World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars: U.N.

[robertpaulsen]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Tx4obama (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

(Reuters) - The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.

As the world's population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.

Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water, according to U.N. estimates, at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply.

And if the world fails to tackle these problems, it risks condemning up to 3 billion people into poverty, the report said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/us-un-development-idUSTRE80T10520120130

[olddad56]

1. I think the NWO has a plan to alleviate this problem.

by destroying about 5 billion of the people on the planet.

[Skwid]

2. Parasites can't keep growing beyond the ability of their hosts to sustain them.

Human are the parasites (or one could call us the 'cancer') on the world. One way or the other, we will go away as a species sooner or later. It's beginning to look like sooner.

[ffr]

18. Very Agent Smith like

Never really saw it like this until a movie spelled it out.

[Pharaoh]

3. We need to stop having babies!

Now!

[GliderGuider]

8. We won't, though.

Not fast enough to stay ahead of all the other issues that are snapping at our heels, anyway.

[usrname]

13. It's not the birth rate

which is at all time historical lows across all nations. It's the death rate, which is also at historical lows. It was just a generation ago that average lifespan was in the 60s. Now it's up to the 70s. We're all living longer and healthier than ever before. Most first world countries are experiencing a birth rate of under 2.2 children per family, which is below the replenishing rate (i.e., keeps the population stable). Even countries in Africa, which still have a higher birth rate than elsewhere in the world, are seeing drops in the birth rate. Rates as high as 8 children per family is dropping now down to 4.3 or so.

Stop having babies is not a good idea.

[handmade34]

17. we need to stop

conspicuous consumption... we need to stop factory farming of animals... we need to stop driving huge gas guzzling cars... we need to start a world of justice and equality and the population will cure itself

[ffr]

19. True

But trying to have them feels sooooo good. The only way to curb population growth when this is the case is through catastrophic events.

[4dsc]

4. PEAK OIL boys

Peak oil is going to raise its ugly head long before 2030. It kills me to see these kind of predictions with little or no regard for reality of fewer and fewer resources.

[GliderGuider]

7. +1

Yep. And if the world economy doesn't grow because of the combined effects of Peak Oil, other resource shortages and the collapse of our unsustainable global financial system, there won't be another 3 billion middle-class consumers. Out of 9 billion people, there would probably be 6 billion poor and malnourished.

I don't expect to see a planet with 9 billion people though. I expect world population to peak at about 8 billion in about 2025, followed by a slide in numbers. The population peak will be largely due to the agricultural impacts of climate change, soil and ocean depletion and rising energy prices.

[bkkyosemite]

5. Monsanto

I'm sure that article was funded by Monsanto and it GMO's and the forcing of farmers to stop growing crops. Lots of land on this Earth and lots of seeds to plant that Monsanto controls. They need to be put out of business and the Bildeburg participants with them.

[TBF]

6. These are the 2 sentences I agree with -

"The current global development model is unsustainable. To achieve sustainability, a transformation of the global economy is required," the report said.

"Tinkering on the margins will not do the job. The current global economic crisis ... offers an opportunity for significant reforms."


Solution: Transform to socialism before it is too late.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

11. Well said. Capitalism is unsustainable.

[bloomington-lib]

9. We won't lower the population when our economies rely on increasing it

[FiveGoodMen]

10. Nature will lower it for us, then.

[bananas]

12. We need large scale deployment of renewable enrgy

and we need to phase out unsustainable fossil and nuclear energy.

[usrname]

14. The world is not lacking in food

The world is lacking in an efficient transport mechanism to deliver food to places that need it, in an economical way. The world is not lacking in fuel. Natural gas in the US alone can sustain the country for the next 100 years. By then, we will have shifted from a hydrocarbon fuel economy to solar + hydro + other methods (maybe renewable hydrocarbon fuels from bio-engineered synthetically created gasoline). Already, there are technologies that use the sun's energy to create fuel from algae or perhaps bacteria. There's new technologies being perfected that will help increase efficiency of solar cells by 2x efficiency. Utilizing bio-mimicry, scientists have created bacteria that can take solar energy and generate as "bacteria poop" certain types of hydrocarbon fuels.

Again, there's no shortage of food: food prices have gone down to historical lows. Even the "high end" organics foods and such are much cheaper now (per calorie, say) than what was available in the 1970s or the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1880s or however many years one wants to go back to.

There is no lack of energy. In almost every corner of the globe, energy is cheaper and more available than ever before. Farming communities in the middle of nowhere, India (or Africa) used to have to walk tens of miles to the nearest village to obtain news, information, trade. These same rural communities are now being wired in and can actually access the same internet that we read and write into. Cell phones are available even to some of the poorest communities in the world. The cost for one hour of reading light in first world countries is almost infinitesimal: less than a penny per hour. 200 years ago, in some places, you couldn't read in the dark for any amount of money.

[bananas]

20. Food scarcity is a dangerous myth

Food scarcity is a dangerous myth
Sunday, January 22, 2012
By Frances Moore Lappé
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/mobile/story.html?id=6033424

More than 40 years ago, Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb
proclaimed that "the battle to feed humanity is already
lost," and today almost a billion people go hungry. In 2011,
a second food-price spike within only five years, along with
heart-wrenching images of famine in parched East Africa,
continued to keep the scarcity scare alive.

There's just not enough, right?

Well, no. Even on the "leftovers" - what's left over after
feeding a third of the world's grain to livestock and putting
more U.S. corn into cars than into animals or humans; even
after feeding a third of the world's fish catch to livestock
and simply wasting a third of all food - there's still enough.
The world food supply comes to nearly 3,000 calories each
day for every person on Earth, enough to make us all
chubby.

The scarcity frame is not just factually wrong, it's dangerous.

<snip>

[Doremus]

23. A question.

Hoping you'll indulge me as I haven't time to read up...

Where is all this extra food??

[Gregorian]

15. I call it the Human Bubble. Every step we take to continue sustaining it just inflates the bubble.

And no one knows what is going to happen. We all know what has already happened. Well, except for a few who we can see posting on this very thread. I wonder if we're talking about the same planet.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. Not lack.

Not distribute.

[DJ13]

22. Im sure the NYMEX commodity speculators are loving that article

"research" like that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy after the prices spike above the ability of the worlds poor to afford food and fuel.

[patrice]

24. Hemp is good food. Why isn't it part of the answer? Surely it's not illegal in all countries.

[Tx4obama]

25. Locking.

The article is in regards to a 'report' (analysis/opinion)
Please consider reposting in GD or Good Reads forum.

Thank you.