Thursday 28th of November 2024
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on planet crap...

planet crap

Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world's growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.

The world population is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.1 billion by mid-century.

Climate change, involving floods and droughts, will affect food production.

The FAO said net investments of $83bn (£52.5bn) a year - an increase of 50% - had to be made in agriculture in developing countries if there was to be enough food by 2050.

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As I have written before in the usual suspect part called sapiens in the mist, this:

Unfortunately, our excessive demands are not going to diminish, despite the present financial regression that is slowing our wants somewhat and despite our "emission reduction" pitiful efforts. We are so confident that with our technological prowess, we can create solutions for developing more needs of comfort — all by consuming more, nonetheless... I am repeating: we are not doomed. We are modifying the nature of the earth. Some of its reactivity to the changes might be beneficial, most will be detrimental to its own ability to regenerate properly. Some changes will be traumatic for some of us. Dramatic. I might post one day an unpublished children book I wrote and illustrated in the 1980s. It's called "Who Needs the Elephant?"... You see my drift. It you don't, I've lost you long ago...

Under these pressures of multiplying like rodents and creating more and more new billionaires and adherents to whatever beliefs, we're disturbing our precious space. By the year 2030, the earth resources will have to support about 8 billion people, all with augmented (and still growing) needs and accelerated wants by a ratio of three times what it is now. By the year 2050, the number will be 9.2 billion and by 2100, which in human history is only about three and a bit generations — when the kiddies of today are grannies and grandpas — the population will be bursting at the seam by a whopping 12 billion. Nearly twice as many people on earth as what there is now.

As we're already struggling to cut down on emissions, farts and belching included, the demands then on food and energy, will be at least six times that of now. Thus our present dream of cutting energy emission by 20 per cent by 2020, which we have buckleys chance of reaching anyhow, represent peanuts in the reality of our massive impact on nature. Our earth is going to be warming up by three times what our worst predictions are.

But the mix of faith-based beliefs by 2050 or 2100 may not be the same, and I'm afraid the green humanists, the only real protector of the natural earth, will be the greatest losers of all, despite being the only ones with the proper scientific pulse on the heart of this sickened planet.

This human expansion by 2100 of course will only be achieved by taking over at least 70 per cent more of the earth surface than what we occupy now, even if we allow for more high rise inhabitation. This expansion will include the sea, already changing or dying, even in the small protected pockets. Seventy per cent more space than we're using now, for lodgement, agriculture and husbandry, transport and mining, and whatever else, including our own pleasure to observe nature dying or being robbed of its naturalness— I mean contained in zoos — or shrinking prison-like reserves, with culling, poaching and unavoidable extinction...

Many of the precious few wild landscapes remaining on earth that we know now will be mutilated beyond recognition. Some will be affected "not by much", but all it takes is a telephone communication tower or a jetty to load gas on and off (see the Kimberleys), to muck up the greater outlook of landscapes in an entire region... Despite politicians (spruikers for "democracy") telling us that the best "environmental considerations" will be taken in the developments, damage is done, a little bit at a time or a lot at a time — constantly, relentlessly crunching more and more of the natural beauty and naturalness of this little planet — taking incremental chunks until not much is left. Until nothing is left. The too hard mountain might not be exploited, although by 2200 and a human population of 24 billion, who knows, a touristic five star hotel at the top of Mount Everest coming your way is feasable.

And not only we're stealing from other species' habitats, we're also crapping big time in "our" and "their" space too.

famine, pestilence and global warming...

"The combined effect of population growth, strong income growth and urbanisation... is expected to result in almost the doubling of demand for food, feed and fibre," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told delegates at a forum entitled How to Feed the World 2050.

The FAO said that even if governments increased agricultural investments, there could still be 370 million people suffering from famine in 2050.

Difficulties ahead included a scarcity of natural resources such as land, water and biodiversity.

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Don't we know... see toon at top and read comment below it... Sigh.

go YD, young man...

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/2002#comment-2719

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/2002#comment-5048

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/2002#comment-5950

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8161#comment-10452

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/4446#comment-7587

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/4446#comment-7808

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/4446#comment-9146

not dinkum dunnies...

19 November is World Toilet Day. But why, when every day seems to be given a name - be it Cat Day, Cuddle Day or even Doughnut Day - is World Toilet Day important?

Well, for one, the average person spends three years of their life on the loo - so there is plenty of time to think about it! But, while it is easy to laugh about toilets, or rather the lack of them, it is a very serious issue.

Two and a half billion people live without a clean or private place to go to the toilet.

This means that nearly 40% of the world's population have to use fields, streams, rivers, railway lines, canal banks, roadsides, plastic bags, or squalid, foul smelling, disease breeding buckets and unsanitary latrines.

When you consider that just one gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, one thousand parasite cysts and one hundred worm eggs, it is easy to see how without proper disposal, human waste can contaminate water and food, and how this causes disease.

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We have not shied of the problem at YD... One has to realise that as world population expands, more food is consumed and more waste is produced... So we need to make twice as many dunnies at the moment than new born people we're welcoming on this shrinking earth.... See toon at top. See also water supplies to Gaza...

reduce world population now...

new colonialism?...

From Unleashed

Has fertile land with access to water become the new oil? The world is experiencing a race for land set to rival the 'rush for Africa' by colonial powers in the 19th century.

Resource hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor African and Asian nations in an effort to secure their food supply and provide bio-fuels to meet future energy needs.

With world agricultural markets in turmoil, the strategic value of land for crops has seen governments from the Middle East to Eastern Africa furiously lobby some of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world.

Why is this level of agricultural investment in foreign countries unprecedented?

Significantly, it signals a shift in foreign policy, as large scale land deals are now taking place between governments instead of private investors. Already, more than 25 million hectares have been purchased or leased in land deals estimated to have cost $30 billion.

The need to provide food security to growing populations has triggered a global race for arable land.

In this context, China has been one of the most aggressive investors in the search for food security. Currently feeding one-fifth of the global population with just one-fifteenth of the world's arable land, China has been acquiring land assets in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America since 1995.

Wealthy oil states have more recently joined the rush.

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see toon at top and ponder why I do silly cartoons like these...

old news to YD...

The world's population could hit 12 billion by the end of the century, a report by population experts has found.

A study, led by United Nations demographer Patrick Gerland and University of Washington statistician and sociologist Adrian Raftery published in the journal Science, suggests there was an 80 per cent likelihood that the number of people on the planet, currently 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by 2100.

They also saw an 80 per cent probability that Africa's population will rise to between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion by 2100 from about 1 billion today.

"Previous forecasts did indeed forecast a levelling off of the world population around 2050, and in some cases a decline," Professor Raftery said.

He said the new projections arise from data that clearly establishes that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been decreasing as quickly as some experts had expected, a trend that was "not as clear when previous forecasts were made".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-19/world-population-could-hit-12b-by-2100-demographers/5755148

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12 billion humans by 2100 is not new news to Gus. His own calculation made in 1994 during a time of reflection on how mad humans were (and still are), shown here in 2009 (see articles at top) came to the same "conclusion". The only things that could affect this total are wars, food shortage, MASSIVELY ACCELERATING global warming with the planet under pressure from "economic" human survival and destruction of the environment. "Nature" would basically disappear...

On the same thrust by 2200, the planet would host 22 billion humans, most of them still mad and idiotic — as we all know that passed a certain level of fiddle, natural selection does not work:

urgency beckons