Ishmael

Note: I posted it on my blog but I thought it was pretty important to think about, so I'm posting it here, too.

“Given an expanding food supply, any population will expand. This is true of any species, including the human. The Takers [us, you] have been proving this here for ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they’ve been steadily increasing food production to feed an increased population, and every time they’ve done this, the population has increased still more.”
“Why increase food production?”
“To feed the millions who’re starving.”
“And as you feed them will you extract a promise that they will not reproduce?”
“Well…no, that’s not part of the plan.”
“So what will happen if you feed the starving millions?”
“They’ll reproduce and our population will increase.”
“Without fail. This is an experiment that has been performed in your culture annually for ten thousand years, with completely predictable results. Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population.”
--
“You’ve seen the ads for sending food to starving peoples around the world?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen ads for sending contraceptives?”
“No.”
“Mother Culture talks out of both sides of her mouth on this issue. When you say to her population explosion she replies global population ctonrol, but when you say to her famine she replies increased food production.”
--
“An increase in food production in Nebraska doesn’t necessarily produce a population increase in Nebraska. It may produce a population increase somewhere in India or Africa.”
“Are you suggesting that First World farmers are fueling the Third World population explosion?”
“Ultimately, who else is there to fuel it?”
--
“You need to take a step back from the problem in order to see it in global perspective. At present there are five and a half billion of you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you’re producing enough food to feed six billion. And because you’re producing enough food for six billion, it’s a biological certainty that in three or four years there will be six billion of you. By that time, however (even though millions of you will still be starving), you’ll be producing enough food for six and a half billion—which means that in another three or four years there will be six and a half billion. But by that time you’ll be producing enough food for seven billion (even though millions of you will still be starving), which again means that in another three or four years there will be seven billion of you. In order to halt this process, you must face the fact that increasing food production doesn’t feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion.”

Frightening, isn’t it?
Basically we have to let all these people starve to death, or we have to extract agreements for them not to reproduce. Or for them to reproduce at a constant rate. And we ourselves must follow this rule as well.
This was taken from the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.