Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the “green revolution” who won the Nobel Peace Prize died Saturday in Texas, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman said. He was 95.The Nobel committee honored Borlaug in 1970 for his contributions to high-yield crop varieties and bringing other agricultural innovations to the developing world. Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps over 1 billion lives.
Jesus Christ, how many other famous people will die this week?
The second picture is the best. RIP
Yay Minnesota!
If you think about it, he probably CREATED a lot more suffering (yet to be seen) than he prevented. Great, he saved a billion lives. Those billion people are gonna have 2.5 kids per couple and so forth. Several generations later hes indirectly responsible for starvation on an even more massive scale and exponentially greater amounts of suffering.
and if thats not irony, the father of the “green revolution” coming out of the republican strong hold of A&M- IS
yeah I kinda grinned at that comment – thanks and Gig’em
Yeah, the “green revolution” has absolutely nothing to do with the word “green” as it’s used today. Considering the food produced under the principles of the green revolution is often doused in chemical fertilizers and pesticides…and modern-day green hippie wouldn’t come near it.
Yeah I actually thought the same thing for a nanosecond. On the other hand, you honestly can’t blame him. Or you would have to blame anyone who contributes to society in any way shape or form, as well as glorify people like Hitler, Stalin and anyone who caused massive death tolls. By that logic anyway.
Progress is progress, of course it supports overpopulation indirectly, but so does almost everything else that we consider good.
Yeah, but he’s proposing a 25% population growth (2.5 over 2), when in fact right now it’s at 1.188%.
lmgtfy.com/?q=world+population+growth
What people assume and how the world actually is are two different things. The last time we rediscovered that we had the Renaissance.
Sorry for the snark, but I just wish people would actually think, instead of the kind of thinking this guy claims to use.
No, you can’t blame him, however the Law of Unintended Consequences is never more apparent than it is in this case. The “Green Revolution” may have staved off famine in the short term, but it has spawned vast monocultures, petroleum dependence (both in fuel inputs and petro based fertilizers and pesticides), High Fructose Corn Syrup which has resulted in an obesity and diabetes epidemic, and unfettered exponential population growth. Just one of these issues is scary enough, let alone all of them.
Kinda sad, ’cause he really looks like a nice guy…
The world growth percentage is actually declining.
Here, straight from the government census for the last 50 years, plus projected:
www.census.gov/ipc/www/img/worldgr.gif
So, if you actually think about it – and I mean actually think and check your facts – no, he did not create more suffering.
a growth rate by any percentage is by definition exponential. i.e. 1% of 1 million is 10,000, but the following year, 1% of 1,010,000 is 10,100. So more people are added to the earth than the year before. So don’t be fooled by percentages, they add up very quickly.
So, tell me how I can repay this man for saving our lives.
I go to A&M and every single one of my Biology and Genetics classes spend at least one lecture on this guy.
In before Lotus rant about Science.
@ActionBowman – That is only presuming that another Norman Borlaug doesn’t come around again. Like Newton said, he was not alone in his discovery, but he did it standing on the shoulders of giants. Who knows what the future brings, and people have been projecting starvation doom since Malthus, but for now, I can tell you from first hand, when you are starving you could give a rat’s a$$ about some future starvation.
With the population balloon like it is, and with petroleum becoming more and more scarce, we are very likely approaching a Malthusian Correction. The notion that we’ll just innovate our way out of the problem is foolish.
Oh, by the way, anyone remember that episode of West Wing where they mention this guy?
Wow. A billion. Interesting concept here.
So, by this line of thinking, I have regularly bought and consumed beer for 20 years. I have therefore saved billions of jobs and billions of lives with my regularity.
I am a fucking God among men.
Perhaps it is a better thing to credit people with things that they have actually done first hand and not some fictitious number.
Here is a direct Wikipedia quote:
“Borlaug’s discoveries have been estimated to have saved over one billion lives worldwide.”
Found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug