Open letter to Kevin Myers

Lestat wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Myers goes way beyond a debate on whether charity works or not - he denigrates the whole continent as a bunch of over-sexed beggars who should be let die..

On the other side of the coin doesn't the charity industry denigrate the whole continent as a bunch of plain beggars.

Sometimes they do but most are too close to the situatio and too aware of the need to respect African self-determination during the post colonial period - which we owe them some help with. It's wrong to say that charities are describing Africa as a 'bunch of plain beggars'. You can't describe a starving child in words or images that sanitise the truth. Most charities make a big effort to walk the line between compassion and condescension.

Aragon wrote:

Sometimes they do but most are too close to the situationd too aware of the need to respect African self-determination during the post colonial period - which we owe them some help with. .

If you regard aid to Africa as a debt owed by the former colonial powers then Ireland has no aid obligation since we aren't a former colonial power. It also leaves Ethiopia out of the aid loop since it wasn't ever a colony.

Lestat wrote:

On the other side of the coin doesn't the charity industry denigrate the whole continent as a bunch of plain beggars.

Aragon wrote:

It's wrong to say that charities are describing Africa as a 'bunch of plain beggars'....

By the simple act of seeking aid for Africa the charity industry describes it as a continent of beggars.You never hear anybody coming on the radio or writing to the papers telling us when things are going good someplace in Africa.

Any excuse to reproduce my favourite Myers piece...

Quote :

What a glimpse into the face of the new Ireland one gets when one travels by Dublin bus. I made such a journey recently, on the upper deck of the 65, from the city centre to Blessington, with large numbers of the tattooed classes as travelling companions, certainly as far as Tallaght.

Now life has taught me to treat people with tattoos with the deference I normally reserve for Garda officers with Uzis who have just been stung by wasps. So when a tattoo lights up in a no-smoking zone, in general, I inwardly counsel timidity, which in my lexicon also goes by the name of prudence. An Australian tourist sitting near me on the 65 was clearly unacquainted with that lexicon, for when a young she-tattoo beside him lit up, he asked her, very politely, would she mind putting her cigarette out´, because she was showing no respect for other passengers.

"Shut the f**k up," declared this hospitable paragon loudly, "and f**k off back where you came from, you f**kin' bleedin' foreigner."

Well, really. One can just about endure other people's illegal tobacco smoke, and perhaps even maintain a certain heroic aloofness while doing so; but there is something in the old system which rises in ungovernable revolt when visitors to this country are thus addressed, especially if they are called a "fuqqin forddennor."

However, I am at disadvantage when talking to a tattoo, for not even my fondest admirer would concede that I am a master of Ireland's numerous argots and accents; and tattoo is quite beyond me. But silence was equally beyond me. Turning to the young and fragrant creature, I simply said: "Our young visitor here is perfectly correct. It is against the law to smoke on a bus. Might I suggest you put the cigarette out?"

My memory is sometimes an able instrument, and there are certain things which it can recall which should be beyond its power of retention but which strangely are not. But alas, it is not able to do credit to the ensuing stream of abuse and contumely, which would have drawn a nunly pallor to the cheek of a sergeant-major. In essence, and converting her terminology to more Latinate and more circumspect language, this petal of Irish womanhood simply informed me to mind my coital business, that I was a copulating pudendum, and if I didn't button my copulating lip, she would coitally well defenestrate me, using a boot about my conjugating private parts to achieve that objective.

Well, something on those lines, anyway.

And then she embarked upon a different tactic. "Who the phuc do yew tink yew are anyways, wid your shoes, and your suit, and your phuqqin' Sunday Independent?. A phuqqin' solicitor?" The creature was clearly unacquainted with any broadsheet other than that august organ emanating from Middle Abbey Street, so she assumed the copy of this newspaper that I was reading was the Sunday Independent. But that did not hurt quite so much as the presumption that I belonged to the lawyering classes; here, now, was a crushing blow, and one which left me speechless.

At which point my antipodean friend chose - I think on balance inadvisedly - to speak up again. "Look," he said, in a voice plangent with sweet reason, "would you please put that cigarette out?" To which St Theresa of the Roses replied (loosely translated): "Hearken well, oh gentlemen of foreign extraction, and stay silent, else I shall rearrange your copulating reproductive organs with my coital feet - do you catch my conjugal drift?" And so saying, the she-tattoo sat back in her seat, her face triumphant as she received the congratulations of strangers around her. And with the principles which she had so bravely defended now vindicated, her neighbours then promptly lit up.

