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Humanity will shrink in the future: 97% of countries will experience negative growth by 2100
(english.elpais.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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With the current food growing technologies, we can handle 10 billion comfortable well. We will obviously not reach that number anytime soon. But we are on track to shrinking rapidly in many nations. That will destroy these nations.
I doubt that. Current conventional food production is highly fossil fuel dependant (everything from fertilizer to processing to transport). Earth's ariable land and top soil is decreasing quickly. Ecosystems are collapsing from the effects of agriculture and climate change. Most "advances" require more inputs and energy, which means more fossil fuel use, further accelerating resource degredation and climate change. I forget the statistic, but humans already control a significant proportion of Earth's biomass. This chart from https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-affected-by-humans/ might be what I was thinking of:
About 30-40% of food is wasted in the US, in India its 22%, in China 27%. These are the largest nations in the world. The reality is that we can build more efficient infrastructures that can drastically cut down on this. But we don't need to yet, because it's not cost efficient. That's how much 'free' resources we have produced based on current technologies.
I think that there are a lot of 8 billion people who would disagree with comfortably well. That number needs to be closer to two, to be sustainable with earth's resources. At least that's my understanding, not disappointed if wrong.
The problem is not the resources, it's the distribution. No political will to end global poverty, no profit in feeding the hungry.
Oh absolutely, people gonna keep being people. The truth seems to be that we don't really know, but it's likely somewhere between 4 and 16 from the little bit of reading up I just did.
Yeah, I tend to most notice reports of overfishing. Food from land sources is almost entirely farmed but we still get a lot of seafood from wild sources plus don’t have aquaculture anywhere near as advanced as agriculture: there’s not much we can do. Loss of a marine food source is a big deal, and we keep doing that with more species. One solution is fewer people
A lot of the higher estimates assume we can overcome limitations like this with better management of resources, but that is against human nature and our current incentives. It’s not going to happen, even if lives depend on it
Let's not forget water.. And eventually, oxygen.. But keep buying/selling those trinkets people, for the economy.
And well, how much of these resource estimates leave enough for other life too, or does all other life just exist to feed us?..