SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From Phys.org:
Global food consumption and production is seriously unbalanced. In the UK alone we threw away 4.4 million tonnes of "avoidable" food waste in 2015 – that is food that was edible before it was discarded – which equates to £13 billion worth of food wasted, or £470 per household. Meanwhile, nearly 800 million people globally are chronically undernourished.
The world population is projected to grow to 9 billion people by the middle of this century. We face a huge challenge in finding ways to adequately feed this rapidly growing population whilst also protecting the natural environment.
However it is not just the amount of food production and the balance of its distribution that are key concerns for sustainably feeding the planet. We also need to think about what we are eating.
Presently western diets are characterised by a high proportion of animal foodstuffs, and this is a problem not just for our health, but for the environment. The Hunger Project has cited climate change as one of the hidden sources of hunger. In doing so it highlights how food production and the environment are inextricably linked.
Meat and dairy production requires more land, more water and has higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant based alternatives. As the global population continues to grow, we will need to be ever more prudent with the resources that are required for food production. We must consider whether the proportion of resources currently devoted to meat and dairy production is optimal given the numbers needing to be fed and the environmental impacts such diets can cause.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by dak664 on Friday June 02 2017, @11:03AM (7 children)
The "green revolution" provides the calories needed to feed the population only until fossil fuels run out. After that humans will have to use their own energy to get those calories. Historically that means everyone working the fields except for a few privileged overlords, or a more equal society that exploits wide-ranging stock animals to gather the calories.
The former might support 100x more people, but I'd opt for the latter.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday June 02 2017, @11:18AM (6 children)
Or electric power. There will be plenty of that around. Or coal-based synthetic oil or biofuel. The world doesn't end just because oil gets more expensive.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Friday June 02 2017, @11:30AM (3 children)
Dead right. It was a Saudi who said: "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil".
There is plenty of oil, and there still will be when we stop using it. When I was a kid there was a proud boast that the UK had enough coal still in the ground to last 300 years. Only 30 years later and we aren't mining it anymore.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday June 02 2017, @11:45AM
Hmmm that's actually pretty apt saying. Dammit, I must give them this small victory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
Nothing to do with scarcity of material (estimated Trillion tonnes in the Celtic & Irish seas off Wales alone), but everything to do with politics, hell, I can walk 5 minutes from my house here in Scotland and find coal from an open seam, and this isn't an area traditionally known for coal mining (nearest workings approx 36 miles away).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @09:22PM
s/in /under /
(don't know what I was thinking...)
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:02AM (1 child)
Didn't say the world ends. Said humans would have to return to sustainable power, which means capped by insolation.
Yes, the first hydropower dam was built to make nitrogen fertilizer, a laughingly small amount by today's standards. Do the math to find out how many idle human hands renewable power can support without the help of stock animals, and kudos if you can fudge more than a hundred million.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2017, @03:10AM
Which is a huge cap, orders of magnitude larger than humanity currently uses.
You misspelled "trillions" there. I'm not saying it's a good idea to cram that many people on Earth, just that our dependence on oil is way exaggerated. Solar power is more than ample to run our global society.