economic development

When agriculture emerged around 11,000 years ago, the world population was around 5-10 million people. In the Bible, it was called Paradise. With agriculture, more food was produced, we had more children, and the population has since grown in line with technological developments in agriculture. All this time, we have struggled to get enough food, because every time a technological innovation has made it possible to grow more food, it has also made it possible for more children to survive, and thus the population has increased. The price has always been the degradation of the natural environment, resulting in desertification, deforestation and reduced biodiversity. We see this happening today as well. Nowadays, we do not lack food, but prices are high because many rich people in the world want to live in abundance, and this creates hunger among the poor. Our most serious problems in the world are declining biodiversity, erosion, drought, deforestation, salinisation of soil and desertification. So is the solution to cultivate the shallow coastal gardens with genetically modified rice so that there can be room for 12 billion people instead of the 8 billion we have now? When will it sink in that continued technological and economic growth is not a solution to the world's problems, but rather the cause of them?