Population growth receives far too little attention in the current food crisis. Pundits blame tyrannical governments’ mismanagement and corruption (e.g., Zimbabwe); geopolitical instability; the madness of shifting land from growing plants for food to growing plants for fuel production; and the growing appetite for meat in such rising powers as China. More meat production requires more farmland to be taken from growing crops for direct human consumption and devoted to far less food-efficient use as pasturage for grazing animals and for crops to supply feedlots.

But much of the problem is more basic. There are just too many people in the world, and there are, of course, more every day — and 80 million more each year. The effects, in declining standards of living in many places, as well as in environmental degradation, are obvious. The increase should be sharply slowed and then halted.

That will require a major effort to boost contraception efforts. The United States should lead the way. Sadly, the Bush administration, for various political/religious reasons, has fought the promotion of contraception. The president’s extraordinarily irresponsible “Global Gag Rule” has barred U.S. family planning aid to private groups that support legalized abortion. But this has resulted in much needed contraception (not abortion) services being shut down and has reduced the distribution of contraception supplies — pills, condoms, etc.

The next administration must reverse this course, and work closely with other nations to rapidly slow the increase in population, which, combined with stupid energy policies and soaring oil and natural-gas prices, threatens to create catastrophe in many parts of the Third World.