The economic and political problems related to population growth are all interconnected of course and shouldn't be considered in unison. As the oil runs out and prices rocket inputs for large-scale mechanised farming will rise which will push up farmers production costs and raise the price of grain; wheat, corn and basic staples will rapidly become unaffordable for the billion or so people on this planet who are already regularly on the brink of starvation.

The same oil is being spewed...

It must be twenty years now since Lester Brown wrote "Who will feed China?" but many of his predictions have proven unfounded. Basically, his case was that with diminishing water tables, increasing soil erosion, conversion of arable land into suburban sprawls, rising populations and double digit economic growth allied with an increasing 'meatification' of the diet of the new middle class, that these trends would all contribute to a massive shortfall in grain supplies. But China was a net...