The Fraud of Agriculture

Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power.Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the gruelling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers, settling down to enjoy the pl...

 Richer is Greener

Overpopulation is a problem we can handle most effectively by targeting foreign aid and encouragement for emerging democracies wi± a stable rule of law and growing economies. Poverty and population explosions are highly correlated. We have learned much in the past four decades about the relationship between increased wealth and decreased family size and about the many ways we can reduce our environmental impact. As the "green" economist John Baden has argued, as people become better educated ...