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In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people in the world.

Add one iddy biddy little century... 9.2 frickin' billion! [predicted]

That is one mother-fucker of a population explosion.

That's what happens in nature: if a species is over-supplied with food, most likely it will take up the slack in the blink of an eye.

In other words, nature is organised in such a way that a species will be (apart from those short periods where the slack is being taken up) forever experiencing a battle against starvation.

But we're humans. We're smarter than nature, right?

I think, in the industrialised world, most of us are under the cosy illusion any threats to civilisation will be sorted by the clever folks. We've had a century of these bods fixing everything from disease to hard labour. So, no worries, some genius will come up with some fiendish invention and everything will be fine.

In the rest of the world (Africa, Asia, Tyne & Wear), those thoughts are mostly overridden by the desire to eat. The need to feed one's self and one's family is a very powerful motivating force. If you meet a starving man, be assured, he will kill you to chew on your boot laces.

I'm not starving (although it is getting close to lunchtime), but my household's mortgage swallows half my household's income. Why is that? Partly because we're a 'creative' household [aka: slackers] and partly because there are more people who want houses, so houses cost more.

Well, I took another job, hoping I could pay my mortgage off a bit quicker. But every time I go to the supermarket, now, we're paying quite a bit more than we did last year - and to fill the tank in our car... luckily we don't need to use it much - so my extra income vanishes as soon as I collect it.

It's getting harder to stay afloat and that's because there's less stuff to go around. OK, we're nowhere near the levels of living conditions experienced by the working classes pre 1950 - but isn't that because we're still experiencing the boom times? We're still taking up the slack created by industrialised farming.

Are we going to reach a point where there is no more slack to be taken up? Surely, we must. Is this not the beginning of those times? Industry can only take so many people so far. There will be a limit, won't there?

If so, the idea that we are going to one day beat world poverty is absurd, isn't it? It's the same as building roads to beat congestion - the slack will be taken up in the blink of an eye.

It's the natural way of things.