French Study on Feeding 9 Billion People

Dunkelheit wrote:

It doesn't really matter if there are 5B, 9B or 12B people on earth. What we fear is that WE have to change the way we live. That's our problem.

Yes, it is.  We need to look for different ways to live which might help solve some of these social problems.  I don't think having more babies is a solution.    Different social arrangements which promote mutual support, such as co-housing, intentional communities, etc, especially among older childless people, could help take the burden off the larger society. 

Dunkelheit wrote:
These are my questions as well. We have a debate in Germany about the demographic change. People getting older, number of people is decreasing because of less and less reproduction and our social systems are, as the politicians state it, on the verge of collaps. German politicians say we have to start making children again to solve all our problems.

This is the illogic of a growth-dependent economy. It presents us with the choice of growth or collapse. But continual, exponential growth in a world of finite resources is absurd; it leaves open only the question of how much damage we will do before economic collapse and possibly attendant cultural and social collapse takes the wind out of our sails.

This is the fatal flaw with the notion that "clean" energy will somehow enable us to continue as we have been. To continue as we have been means to continue increasing production, consumption and population, which in turn means that the end of fossil fuels will not inhibit our doing progressively greater damage in other areas of crisis including deforestation and desertification, loss of topsoil from agricultural areas, loss of species,emptying aquifers, etc.

I haven't seen the hard evidence that renewable energy will be available in the amount needed to take the place of fossil fuels. Scrutinizing the state of the art with wind farms, for example, suggests that  that the energy production over most of their 30 year lifespan simply goes towards offsetting the huge carbon footprint of their construction and installation (they need really gargantuan concrete footings, for example.)

But assuming that we CAN somehow get the technology right to produce all of the renewable energy needed to take the place of fossil fuels, we will simply be fueling the juggernaut that ultimately destroys our habitat and us with it. We need change on a level far more fundamental than substituting photovoltaics and turbines for petroleum.

LasVegasLee wrote:
But assuming that we CAN somehow get the technology right to produce all of the renewable energy needed to take the place of fossil fuels, we will simply be fueling the juggernaut that ultimately destroys our habitat and us with it. We need change on a level far more fundamental than substituting photovoltaics and turbines for petroleum.

Very well said.  I agree 100%.

we do mega estructures for frivolouse reasons, if we do them for clean energy then that will be great and in the end it will mean being able to do them without making such a big carbon foot print, all the lorries and machines we use to make them will be run on clean energy.
  Of course we can do it, if big wind mills take up too much concrete well millions of small ones, we are used to making masses of things, telegraph poles, cars, roads, drains, houses, it should be no big deal for us.
  It is not just wind tha can give us clean energy it is thermal and solar, probably wave one day, and improvements in technologyhas not the aeroplane got better over the years. They can now make solar energy with less and less direct sunlight. Things are so seriouse and expensive, think of the whirl winds that we just have to make it.
  Think of the rail road and the canals that were put in in the ninteenth century and we live in the twentieeth when we have enormouse machines to make things with. agri rose macaskie.

I don't see migration as something bad. My girlfriend is from Turkey, my father was a german Jew with a spanish background, my mother is from Finland with a swedish background. Somehow I got a German Passport, haha. Doesn't really matter anyway.

We are all driven by the want of more. Is it to spread religion, beliefs to others just because of some unproven hypothesis? Is it money or stuff? Is it more room for nature? More soil in our garden beds?

Right now we're pissed off and driven by fear because modern capitalism obviously doesn't only work for us but for others aswell. In the old days we were the guys taking all the good bites on the expense of others. We were and are thinking: When the others work hard like we do, they could live like we do. But that's a biased and wrong assumption. We have to cooperate, share knowledge for a better living. See those brown, black and yellow skinned people as what they are: Humans with familys, fears, hopes, dreams. They are just like us but we're ruining their land and economies for the short sighted want of more. For the status quo.

Having lived my entire life in border states (CA  and TX) I haven't been able to whip up any fear of immigrants, personally.  Not being of the First Peoples/Native Americans myself, my family of course were immigrants of a previous century. 

