Regarding how we might get there, in the Newsweek 7/30/07 issue, Jonathan Alter writes thusly about Norman Borlaug:
In only a few years, his ideas—which go far beyond seed varieties—had spread around the world and disproved Malthusian doomsday scenarios like Paul Ehrlich's 1968 best seller "The Population Bomb."One Curtis Palmer comments on Alter's piece:
Dr. Borlaug labored to provide a food supply for the supply of people. He has to his credit an amazing achievement. The problem however, has never been the supply of food, it is the supply of people, and that remains to be addressed. If we don't adddress it in the near term it will correct itself, but that will likely be brutal. Even Dr. Borlaug believes that with little land left available to be put into food production that mass starvation will not be prevented through his work, just delayed (and magnified due to population increase). Inceases in crop yield may still be possible to compensate for further population growth but eventually we will reach the end of this particular Malthusian rope.The Malthusian catastrophe looms large. See Albert Bartlett's letter to Physics Today and the DieOff site.
The History Channel has produced an extensive series based Weisman's book, Life After People.