I confess that my reserves of valour, limited at the best of times, by this time had been squandered in the futile assault on her single cigarette, and I was no more capable of storming the veritable fortress of cigarette-smokers now around me than I was of converting Alabama to Islam.

There was a time when a foreign tourist such as the (now silent, scarlet-cheeked) Australian would have been defended by most natives in such circumstances. That time, it now seems, is past. No doubt there has always been a tradition of not obeying the law; but there was an equal tradition of courtesy and hospitality which would have caused a large group of Irish people to have defended an outsider against such vile abuse. Instead, the she-tattoo was hailed as a hero - or perhaps heroin would have been a better word - and our visitor was left to muse upon what an enchanting country Ireland has become.

Travelling by bus into the city doesn't even save time: this trip of 20 miles took two hours (a journey made all the more fascinating by a journey through most of Tallaght's back streets). How often does Dublin Bus management actually travel on the upper deck of its vehicles to see how truly abominable it is up there? How many people have been prosecuted for illegal smoking and for threatening passengers who complain? And how really stupid must you be to travel by Dublin Bus when you have a car?

Here is a promise. Mark it well, Dublin Bus management, and weep: regardless of how long I have to sit in my car in a Dublin traffic jam, I will never travel on one of your sanguinary copulating omnibuses, ever again.

Lestat wrote:

Aragon wrote:

Sometimes they do but most are too close to the situationd too aware of the need to respect African self-determination during the post colonial period - which we owe them some help with. .

If you regard aid to Africa as a debt owed by the former colonial powers then Ireland has no aid obligation since we aren't a former colonial power. It also leaves Ethiopia out of the aid loop since it wasn't ever a colony.

Lestat wrote:

On the other side of the coin doesn't the charity industry denigrate the whole continent as a bunch of plain beggars.

Aragon wrote:

It's wrong to say that charities are describing Africa as a 'bunch of plain beggars'....

By the simple act of seeking aid for Africa the charity industry describes it as a continent of beggars.You never hear anybody coming on the radio or writing to the papers telling us when things are going good someplace in Africa.

Ireland owes Africa a large debt - our missionaries have played a huge part in interfering with spiritual, social and cultural aspects of life in Africa - in stripping African people of a sense of worth and belief in their own culture. Latterly, there has been a lot more compassion and reflection about this by religious orders over there and there is no doubt that they have done some good. But they played their part in the psychological rape of Africa formerly, which is a significant part of why there is so much strife there now. We know all about this having had our language and therefore our self-expression taken from us and now suffer the highest rates of schizophrenia in the world as a consequence. All post colonial societies suffer high rates of schizophrenia.

Cookie - a 'witty' piece from Myers to be sure. But it's the 'fuqqin forddners' mentality that his column on Africa was most likely to appeal to - as he must have well understood. Imagine that same 'tattoo' with a few pints in him or her, if an African person asked her to put a cigarette out just after mr/s tattoo had read that article?

Quote :

But it's the 'fuqqin forddners' mentality that his column on Africa was most likely to appeal to - as he must have well understood. Imagine that same 'tattoo' with a few pints in him or her, if an African person asked her to put a cigarette out just after mr/s tattoo had read that article?

I can't imagine the person written about in that article being able to read anything much that Myers has written - she certainly wouldn't recognise herself in the piece that CookieMonster quoted above.

In fact, the kind of person who is likely to be incited to act out of a hatred for African people, not all of whom are black, doesn't need Myers to give them a blessing.

Lestat wrote:

Aragon wrote:

Sometimes they do but most are too close to the situationd too aware of the need to respect African self-determination during the post colonial period - which we owe them some help with. .

If you regard aid to Africa as a debt owed by the former colonial powers then Ireland has no aid obligation since we aren't a former colonial power. It also leaves Ethiopia out of the aid loop since it wasn't ever a colony.

Lestat wrote:

On the other side of the coin doesn't the charity industry denigrate the whole continent as a bunch of plain beggars.

Aragon wrote:

It's wrong to say that charities are describing Africa as a 'bunch of plain beggars'....