Dunkleheit it is alright for me to say that reacism does not matter because i dont mind about other people, though i do if they are too conservative say, still i know that mixing races causes a big problem for others though it doesnt for me and that starts a cycle of problems.
  What do the liberals think when the people they have welcomed in because they are liberal minded turn out to be faschist and menace the country with the end of liberalism.
     If you are a preist here in Spain,  you just say we should all love each other and problem dealt with and i suppose, as priest are in a position of power, people say great i agree with you to them, but they dont tell priests their real attitudes to foriegners, some people are in a postion to have some very unreal ideas about things, they are too powerfull for anyone to tell them the truth.  

 Have you never been nice and liberal to another set of people and had them eat you up with their prejudices. If you have not had that sort of problem it is maybe beause you are good at holding youir own but it happens to me all the time. I have come to consider trying to be nice to disadvantaged  groups as dangerous,  if i am with those i was born into knowing, then if they aren't nice to me i get the hell out of there, or snub them a bit, while if i am with people i am trying to be nice to, people that i think need positive racism or what ever positive, positive attitudes to the stupid or ugly, then i take an awful lot of punishment, I dont get cross with them if they are nasty to me, they nearly do for me. Just being nice is no answer for anything.

 I have met people who say they aren't racist but you try going out with someone of a different race then you are in the eyes of these supposedly not racist people some how doubly promiscuous, promiscous for having a boy friend even  though these are hippy times when people dont wait to get married and a person with a perverse taste for the exotic, it is those who pretend not to be racist who tell you this. The supposedly none racists even argue that your being friends with or going out with people of different people  is only a sort of inversion racism its a no win situation and when you know one person of a different culture other people of culturesw differetn from your own  see you are open to advances of friendhsip from all sorts  so you end up with more than one foriegn boyfriend. Maybe you also put off people of your own natioanality so less English men are trying to court you.
      People who pretend not to care about race and then acuse you of all sorts of insulting things if you go out with people of different races are a problem. They just  decide not to believe you  were trying to have a seriouse relationship with a person of another race and pretend you only left them because you were playing with them not because you decided the relationship would not work for reasons tha hd nothing to do with race. They think you are playing around with your boyfriends rather than trying to have a seriouse relaitonshop more easily than they otherwise would.  
      For a girl, even for a man it is a problem if their groups say they have a taste for the exotic, their groups being people they love like their family it is a seriouse emotional problem it is seriously traumatic, these matters are hard and complex and joining your lot to thosen of other raes means real suffering fo ryou often it is a heroiuc stance, it is not just easy and if we dont talk about the problems then  will go on being hard though in theory they are a walk over.

