Apocalypse Soon?

Dystopian tales have always fascinated me. Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley being two of my favorites that describe an orderly but disordered and scary future.

Then there are the grim but morbidly fascinating predictions of an overpopulated, Hobbesean world where man devolves into unwashed, feral tribes at constant warfare with one another over dwindling resources.

For a more restrained view of what could happen if Europe were to be swamped by waves of poor immigrants, read Camp of the Saints, by Frenchman Jean Raspail.

Now comes Paul Farrell conjuring a fusion of catastrophic climate change and a demographic tidal wave that produces a global cataclysm making the fall of Rome look like a kids birthday party breaking up.

Thomas Malthus predicted as much almost 200 years ago, and people on the left and right have been hanging on his famous words ever since. This despite the fact that we have not yet seen his dire conclusions realized.

Our scientific minds have continued to pull our collective fat out of the fire for lo these many years, so I wouldn't yet be digging that bomb shelter with the 5,000,000 gallon water tank and a 100 years supply of MREs.

Nonetheless, Mr. Farrell does place his finger on an inexorable trend: Global population is increasing, and there are large swathes of benighted humanity that have not the technology to ameliorate the expansion of the teeming hordes. Wars are not fought for religion; wars are fought over resources, and the resource to person ratio is decreasing. Can science keep up?

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Five-reasons-population-boom-biggest/story.aspx?guid={66A7D394-5E73-4D74-8C22-4E1BC7BFB98B}