By the simple act of seeking aid for Africa the charity industry describes it as a continent of beggars.You never hear anybody coming on the radio or writing to the papers telling us when things are going good someplace in Africa.

Ireland has taken plenty of aid itself over the years. I never heard anyone complain here that we were too proud and self sufficient to take the eurobillions.

I agree with you Lestat that we get a uniformly negative picture of Africa from charities and the media. Patronising and condescending too. But it is a one-dimensional caricature and Myers should know better than to rely on it.

slartibuckfast wrote:

Diarmuid Doyle: Myers 'becomes a kind of Pied Piper to the white supremacist classes'

Quote :

Once he moved to the Indo, he found himself surrounded by people as right-wing as himself (his column on Friday, for example, was on the opposite page to that of the conservative Catholic, David Quinn). To make himself heard, and justify his huge salary, he has had to shout much louder, on a more consistent basis. His arguments have consequently become more top of the head, less based on logic and fact (there were several errors in his Africa piece, for example) and designed primarily to outrage.

"He only says it to annoy, because he knows it teases"

Unlike DD, I would quite happily martyr Myers

The article cookiemonster quoted showed that he at least has a proper degree of respect for the Indos.

Aragon wrote:

Cookie - a 'witty' piece from Myers to be sure. But it's the 'fuqqin forddners' mentality that his column on Africa was most likely to appeal to - as he must have well understood. Imagine that same 'tattoo' with a few pints in him or her, if an African person asked her to put a cigarette out just after mr/s tattoo had read that article?

You know I never though of that, just as well I posted it in this thread, isn't it?

Aragon wrote:

Ireland owes Africa a large debt - our missionaries have played a huge part in interfering with spiritual, social and cultural aspects of life in Africa - in stripping African people of a sense of worth and belief in their own culture.

I don't think that the extension of christianity to Africa falls within the definition of colonialism. Apart from that I thought you would have been a fan of diversity. If we accept that African immigrants coming here introducing their culture and traditions is a good thing, then we must also accept that the reverse is true. Irish missionaries going to Africa introducing their culture and traditions is also a good thing.

cactus flower wrote:

Ireland has taken plenty of aid itself over the years. I never heard anyone complain here that we were too proud and self sufficient to take the eurobillions.

Very true. But that aid wasn't charity, it was an investment. After 30 years of being a net recipient of EU money Ireland has become a net contributor. Hopefully this will continue for many years so that we will pay back the debt. Also in return for the EU membership and by extension the "eurobillions" we had to conform to acceptable standards of democracy and the rule of law.

None of that applies to aid to Africa.

multilateral aid,
tied aid,
emergency aid,
development aid,
bilateral aid
voluntary aid,
'imposed' aid,

... just what kind of aid is in question in any of the above posts?

This appeared in yesterday's Indo. What do posters think? I find it a rather peculiar and badly written non-defence/apologia.

He takes a minor swipe at the sub-editor who wrote the headline, adds a substantial section about female circumcision(? why), and describes his own desire to write tear-jerking purple prose about fly-infested children rather than what he actually saw in Ethiopia 20 years ago.

And then this, which muddies rather than clears the water in my opinion:

Quote :

Am I able to rebut good and honourable people like John O'Shea, who are now warning us that once again, we must feed the starving Ethiopian children? No, of course I'm not. But I am lost in awe at the dreadful options open to us. This is the greatest moral quandary facing the world. We cannot allow the starving children of Ethiopia to die.

Yet the wide-eyed children of 1984-86, who were saved by western medicines and foodstuffs, helped begin the greatest population explosion in human history, which will bring Ethiopia's population to 170 million by 2050. By that time, Nigeria's population will be 340 million, (up from just 19 million in 1930). The same is true over much of Africa.

Thus we are heading towards a demographic holocaust, with a potential premature loss of life far exceeding that of all the wars of the 20th Century. This terrible truth cannot be ignored.

But back in Ireland, there are sanctimonious ginger-groups, which yearn to prevent discussion, and even to imprison those of us who try, however imperfectly, to expose the truth about Africa. And of that saccharine, sickly shower, more tomorrow.

...by which he means, I suppose, tomorrow and not today.

Any comments on this article? I'm not sure that it furthers the debate about the efficacy and ethics of aid beyond what the previous one did - the tone is tired for a start.