 When i was forty i thought i could talk to african origen men without being told i had exotic taste, i thought i was to old to be accused of having a sexual interest in them, i am often really silly, i was aplying a childhood veiw of things, it is not that i though t i was no loonger interested in romantic things it is that i thought somehow thought i could even so  talk to people without it being thought i was after them, though that was at the time when i was tryign to get a divorce. I am really silly sometimes, thats why i get it in the teeth.
      The minute i did talk to people of african origen that is what i was told, a friend of mine said i liked the exotic too much. If you are a woman and you talk to african origen people you are thought to have a sexual interest not a friendly anti racist one in them.  I have spoken to a lot of african people I have found unattractive i did not just talk to the attractive ones.
       This is an insidouse way of creating separatism, it is very sucessfull and almost ¡mperceptible, women and men who would like to do things that reduce racism like including foriegners among their friends even  daren't for fear of being called exotic. My attempts at anti racism have lead to me bieng almost  totally reduced morally and interllectually and of course if you spend time with people of different races you do end up finding some of them attractive, people in all races have attractions and not all of them of a purely physical type they attract you for theiur mental beauty they can be very noble, kind people of course or you may imagine they are it is hard to really know people.  Obama said his mother was idealistic and not very realistic or some such he seems to have nbeen aware of these sorts of problems.
      I read about this sort of distinction of people into into a category in which they distinguished as having attraction that is less noble than some other ones  of  merely exotic or physical nature in another place, in a book of facial and fyuisical types a phrenology system type book written in Francos times, general franco was the spanish faschist tyrant who rulled from before the seond world war till about 1973, here. Working class people were charicterised in the book as muscular types who are nice but of uncertain temper, like more likely to kill you beause their passions got the better of them than otther people are, probably it is also more probable that they think your interest in them, if you fall in love with one, is physical, which is to say of a lower order than if you fall in love with a middle class person but ht ebook was to nice to talk of sex.
     The right type of people according to this book were discretely dressed, your secratary type and the other wrong type had curved noses and were interested in money instead of higher principles, the writers of the book would have been suprised if they had known what the normal type of conversation of a rabbis family or a religiouse jew is, how high the tone of their conversations is and how interested they are in people being disinterested.
 I imagine the thinking about people of african origen is the same for the people who b elieve in this book and subcounsly for many others as that mentioned in the desccription of  the working class man the type with a lot of musles as they all it who is more likely to give way to their passions so it is more sensible to give them a wide birth.
 Therre secxualityy has been used to shut women up in their houses for centuries so using sexuality oto creat speratism is as old as the hills and somethign that it is still easy to get aways with in many patrs of the world. this book and women beign kept at home is a bit of proof about the validity of the idea that this is cleverly used to create seperatism counsly and uncounsly p0robably.
 This is a hard subject that we need  to work hard on, it is not something you can wish away hoping everyone will be nice beause you tell them to be nice. and it is a sucjet in whihc people believe they have the right attitude even when they dont they may be b¡niue to people of other nation but call those who spend too much time with them of exotic tastes for example. agri rose macaskie.

This speech presents another perspective of the food/population issue:

"Reaching for the Future with All Three Hands"
Address by Daniel Quinn, Kent State University, Earth Day, 1998

http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Writings/kentstate.cfm

I know I'm a little late on the "food from the boreal forest" part of this conversation, but here is some info which I hope will bust some misconceptions about the Canadian Shield. It's a bit of a thread theft, but a topic that I am very passionate about.

I live right in the middle of the forest. Roughly 55 Degrees of Latitude North. Last year's summer reached temperatures of up to 37 degrees C (that's almost 100 degrees F - and one heck of a heat wave). Normal summer temperatures are around 5-10 degrees at night, at 20-30 during the day (40-50, and 70-85 F).

It's not until about 200 miles south of the treeline that trees start being sparse, devoid of branches, and tiny. In my area, forests can be as dense as 1 tree every 1-2 feet, and 40ft tall. The soil is mostly sandy and rocky, though there are some areas, like the Muskeg type marshes, that are very fertile and consist of sandy loam. Problem is, there are so many evergreens that the soil is quite acidic. And of course, the growing season is very very short. We just had a small snowstorm over last weekend (may 21-22), and we can expect the next snowfall to be around the end of September.

In my various walks and drives around the north, and thanks to the visionary people of Permies.com, I have seen land that can most definately be used as food forests or even  commercial monocultures. If there was better access to Zone 1 or 2 plants, or some very fast-growing variants, the north can - and should - be a decently-producing zone. And if you add micro-climate formation, you could be able to grow most commonly found supermarket veggies. As for perennials or trees, I can't see any useful speciments surviving anywhere other than the boreal forest's most southern reaches.

As an example, there is an area just north of Grand Rapids, Manitoba, that was leveled about 6 years ago in a giant forest fire. The land is clean and unused, and the trees that have settled are 4 feet tall. The area in question has soil barely 5 inches thick, but the sandstone and limestone that lies under it is so brittle that there are piles of large slabs of rock on the side of the highway. That bedrock could be collected, and a nice stone house could easily be built, with rock walls to heat the garden area and provide some protection against wild animals. The surroundings that were spared house an extremely dense forest and lakes.

Biggest issue would be to find brave souls to cultivate the land, and stick around for our disgustingly cold winters haha! But I am convinced that if mega-farms meet their demise and people gradually return to the land, the boreal forest is ripe with possibilities!

