Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/11/mass-starvation-humanity-flogging-land-death-earth-food

by aviziva • 8 years ago

37 14 8 years ago

erpaa4• 8 years ago

"I am plagued by visions of starving people seeking to escape from grey wastes, being beaten back by armed police."

Excellent. But where are they escaping to?

All countries north of 40th parallel are living far beyond their sustenance level. For example Sweden can maintain population of one million and then the food must as simple as possible, mostly potatoes.

erpaa4• 8 years ago

This fact comes from history. There were mass famines at that population level around 1000 AD. The reason why vikings started to travel to other countries murdering and pillaging.

JPLeRouzic• 8 years ago

Actually Vikings invaded much of western Europe as well as Ukraine earlier starting in 800AD in response to Carolus Magnus proselytism, and it is contested that they were "murdering and pillaging". Most probably this vision was propagated by their enemies in the Christian world.

We do not know for the "mass famines", but this time was the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300). It is thought that between c. 950 and c. 1100 was the Northern Hemisphere's warmest period since the Roman Warm Period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Age

ahje2• 8 years ago

According to some semi-official sources I found with a quick Googling, Sweden was mostly self-sufficient up until the mid-90's. Dunno how many people lived there during the 90's, but I take it that it was more than a million?

Of course, things will change once harvests will start failing, and if you guys had just a bad of a harvest as we had this year (Finland), then it doesn't matter if 50% or 10% of the food comes from local sources; you're going to be reliant on imports anyway.

partycoder• 8 years ago

Invest in soylent green.

mruts2• 8 years ago

Malthusian fallacy. People have been saying this for centuries. Maybe he can eat grass, but I think I'll stick to my meat.

fractallyte• 8 years ago

Malthus considered only one very narrow facet of the results of population growth. There are others - most significantly, ecosystem degradation and eventual collapse - that will impact humanity.

So it is vital to consider these factors too, rather than recklessly rejecting the spirit of the argument.

mruts2• 8 years ago

I agree that we need to consider those factors. But saying we need to switch to a plant-based diet is ridiculous. Any "solution" that involves everyone just changing their behavior (behavior that in some ways defines us as human) is just flat-out not going to happen.

A real solution is cognizant of human behavior and the tragedy of the commons. A real solution isn't dependent on every human being lowering his standard of living. The solution to whale extinction from whaling didn't depend on everyone using less whale oil, it depended on finding new, better, sources of energy.

growlist• 8 years ago

By the middle of this century there will be two or three billion more people on Earth

..this is only inevitable if we choose to make it so. The laissez-faire approach to population growth prioritises sparing the feelings of current liberal observers over the happiness of the future inhabitants of earth and the quality of the environment. Whatever mitigation measures we take, a global population of 12 billion are inevitably going to have far nastier lives than 3 billion could.

Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death

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