However it does raise the question of cowardly journalism and the way in which stories from the developing world are written to appeal to certain emotions in the reader.

Your're right Kate it does sound tired but it does reveal that he is thinking of demographic holocausts which is a fact that the world should be looking at as a possibility not just in Africa but elsewhere as burgeoning population puts more and more pressure on everything, especially food and energy not to mention human living space and privacy/dignity.

That it sounds tired is the trouble with using a device in the first place - you have to keep some kind of ball rolling after that which could reveal what grade of craftsperson you are in the field of writing. At least he is keeping up the offending the 'saccharine, sickly shower' pose which I don't think is a device at all.

Does he use this style to try to piss the Establishment off?

Kate P wrote:

This appeared in yesterday's Indo. What do posters think? I find it a rather peculiar and badly written non-defence/apologia.

He takes a minor swipe at the sub-editor who wrote the headline, adds a substantial section about female circumcision(? why), and describes his own desire to write tear-jerking purple prose about fly-infested children rather than what he actually saw in Ethiopia 20 years ago.

And then this, which muddies rather than clears the water in my opinion:

Quote :

Am I able to rebut good and honourable people like John O'Shea, who are now warning us that once again, we must feed the starving Ethiopian children? No, of course I'm not. But I am lost in awe at the dreadful options open to us. This is the greatest moral quandary facing the world. We cannot allow the starving children of Ethiopia to die.

Yet the wide-eyed children of 1984-86, who were saved by western medicines and foodstuffs, helped begin the greatest population explosion in human history, which will bring Ethiopia's population to 170 million by 2050. By that time, Nigeria's population will be 340 million, (up from just 19 million in 1930). The same is true over much of Africa.

Thus we are heading towards a demographic holocaust, with a potential premature loss of life far exceeding that of all the wars of the 20th Century. This terrible truth cannot be ignored.

But back in Ireland, there are sanctimonious ginger-groups, which yearn to prevent discussion, and even to imprison those of us who try, however imperfectly, to expose the truth about Africa. And of that saccharine, sickly shower, more tomorrow.

...by which he means, I suppose, tomorrow and not today.

Any comments on this article? I'm not sure that it furthers the debate about the efficacy and ethics of aid beyond what the previous one did - the tone is tired for a start.

However it does raise the question of cowardly journalism and the way in which stories from the developing world are written to appeal to certain emotions in the reader.

Do you have a link, Kate? From this extract he seems to have backed down considerably. Which version does he believe?

The response is pretty poor stuff. He doesn't seem to understand that most people would prefer to see an "evil, misogynistic and dysfunctional social system" perpetuated, rather than let thousands of children starve and tell them it's for their own good. And that's assuming that everyone thinks the very worst of Ethiopian society. He doesn't address the question of his gross generalisations at all, we are still to believe that the entire continent is a miserable place without any redeeming features. The circumcision piece illustrates how Victorian his thinking is. He somehow thinks that female circumcision, (which is, of course, the fault of men) could have been rooted out with sufficient political will. He seems unaware that parts of Africa have been trying to end circumcision for over a century now. Governments have opposed it. Religious leaders have opposed it. Men-folk have opposed it, all to no avail.

It reminds me of a piece Ian O'Doherty wrote a while back. He gave out about corruption in Africa and the pointlessness of giving aid, only for it to disappear into someone’s back-pocket. Meanwhile the schools and the hospitals don’t get built. All very reasonable, till he suggested that no aid should be given to African countries until they could guarantee democracy, equality for women and gay rights. That’s three conditions we don’t have in this countries, if the critics are to be believed. What about the schools and the hospitals?

With O’Doherty we got, at best, a fearful prioritisation of western ideology over on-the-ground necessities and at worst a deliberate and cynical demand for unattainable conditions which would mean not having to give any aid. I get the same vibe from Myers, who requires the sacrifice of thousands of people in the name of ‘civilisation’. As with O’Doherty the proper issue, corruption or the population explosion inparts of Africa gets sidelined.

Link here

Sorry cf - thought I'd added it at the time.

RTE was reporting this morning that an African boy playing GAA in Carlow was seriously racially abused on the pitch. The GAA have a pretty good record as an organisation. So far as I can work out what was chanted was not dissimilar to what Kevin Myers said but less literate in wording - i.e. kill the f***ing n****r

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/story.asp?j=kfaucwcwojgboj&p=yxzz58x&n=1022657

I await Mr. Myers comments on this with interest.

