the greatest man ever

[sgxnk]

on a pure #'s basis, there's an argument this is the greatest man ever...

http://reason.com/0004/fe.rb.billions.shtml

Who has saved more human lives than anyone else in history? Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? Who still teaches at Texas A&M at the age of 86? The answer is Norman Borlaug.

...

In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." He insisted that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."

But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn't work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties. In 1965, they had begun a massive campaign to ship the miracle wheat to Pakistan and India and teach local farmers how to cultivate it properly. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book appeared, the U.S. Agency for International Development had already hailed Borlaug's achievement as a "Green Revolution."

In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million. And the yields continue to increase. Last year, India harvested a record 73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich's dire predictions in 1968, India's population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold. Soon after Borlaug's success with wheat, his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread the Green Revolution through most of Asia.

[dropkickpa]

1. Penn and Tellers Bullshit...

...did an episode called "Eat this!, and did a very nice section on Norman. It was the first time I'd heard of him and, I gotta tell ya, he's become someone I really admire. The video can be seen here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-523574361738010757&q=bullshit , and the Borlaug section starts at 13:27.

[sgxnk]

2. exactly

lurv penn and teller

also the reason article has a link to a video fo their video on norman

he is truly a "walk the walk" kinda guy

[Selatius]

3. What would've happened if Borlaug had failed?

Would the population have simply hit a plateau? Or would it have crashed?

[sgxnk]

5. that's a good question

i don't think we would have had an erlich'ian catastrophe .

otoh, i do think he's responsible (borlaug) for metric a**loads of lives saved

methinx...


population dynamics are bizarre and chaotic

i need to load up my old version of Life on the computer

[Dogmudgeon]

4. They're still kicking Ehrlich

I wonder how much space Reason gives to the fact that Borlaug's (and others') Green Revolution technology is dependent on large amounts of energy, demanding around 8 calories of external energy (in the form of synthetic fertilizers, agricultural equipment, mandatory irrigation and insecticides, etc.) for every calorie of food value?

I'm glad Borlaug (and others) made the Green Revolution possible. It prevented the famines that were certainly coming, though a few "small" ones actually did develop anyway. But to then say, "okay, that ends the problem forever, and if it does come back, the Free Market will again solve all our problems" is folly. We should have used the time to develop sustainably higher-yield agricultural methods. "Nature" -- in eco-speak, the terrestrial biosphere -- is a dynamic system. As in Adam Smith's description of a large economy, there is an Invisible Hand that is at work in natural processes. Only the Invisible Natural Hand kills as often as it sustains.

I'm sure Borlaug was chosen over his equally-deserving colleagues for Reason's kudos because he shares their attitude that "the Market will solve all our problems", including a number of highly speculative and/or power-centralizing technologies.

"Free Minds and Free Markets" is Reason's motto; "Free" means "Libertarians Only" with their peculiar idea of what freedom is ("the freedom to obey the boss, to give all your money to the landlord, and to vote for whomever they tell you to"). Which is why 38 years after Ehrlich first wrote about the prospect of famine, they're still kicking him. You see, concerns of famine have returned now that the price of fertilizer and agricultural technology have started to increase -- dramatically -- along with the price of oil. Reason wants its readers to forget that there are some things that "free markets" can't cure -- and to keep kicking Paul Ehrlich.

--p!

[sgxnk]

6. there are plenty

of non-absolutist free marketers at reason, especially on their blog. only a small %age of reason folks are extremist to that extent.

yes, they have a fair share of extremist free market folks, just like DU has a share of extremist state worshippers (tm). but there are plenty of non-absolutists

i don't think they think that the free market is ALWAYS the solution

i just think they give it more credit than most statists in the dem or repub party give it

im all for dems with a healthy dose of libertarianism. and get tired of nannystaters

fwiw, most famines, as has been shown over and over again, are political in nature. not caused by nature. just used by politicians (mao, stalin, etc.) as an excuse to starve their people INTENTIONALLY

ehrlich was such a BROADLY cited quack, that ridicule of him still rings true