by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-04-28
© 2010 Peter Belmont

RSS Recent Essays (All Topics)   •(12/23) How did we get to October 7th? •(11/23) Our Political Habits Are Ending The Human Race •(10/23) Sketch of Israel-Palestine History •(10/23) Whoever controls the discourse controls emotional reactions to reality •(08/23) Russia On Trial •(01/23) The Purpose of "Conservatism" •(10/22) The project of returning the earth to the cockroaches couldn't be in better hands! •(05/22) Abortion, The Constitution, And The Supreme Court •(03/22) The Problem of Climate Change Framing or Discourse or Understanding •(06/21) Israel-Palestine: If not apartheid, then what? Much of the natural gas and petroleum used in the USA and elsewhere by farmers is used as a “feedstock” for the manufacture of fertilizer and pesticide. Indeed, farms which use these materials may almost be considered “factories” which transform the energy of fossil fuels into corn and other commodities with the small additional input of farm labor and sunlight. The main constituent of food, we are told, is fossil fuels. Thus, the large human population on the earth today is here by virtue of—and by permission of, so to speak—the availability of large amounts of fossil fuels and humankind’s willingness to use them for this purpose. But wait! Global warming is being brought upon us, in large part, by overuse of fossil fuels. Are our days numbered?

Much of the fossil fuels used in the USA and elsewhere by farmers is used as a “feedstock” for the manufacture of the fertilizers and pesticides which are generously distributed onto farmers’ fields in order to produce food and with the long-acknowledged side effects of poisoning the earth and water, damaging the soil by monoculture, and encouraging pesticide-resistent pests.

Indeed, farms which use these materials may almost be considered “factories” which transform fossil fuels into corn and other commodities with the small additional input of farm labor and sunlight. The main constituent of food is, thus, fossil fuels.

Accordingly, the large human population on the earth today is here by virtue of—and by permission of, so to speak—the availability of large amounts of fossil fuels and humankind’s willingness to use them for this purpose. The great bulk, or so I understand, of the food consumed in the USA and “first world” is produced in this way.

And, of course, as we all know now, global warming is being brought upon us, in large part, by overuse of fossil fuels.

SOMEONE SHOULD DO THE ARITHMETIC.

Someone should compute how large a human population can be sustained on earth if the per capita use of fossil fuels includes all the fossil fuels today used in agriculture and we aim to avoid the worst of global warming. We can make significant reductions in fossil fuel use (as well as in greenhouse gas production from animal effluents) by greatly reducing per capita consumption of meat and animal products, but people will still want to eat “oats, peas, beans, and barley” and corn and wheat.

To summarize, any computation of the minimum per capita use of fossil fuels must consider all components of agriculture including meat and animal products production (meat, milk, eggs, cheese, leather).

PER CAPITA COMPUTATIONS LEAD TO MAXIMUM POPULATION COMPUTATIONS

I see no reason to assume that there is no limit to the human population on earth due to global warming. On the contrary, I see all kinds of (potential) limits on the size of the human population, global warming among them.

To say that, at some moment, the earth is overpopulated, or to say that a region is overpopulated, is simply to say that (at that time and in that place) the per capita demand for some essential resource—such as food or water or air or ability to dispose of trash or sewage or agricultural poisons or flood-water runoff—when multiplied by the number of people in that place exceeds the supply of the resource.

One place can be doing fine and a neighboring place may suffer over-population. California may be suffering an under-supply of water while New York has enough and another place is flooding.

We may run out of potable water in many places before we run out of other necessaries. Or we may so change the climate (with global warming) that we run out of food first, in many places.

The world has long had economic migrants. We may soon see climatic migrants, people escaping (or trying to escape) from places where there is insufficient food or insufficient water.

In places which used to have adequate supplies of resources, these shortages may come about from increases of population or from reduced resources or from both.

For example, consider the water from the Colorado river, in recent years suffering from prolonged drought while human populations have grown.

From a huge drainage basin covering almost 632,000 square kilometers (244,000 square miles), the Colorado River supplies water to Mexico, 10 American Indian tribes and parts of seven states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

”Drought drum” is a particularly apt expression now making the rounds since one can sense a building intensity and a foreboding beat in the sound of a drum.

The drought drum beats along the Colorado River, and officials of basin states are meeting to work out plans for sharing the dwindling resources of a drought-struck river. Whereas basin states once negotiated ways to fairly and equitably share Colorado River water (or at least achieve as close an approximation as possible) they are now discussing ways to fairly and equitably share water shortages.

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