A host of issues
You've raised a host of issues, let me try to address some:
1) I am not aware of any environmental groups or high-profile activists (there are always nuts bars, right, left and centre) that have suggested anything like 'killing' people or letting people starve.
The historical issue, in the Green Revolution is that the miracle was in fact only a deferral of pain, without a proper, comprehensive plan.
When it comes to population, we know that given access to modern birth control, from condoms, to pills, IUDs to injections to even vasectomies, both women and men will choose fewer children, on average.
If you offer these, you don't need heavy-handed laws in the same way.
Good sex education, discussing birth control/family planning, along with shifting people to a more urban lifestyle (where producing large families does not show the same superficial advantage) will largely address the problem on its own.
We can, if necessary adjust financial incentives as well (though i doubt this is necessary) by curtailing parental leave, or child benefits etc. etc.
Most western countries, even with generous parental benefits, largely produce children at or below the rate of replacement. No eugenics required.
2) There is a carrying capacity limit. And yes, it does vary according to lifestyle, technology, means-of-production, level of consumption and so on.
But at any given time, there is a limit pending making changes in the preceding.
If one goes over that limit, then resources are consumed at an excessive rate, which artificially diminishes their future availability. Its not merely food.
Though, there is a practical limit for production, which yes, can be offset by 20-storey greenhouses, as long as you don't mind paying $12.00 for your carrots.
In any event, no such greenhouses yet exist. But carrying capacity goes beyond food; its water (which we aren't making any more of); its fish, which we are running out of, all over the world; its inadvertently wiping out whole species, which on a purely selfish level might have providing new discoveries in medicine for humans, but oops, they're gone, as we destroyed their habitat for logging or agriculture or cities.
Limits can be bent, or grown, but not ignored.
3) As for all the old people on pension; there is already a looming crisis in Canada (and worse in the U.S. and many other places); as the Baby Boom was an unfortunate anomaly which created too many schools and now will force up other costs in a bubble, which will only deflate 20 years + later.
That, along with longer life expectancy does mean than the retirement age must and should be bumped up.
When 65 was first used, most people didn't live to see 75.
Pension contributions were much lower, because you didn't have to pay them for too long to too many.
They were always intended to be a 1-3 year reward for hard service to society followed by in essence a disability cheque as most beyond 68 or so could not have worked had they wished to do do.
While we needed make the system that tight again; we are overdue to curtain this notion of paying people pensions for 20-30 years of their life.
I would argue that anything less than 70 is even now an unsustainable retirement age; and 75 will be a much more reasonable and likely choice in the next few years.
Once that is done, at current contribution rates, we would be able to manage (at existing pension levels, indexed to inflation) to fully fund the pension system even with a modestly smaller youth population.
No one is suggesting that world population will or should collapse, only that it needs to stabilize, and decline some, while resources and people are better matched.
4) GM Foods
I for one do not have a wholesale objection to GM foods.
I do, however think they are not only not the whole solution, but it is premature to suggest they are even a worthwhile or necessary part of any solution were world hunger is concerned.
While it is true that crops have been studied, it is also true there are a host of unknowns. You can't possibly study multi-generational cumulative impact when the product has barely been around for a single generation.
So there lies problem one.
Beyond which, the purpose of the largest GM crops, Roundup-Ready Corn and Soy; is so that they can accommodate heavy pesticide use to reduce losses to insects.
So far so good. Except, what effect does that have on the insects? No, I am not a bleeding heart for grasshoppers, but I am thinking for instance of honey bees, which has recently been threatened with collapse for reasons not yet fully clear. We know that those insect populations are part of a food chain that includes many small birds, which are showing marked declines across Canada that have been linked to the use of pesticides on crops.
In other words there is a chain reaction that goes far beyond the superficial matter of can humans safely eat this.
There are a host of questions on the invasiveness of new crops, and whether they pose a thread to native species or biodiversity; the law of unintended consequences remains a serious threat.
Its not that this is 'franken food' or that well intended experiments ought not go on; but rather that an abundance of caution is required, and the risks need to be very carefully weighed, against benefits which may or may not be that great.
And never mind the goat genes, what about those pig genes in the tomatoes, which as I understand it, are approved.
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In closing I am not, nor do I think anyone of profile is simply against GM foods.
Nor, was I demeaning the good intentions or partial accomplishments of the Green Revolution.
I was merely pointing out that good intentions have not in fact solved the problems they preported to.
Further that they did in fact leave other problems unchecked, such that India (and other locales) may yet face worse crises. GM Foods (or as pointed out, mere cultivars) are not the solution to everything and maybe not even the first or best partial solution.
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Oh and kindly stop engaging in character assassination of people who shop at Whole Foods. The fact that you don't like to pay good for money for quality food while easing your conscience at the same time is fine. But I hardly consider it a character flaw or intellectual blind spot in others.