Tl;dr, The North is awesome!

I kind of went back and forth on whether I should post or just leave this topic alone over the last several days, but decided to post. I know Paul doesn't take kindly to stepping on toes in his forum, but I feel people need to understand other POV's in order to grow.

I believe this song of overpopulation has been sung many times over and the earth still continues.

From my understanding a lot of the proponents of these theories were (now dead) and are (living) eugenicists. Some believe the idea of eugenics died along with the fall of the Nazi's. I don’t. I believe it just went underground and continues through today.

I feel it continues through many different movements, including some dear to my heart; environmentalism, better health/medicine for the poor, etc...; many having the facade of altruism, philanthropy, and/or some form of saving or protecting someone or something. Who doesn’t want to give to or help with that? But once I dug below the surface of the well manicured front, I found the insidious nature of what I believe really lies behind it.

I’m not saying the earth should continue to be pillaged, but the notion that people need to die, or be limited to one child, etc…, is absolutely taking us in the wrong direction.

There are many other solutions, but first we need to recognize the problems of which there are many.

Love for all life and creation - Dave. 

Updated to make less toe-steppy.

Admin - Irollaround:  If you would add "in my opinion" your post would be fine.

Paul is correct, contrasting opinions can be stated as long as it is made clear that it is (1) your opinion, or only how you (2) believe/feel about the subject.  And not worded as the one right way, the only truth and/or that others opinions are not as valid as yours.

----------------------
This subject - over population - is all over the map in my opinion.
One minute you hear how populations are declining on the news, then the next it shifts back to the limited resources - over pop stuff.
I feel it is true that we cannot go on as we are BUT I also feel that is a good thing.  It would be so helpful to find more efficient ways to use resources, ways to replace natural resources, free up some of the set aside lands.  Will any of this happen, seems unlikely, however should things get worse I believe people will naturally have to limit themselves due to hardships.  I do not believe in population control, nor most other controls decided by the corporate, forced on the individual, for that matter.  Seems we have more of an over-control explosion due to fear marketing, more rules and control every day, to my way of thinking. 

See - something like that   

Personally I believe in limiting my population so there are more resources to share with other living things. 

irollaround wrote:

This song of overpopulation has been sung many times over and the earth still continues.

A lot of the proponents of these theories were (now dead) and are (living) eugenicists. Unfortunately many believe the idea of eugenics died along with the fall of the Nazi's. It didn't. It went underground and continues through today.

It continues through many different movements, including some dear to my heart; environmentalism, better health/medicine for the poor, etc... Many have the facade of altruism, philanthropy, and/or some form of saving or protecting someone or something. Who doesn’t want to give to or help with that? But once you dig below the surface of the well manicured front, you find the insidious nature of what really lies behind it.

I’m not saying the earth should continue to be pillaged, but the notion that people need to die, or be limited to one child, etc…, is absolutely taking us in the wrong direction.

If any on this thread were advocating eugenics, mass executions or legislative restriction of family size, I have to say I missed that.

As I understand it, the fossil fuel age took a human population which had been fairly stable for roughly 10,000 years and increased it tenfold. Apart from the issue of whether various ecosystems can bear the burden of this indefinitely, there is a serious question of what happens to the human population when the age of cheap oil is over. Will there be a massive human die-off? If so, how massive will it be? How can we manage this energy descent to minimize human suffering?

I think that this question is really at the heart of permaculture, and it is one arising out of compassion rather than some sort of environmentalist misanthropy.

Jami McBride wrote:
Admin - Irollaround:  If you would add "in my opinion" your post would be fine.

Agreed. 

Hopefully I updated it to satisfactory standards. 

I believe I saw a couple of different posts in which people were in/directly(?) pointing at the notion of population reduction. And I tend to get a little worked up based on the POV I have on the subject.

In my opinion, population reduction need not entail the bad things mentioned above; it can be entirely voluntary and benign.

