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> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month The amount of this land
by jahnu 4y ago
> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month
The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant once we’ve addressed the low hanging fruit (pun intended) of overproduction of meat.
Even precision fermentation is an easier to implement fix for land use, which looks increasingly like it can reduce our need for land to grow grains. See Solar Foods for example
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods
- mytailorisrich 4y agoThe root cause of the problem was plainly mentioned: 8 billion people and counting. Solutions to problems ought to address root causes.
- tuatoru 4y agoThe Pareto principle applies. Most of the problem is caused by the top billion people ordered by income. If you have a tailor, that's you.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoNo. Unless you're happy to keep billions in abject poverty (and that does not ecen protect the environment) the aim is to have all humans on this planet live a good life in good conditions. Therefore it's not "us vs them" it's all of us together and the root cause is indeed the overall number.
- sveme 4y agoIf the top 1% would reduce their lifestyle to that of the next 10%, a lot would be gained right away. Private jets are evil.
- nootropicat 4y agoYou're thinking of the upper 0.01%. Global upper 1% starts at about $1M nw. Private jets are only really affordable at 9 figures.
- bee_rider 4y agoThe top 1% globally probably includes a good chunk of upper-middle class Americans (at least in the classic definition of upper middle class, maybe not in the informal “median income” sense that sometimes gets used). We like to point our fingers at private jets because they are particularly extravagant and we only need to take them away from a couple people, and they are a problem. But also heating McMansions and pushing around suburban SUVs ought to be avoidable.
- automatic6131 4y ago>Solutions to problems ought to address root causes. Oh really? Please lead by example.
- jahnu 4y agoThere are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Increases in population are down to not dying young. In almost all regions of the world people are having fewer children and trending towards lower than replacement levels as the necessity to having enough children that survive to adulthood and can care for you in old age disappears. These are hard facts. Given these facts the suggestion that we tackle the “population problem” implies all sorts of horrible utterly unethical “solutions”. The “population problem” is a solved problem (not ignoring ongoing efforts and regional as opposed to global problems such as Madagascar population/land use issues which are largely political anyway) and there is nothing left there that we can do to solve the global environmental ecological degradation.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago> implies all sorts of horrible utterly unethical “solutions”. No it doesn't and I am tired of the dishonesty of that claim, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack aimed at shutting down discussion. Please refrain from this type of behaviour. > There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Nice tidbit but irrelevant to the point, which is population growth. Anyway, there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day.
- smeej 4y agoIt doesn't imply those horrible solutions exclusively, but it's pretty hard to look at the forced sterilization of parents and abortion of children for generations in China and argue that it doesn't imply them at all.
- jahnu 4y ago> there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day. Eh? I was being completely cordial. At least my intentions were such. If you have a counter argument you have the all the space here you need to present it. I have no power to silence you or anyone else.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
- ETH_start 4y agoThe root problem is that this number of people is considerable relative to the productive potential of Earth-based resources. Possible solutions include raising the productive potential of those resources, like the effort described in the article, and acquiring more resources beyond Earth. Neither of those two requires reducing the human population. So I think you're being inexplicably hasty in offering a drastic anti life solution.
- maxerickson 4y agoEven with it taking up much more space than a lot of other power sources, the amount of solar needed to run the world will take up a relatively modest amount of space. Tens of thousands of square miles is a lot, but it's pretty manageable if the discussion is optimizing global land use. Also, "unused arable land" is probably true, but there's likely more than 0 land that could be converted to agriculture from some other use.
- jcampbell1 4y agoI came up with 15 million acres of panels would provide all the US energy needs. We currently have 39 million acres of corn dedicated to putting ethanol in our gasoline.
- fghorow 4y agoA long time ago -- in a continent far, far away -- I did a back of the envelope calculation for the area of solar PV required to power Australia's total energy consumption (not just electricity, but heat, industry, and transportation too). It turned out to be something on the order of 20% of the land area in Tasmania (the island state just off the SE shore of Oz, for those of you unfamiliar with Aussie geography). Now, I am not for a millisecond suggesting that Aussies cover 20% of Tasmania with solar PV. But that area happened to be within about 20% or so of the estimates of roof area in the country. Food for thought.
- ranit 4y ago> Even precision fermentation is an easier to implement fix for land use, which looks increasingly like it can reduce our need for land to grow grains. See Solar Foods for example What do you refer as "precision fermentation" here? The linked Wikipedia article is about "growing microbial biomass that can be used as edible protein". Just curious, perhaps I missed the connection.
- jahnu 4y agoMy understanding was that was the umbrella term for various technologies one of which Solar Foods use. https://www.monbiot.com/2022/11/26/fermenting-a-revolution/ https://www.monbiot.com/2022/11/26/fermenting-a-revolution/ Is it incorrect?