The End Ain't Nigh (for the world nor for predictions of its doom)

Here's a letter to the New York Times:

Reviewing Julian Cribb's book The Coming Famine, Mark Bittman approvingly summarizes Cribb's thesis that "we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.  Much of 'The Coming Famine' builds an argument that we've jumped off a cliff and that global chaos – a tidal wave of people...