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
In my opinion, population reduction need not entail the bad things mentioned above; it can be entirely voluntary and benign.

IMO -You would be right that it need not entail it.

However I believe when it is presented in the way that it currently is, it's both wrong and immoral. There are other solutions and options, not just a need for reduction in the number of people. And from what I've seen  the other solutions or options are not presented or are given very little attention or resources. Permaculture and all that falls within it's concepts being one of them.

I'm not sure how voluntarily limiting the number of children I choose to have is wrong or immoral.     From what Bill Mollison has said in "Permaculture,a designers manual," limiting population is an ethic of permaculture.

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
I'm not sure how voluntarily limiting the number of children I choose to have is wrong or immoral.     From what Bill Mollison has said in "Permaculture,a designers manual," limiting population is an ethic of permaculture.

The population of cattle or the population of humans limited by whom?

Dunkelheit wrote:
The population of cattle or the population of humans limited by whom?

I've always figured it was the population of human permaculturists limiting their own population.

This is the ethic I'm referring to, from Chapter 1 of the Designer's Manual:

"3. Setting limits to population and consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles."  (the above principles being the first two ethics 1. Care of the Earth and 2. Care of people)

irollaround wrote:
IMO -You would be right that it need not entail it.

However I believe when it is presented in the way that it currently is, it's both wrong and immoral. There are other solutions and options, not just a need for reduction in the number of people. And from what I've seen  the other solutions or options are not presented or are given very little attention or resources. Permaculture and all that falls within it's concepts being one of them.

In My Opinion 
All anyone need to do is research and read to find out what is being done in regards to population reduction. None of it is hidden. There are people who are doing everything they can to reduce global population. They also have had great success in their goals. If one looks at rate of change, world population is leveling off and will start to decline in the not so distant future.  Just my opinion and only based on what I have read. I have no idea about what I have not read. 

Dr_Temp wrote:
They also have had great success in their goals. If one looks at rate of change, world population is leveling off and will start to decline in the not so distant future. 

Yes, there are several nations with stabilized or reducing populations due to demographic change, family planning programs, education and women's rights.  And it's not just wealthy countries who are able to do this - Kerala state in India has had enormous success in reducing the birthrate due to their education programs and healthy baby programs (women who know their children will live tend to have fewer of them).

dunklheit it is the extreme right here in SPpain that lead me to talking otf totalitarian regimes not the germans.
h ludi taylor you are not afraid of population that enter but you must know of sections of the population that are, and sections that will be more prejudiced by it than other sections so you must know the need to think of ways to clear up their fears or to tell them they just have to grin and bare it, you must be able to think of things that need to be said and done to reduce fears, a thing tha tcan be done is to provide good enough education and housein gfor all so no one is afraid of losing out. 

    Irolaround terrible things do happen, the holocaust happend we are not all here, my mother died soon after chernobil of luecemia,  we have just been through a terrible century, alright for me except for my mother and aanother thing or two not so alright for me but terrible for some. what about the soldiers in irak  just think what they will say in history to the number of people who died in the second world war.
    it is not true to say that everythign is alright maybe if we were really good art organising wha twe had everything would be alright but it is not. we are not good enough at managing with what we have got it is easier to go to the mon than have good living standards for those people we do have. Hvaave you been whatching about slavery in the twenty first century in CNN for example.
      What about aids in africa, that is a terrible situation i went to live far from my family as an adult and have hated it, aids leaves children without a family. The religiouse think that they can supply the place of parent or that god can but it is a fatasy orphans are more likely to have a horrible time than other people the world is a real place how woudl we learn to be kind if unkindness was made up by god adjustin gthings if we allow a lot of orphans their umñhappyness is on our heads.
  what about what the boys go through in war,Wwhat they go through in war is horrible like a long horror film?
    i hated being in bording school. There are religiouse people who think that they dont need durex in africa were there is so much aids, they think that it is terrible to have too few children but they dont mind piles of people having a long and painful death from a horrible illness and leaving orphans. They think they are right to be horrified if we dont have a lot of children but they dont think we are right if we are horrified about any policies that increase the possibility that aids spreads. They are so tough on people who dont have their veiws, that i think we can be very tough on them for their attitude to preservatives.  They should understand people backing up their veiws with harrasement, it is what they do. They never seem to see that others also have very strong moral veiws though these dont take them in the same direction, they see different ills in the world. agri rose macaskie.

