but it will take some serious paradigm shifts of how we do business. In addition, i think we need some serious breakthroughs in material sciences and energy production/efficiency/distribution to make it happen. I know thats a big caveat but I think its possible and I think we have fightin' odds of making it happen. In sum, I am a short term pessimist (i think we are headed for a shitstorm in the next 50-100 years) but I am a long term optimist.