The following is from Don Bowen. I assume it is intended for
ecopath, if not.... oh well, it fits here ok
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Recently there was a brief positing about our urban life and
whether it was sustainable or not. That may be a good topic
of discussion because sometime on Tuesday, statistically the
person who will bring the world population to 6 billion will
be born. There is a 60% chance that person will be Asian and
95% chance it will live in poverty.
But that is not the end of the problem, projections have the
figure over 9 billion sometime around 2030. Those teeming
masses that make your Xmas toys will be even more teeming by
the time the children born today will be buying Xmas toys.
How much water will those 6 Billion need? How much marginal
land will have to be set to growing food with ever increasing
amounts of energy that will not be available? Energy to make
the super fertilizers, pump fossil water, prepare the ground,
distribute the food?
It is all well and good to talk of going to a vegetarian diet
but trends are going the other way. The current economic
expansion of China is giving more people the opportunity to
eat port, something only the wealthy could afford in the
past. One figure I read said that even if China does not
increase the percentage of meat in the diet, the increase in
population will mean that all of the current world wheat
export will be flowing to China by 2020.
In the US we are turning prime farmland into housing tracts
at an alarming rate. In the arid west water usage is
becoming more important as schemes are put forward to move
water from farm land to urban landscapes. Much of the loss
is being taken up by importing food from our poorer neighbors
to the south. Countries that are having problems feeding
themselves are farming resources into growing cut flowers and
strawberries for the US market.
This list and others talk of home based production but again
trends are going the other way. Many developments closely
control common areas and forbid growing any plant not on the
approved list. Society is rushing headlong into recreating
its vision of a leisure society where the only work is on an
approved list of occupations. Such things as growing your
food is being turned into an activity enjoyed buy kooks who
send letter bombs, unless you are growing some exotic
vegetable.