I read about this too, but I'd be inclined to treat the report with a degree of caution for this reason:

Remove the last word from the chant and replace it with just about anything else and you'll hear what many people shout (unfortunately) from the sidelines at a GAA match - they can be very fraught, even at u-14 level.

It's an unfortunate combination of two inappropriate phrasings coming together. I can't imagine that there was any racist sentiment in the first half of the sentence, though there clearly was in the latter half. Hard to believe the parents stood by and let it continue though.

Kate P wrote:

I read about this too, but I'd be inclined to treat the report with a degree of caution for this reason:

Remove the last word from the chant and replace it with just about anything else and you'll hear what many people shout (unfortunately) from the sidelines at a GAA match - they can be very fraught, even at u-14 level.

It's an unfortunate combination of two inappropriate phrasings coming together. I can't imagine that there was any racist sentiment in the first half of the sentence, though there clearly was in the latter half. Hard to believe the parents stood by and let it continue though.

I would be inclined to accept the report having listened to someone who was there on the radio this morning. Is this something you will be following up?

Racist chanting was a big thing in English soccer for a while until both management and supporters clubs took it on and walloped it.

I won't be following it up, workwise, if that's what you mean. it's out of my area and I'm up to my eyes with other stuff - which I should be doing now...

But the fact that this is hitting the news now at the height of the GAA season means that it's unlikely we'll get to the stage that English soccer reached - indeed soccer in general. Now that Paul Galvin has had his suspension overturned, there's space for something more important in GAA news...

I wouldn't like to link this incident with Myers. I just can't see under-fourteens appreciating him. I'd be inclined to blame youthful exuberance myself rather than any deep racist sentiment. But I wasn't there.

Myers more recent article as linked to above is more moderate and tempered and factual. It is probably the article he should have written in the first place. He says he used strong language to stir the debate. I think he went beyond that. The fact that 90% plus of the 800 emails he received were in favour of his article does not surprise me either. He went over the top and 720 people emailed him in their support. That is a dangerous sentiment to be fostering.

The first article stoked ignorance instead of informing. The second article makes a better stab at it but does not in any way retract the blunderbus racist generalisations made in the first article. It also offers no solution other than letting people die.

The turpitude that is the Irish Independent goes from strength to strength. Let's hope Denis O'Brien can get a hold of that paper and change its lazy ways.

http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=1062458

Quote :

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have discovered a quirk in the constantly evolving HIV virus that they say will help them to develop an effective vaccine for the prevention of the virus in the next 10 years.

"It is a long road; the virus has been around for almost 25 years, vaccine efforts have failed again and again, but we think we have a unique solution to the problem," said Sudhir Paul, a UT medical school pathology professor who has worked to find an effective combatant to the HIV virus for the past 19 years.

Along with fellow researchers, Paul has identified one region on the surface of the virus that is mostly unchanging. He explained that this small region is critical for the virus to bind to cells; without this section, the virus would not be able to infect the cells.

The UT researchers call this small region the "Achilles heel" of HIV, which causes AIDS.

Good news if they can make use of that Achilles heel - how did it evade them for so long?

Quote :

This vaccine would be drastically different from current HIV treatments, which are used to block some parts of the virus' life cycle. Current treatments can have severe side effects, including toxicity, and 15 percent of patients are resistant to them, he said.

"Moreover, these drugs are not affordable, particularly for the third world," Paul said. "We need a cheap preventative vaccine that will take care of the virus from birth to death."

Paul said the federal government has been financially supporting the group of researchers for over a decade, but in order to move forward with the clinical trials, they will need the support of the private sector. He said when the researchers can get financial backing from a private company, development of the vaccine will follow.

"I am very optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the time I turn 65," said Paul, who is 55 years old.

A vaccine would change Africa if not the world - everyone would be at it left, right and centre - maybe even Kevin would get some.

Auditor #9 wrote:

A vaccine would change Africa if not the world - everyone would be at it left, right and centre - maybe even Kevin would get some.

A vaccine would change the lives of those who could afford it. The whole world is at it left, right and centre anyway and Kevin is 61 so he needs to start taking it easy in that regard.

Lots of good points made already. I've not read them all so I'll probably be repeating them below....but anyways.