I assume from the 'conventional progressive wisdom' that population growth and climate change are serious threats to human future.  But some of what I've heard and read leave me with a lot of nagging questions about these blanket assertions on population (re: eugenics, and present formulations, read Edwin Black - and the growth rate is apparently continuing to shrink, so projections may not be so certain), and climate change (boosted by the Aspen Institute and Maurice Strong ?).

Also, desertification is being reversed by Allan Savory (for those who haven't seen it, this video thrilled me  http://vimeo.com/8239427 ) and Goeff Lawton, and Willie Smits is doing wonders in the jungle climate of Borneo - all permaculturally driven.  Plus so many more.

I don't think the demand for more is driven by innate human greed.  See "I Am the Documentary" for presentation of the scientifically supported fact that human nature is inherently predominantly peaceful, cooperative and generous.  Toddlers are spontaneiously altruistic!  BUT a culture driven by sociopathic greed, using the latest psychiological/marking research, has created, using schools, media, religion, etc., false 'pictures' of what is 'good, right, proper, even possible"  (ala "TINA").  cont'd...

cont'd  (I'm probably doing something wrong here... ??)

I think that thousands of individual and small efforts will see results, eventually, but the big change may not come until the 'peaks' in oil, the economy, water - maybe all  - have 'crashed' the current juggernaut.  Then, I think the majority of folks will 'see' another way of living.

"A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit looks at how the common man and woman has historically reacted to catastrophe, and it's enormously heartening.  It seems that we revert to our true nature   Very little arrives exactly as it was predicted, but big changes are what we will need to instigate the 'new thinking' that is the only way to solve the old problems, per Einstein   (of course, a lot of it won't be new to us   And Bucky said in the early 80's that we had all the technology we needed to improve, sustainably, life for everyone.

I'm thrilled with everything I learn and do 'permaculturally' - what a blast!  And I'm doing my political thing out of guilt, because I think Bucky was also right when he said:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  Existing reality will be destroyed, and WE are designing the new models.

Humus wrote:


I think that thousands of individual and small efforts will see results, eventually, but the big change may not come until the 'peaks' in oil, the economy, water - maybe all  - have 'crashed' the current juggernaut.  Then, I think the majority of folks will 'see' another way of living.

They may only be able to "see" something for which there are examples, which is why it is so important for us to develop models of different ways to live - one of those different ways being permaculture. 

Humus wrote:
And Bucky said

I'm assuming you mean Richard Buckminiser (Bucky) Fuller.

Didn't know there was another one   He's been a lodestar of mine since the 70's (I'm that old

not sure there is another one either, but figured i clarify for everyone (including myself).

He's one of the greats that you may not agree with all of him, but he sure doesn't get the recognition he deserves. Tesla is another one that is easy to add to the list.

since you like to read and you like bucky, you might like Logic and Design: in art, science & mathematics , by Krome Barratt (there are a few versions out there, so search by author to look at them)
link to reviews on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Design-Art-Science-Mathematics/product-reviews/155821268X/

Oooh, just put a hold on it - sounds yummy (plus all the other deliciousness - Tesla et al- to be re-discovered   I was going to respond with "Sacred Geometry" and I see the excellent Amazon reviewer already did   (BTW should this be another thread - I'm no/lo tech - sorry)

To recap my prior possilby-incoherent post, I think history shows that the future rarely arrives as anticipated, and so the dreaded threats re: climate, population, resources, finance, decademce, etc., probably will bring some kind of 'crash', BUT, possibly one that rewards the out-of-boxers like permies and many others, and also resets the oblivious 'us' to our default good natures.  Thus I nurture faith.....and Art Donnelly's (of SeaChar) admonition tagged below.