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It would be more interesting to phrase this in terms of how much of the planet's production of renewable resources is being used/exceeded. It's my understandin
by WillAdams 4y ago
It would be more interesting to phrase this in terms of how much of the planet's production of renewable resources is being used/exceeded.
It's my understanding that not too long ago, when this last came up in an online discussion I partipated in, our modern lifestyle is burning through some 2.5 earth's annual renewable generation worth of resources each year by using non-renewable resources.
Consider that we burn up to 10 calories of petro-chemical energy to get a single food calorie for some crops --- we need to transition to some sort of sustainable lifestyle and energy usage in the near future --- the sooner the better.
A phrasing which I think would make sense, and which should at least be considered in such discussions is: Under what circumstances does a person have the right to generate more heat energy than 1/current human population portion of the amount of energy which the planet is able to radiate off into space overnight?
One good blog post discussing this sort of thing:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
- iamgopal 4y agoOne idea is to create self sustainable dense forest ( of mixed plants, many growing edible fruits vegetables etc) , to reduce farming.
- gameman144 4y agoThis already is done to some degree (at local scales), but there's the issue that both the cost and the density are pretty prohibitive for large populations. Whether large populations should exist or not, they do today, and this makes us pretty reliant on high-yield low-cost food production.
- akudha 4y agoAnd eat less meat, or quit altogether. A huge portion of land is used to grow food for animals, and huge pollution comes with meat consumption.