I think it's important to point out that Myers was factually incorrect in much of his article. For instance in the example of Ethiopia, the corruption argument and the overpopulation argument.

In terms of corruption the underlining intention was clear with respect to smearing the entirety of the continent with corruption, --as opposed to the reality where corruption is focused on a local minority much of which is corrupted by non-African sources. Myers was factually incorrect in apportioning blame solely to Africans.

Stiglitz has documented the process by which an elite minority is corrupted within those countries by the international institutions of finance ( Globalization and Its Discontents )

see the briberisation example of Stiglitz in the article below (1)

Quote :

"Step One is Privatization—which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, Briberization. Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders—using the World Banks demands to silence local critics—happily flogged their electricity and water companies. You could see their eyes widen at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets."

Myer's use of Ethiopian aid money is a good example of his fact-free, reactionary style.

There should be no puzzlement as to what happened to the aid to Ethiopia in the 80s as the Nobel economist and former head of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz has outlined exactly what happened. See the extract below.

(1)
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/079.html

Quote :

"A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopias new president in the nations first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasurys vault in Washington."

And as regards comparing the growth of East Asian nations and Africa. There is no surprise here either, as Africa actually grew steadily in the decades from the 50s to 1980 (from World Bank figures) when native Africans gained independence and, in the main, had more control over their own economies.

Also, I think it is only fair to blame those who are in control of any economy for the ills of that economy.

However from the 80s to the present day, --when the economies of Sub-Saharan African nations have ( for all intents and purposes) been under the control of the contraindicative, anti-development, neoliberal policies and strictures of the IMF and the World Bank --they have declined drastically economically and in terms of health and education. Having said that they have been profitable for foreign capital, a corrupted native elite, Western Banks and some MNCs.

The fact of the matter is we earn far more in profits and trade from Africa than we ever do in the aid we give, --even when you factor out the aid that is used to prise in contracts for the donor countries companies (google UK development aid, Tanzania , Biwater and the Adam Smith institute to see the point .....) and/or to open their markets to our manufacturers' and service providers' products.

But in Myers world the IMF/World Bank and such forced Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) don't exist. The mountains of evidence of the failures stemming from such policies don't exist!

And yet the failures should be laid, not at the door of the Western financial institutions, but at the majority of native Africans who had no input in their creation!

Unlike Myers this analysis is based upon undisputed economic evidence. In fact, evidence from quarters Myer's would surely be a fan of.

In contrast countries such as South Korean and Japan (et al) had the choice to protect their industries and native manufacturers. They were lucky enough not to be forced to use 'Washington Consensus' policies which have been shown to fail time and again with respect to native economic development.

Finally on this point, John O'Shea's overall analysis, and unerring focus on native corruption is very unusual within the NGO community. So its is not surprising that Myers is a fan of him.



Myers population argument is massively overplayed and there's evidence that on a global level it won't be the most important environmental factor(see 2) which is likely to be economic growth.

Therefore the Myer's Malthusian argument makes no sense when targeting Africa as there are existent worse examples elsewhere in terms of pressure on the planet or local resources. Again there's an underlining attempt to say Africans should not have similar population densities. Given the choice of our economic growth or for Africa to have comparable population densities we should choose our growth, or continue to increase meat consumption or to use grain to feed cars not people. Such an argument is morally bankrupt.

(2)
an article by George Monbiot with references on the relative importance of population growth.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/01/29/population-bombs/

Quote :

"..a paper published in Nature last week suggests that that there is an 88% chance that global population growth will end during this century(6)."

[...]

"...So economic growth this century could be 32 times as big an environmental issue as population growth. And, if governments, banks and businesses have their way, it never stops. By 2115, the cumulative total rises to 3200%, by 2138 to 6400%. As resources are finite, this is of course impossible, but it is not hard to see that rising economic activity - not human numbers - is the immediate and overwhelming threat...."

[...]

How will another three billion be fed?

Even here, however, population growth is not the most immediate issue: another sector is expanding much faster. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that global meat production will double by 2050 (growing, in other words, at two and a half times the rate of human numbers)(18 ). The supply of meat has already tripled since 1980: farm animals now take up 70% of all agricultural land (19) and eat one third of the world’s grain(20). In the rich nations we consume three times as much meat and four times as much milk per capita as the people of the poor world(21). While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent.