Friday, September 18, 2009

Borlaug: "two opposing forces"

In his Friday Newsletter (What’s New), physicist Bob Parks notes the passing of Norman Borlaug, a “brilliant scientist” whose “work in agronomy led to the Green Revolution and saved perhaps 1 billion lives.”

Park quotes from Borlaug’s 1970 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
"We are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction. . . Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction, effectively and humanely . . . but has not yet used this potential adequately. There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until food production and population control unite in a common effort."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, with only 6.5 billion plus of us, we can start Victory Gardens in preparation for world collapse. Fish populations are crashing, bees, birds, frogs, jungle primates. We should be queing up for our share. But people in a number of places are already starving. I guess we caught up to the others after all.

13 Stoploss said...

I think we're supposed to worry that Swine Flu will even out the numbers some. :)

Anonymous said...

Can Fuentes tell which party a person belongs to based on the neatness of the lawn that a shitload of old, trashed cars are permanently parked on? And said cars have peeling and faded bumpers stickers of the confederate flag?

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...