Will overpopulation drive us to eat our own DEAD? Controversial academic claims humanity is moving towards cannibalism at 'ridiculous speed'

• Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich predicts population increases will lead to food crisis
• Says we will have to address if it is 'okay to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry'

By Mark Prigg

A controversial Stanford professor has claimed overpopulation could lead to humanity having to eat the bodies of the dead.

Paul Ehrlich, best known for his prediction of human 'oblivion' 46 years ago, says that current population trends are on a course that could leave cannibalism as one of the only options.

Ehrlich claimed that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need to drastically change our eating habits and agriculture.

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Ehrlich claimed that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need to drastically change our eating habits and agriculture - and even consider eating the dead.

IS LAB-GROWN MEAT THE ANSWER?

Researchers are developing new ways to grow meat in the lab.
Last year, Mark Post, a professor of tissue engineering at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, presented the first lab-grown hamburger.
To great the burger, stem cells are cultivated in a nutrient broth, allowing them to proliferate 30-fold.
Next they are combined with an elastic collagen and attached to Velcro 'anchor points' in a culture dish.
Between the anchor points, the cells self-organise into chunks of muscle.
Electrical stimulation is then used to make the muscle strips contract and 'bulk up' - the laboratory equivalent of working out in a gym.
Finally thousands of beef strips are minced up, together with 200 pieces of lab-grown animal fat, and moulded into a patty.

Ehrlich claimed that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need to drastically change our eating habits and agriculture.

'We will soon be asking is it perfectly okay to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry?,' he told HuffPost live host Josh Zepps.

He added that humanity is 'moving in that direction with a ridiculous speed.

 

'In other words between now and 45 years from now, 2.5 billion people will be added to the planet.

'We are moving towards resource wars.

Ehrlich is widely known for his 1968 publication of 'The Population Bomb' which called for 'population control' to prevent global crises from overpopulation.

'In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death,' he predicted.

'our children will inherit a totally different world, a world in which the standards, politics, and economics of the 1960’s are dead.'

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Population crisis: Between now and 45 years from now, 2.5 billion people will be added to the planet, Ehrlich claims

Ehrlich claims that the dangers of overpopulation are once again growing, blaming Republicans and the media for failing to take action.

'We all have to eat, and it's very destructive.

The ethical issues around the way we raise cattle are important, but relatively trivial compared to the wrecking of our life support systems.

'I can much more about people, because I'm a person.'

In his new book, called 'Hope On Earth,' Ehrlich worked with Michael Tobias.

'There's a tremendous amount of optimism in the book,' said Tobais.

'I really think we have  a capacity to come to the aid of individuals.'

Tobias believes that young investors could hold the key to solving the problem, by investing in technologies to solve the problem.