Do you really intend to argue that the quality of life in just about anytime before the 1960's is better than it is now? Quite a lot of people were still stuck on the subsistence farming treadmill.
>Nor do I think that is a given fact. More people starve today than there were people alive a few hundred years ago
So no credit for feeding the billions who eat on the back of modern, energy intensive, fertilizer production?
> on the back of modern, energy intensive, fertilizer production
One of the very things destroying the environment and negatively affecting public health?
> So no credit for feeding the billions
This isn't school and human lives and people are not statistics. The question to ask is "at what cost?". Does feeding those billions suddenly do anything to help the 800 million or so starving in a world that has enough to feed them? What about the illions of animals and plants humans have destroyed over the past few hundred years? Again, at what cost?
A related aside: when humans originally started to utilize agriculture in the beginning of human history, the overall affect was a net negative in health, life expectancy, and efficiency (i.e., time spent working).
>Nor do I think that is a given fact. More people starve today than there were people alive a few hundred years ago
So no credit for feeding the billions who eat on the back of modern, energy intensive, fertilizer production?