I am appalled (though not surprised) that people on this list who "don't have any answers" suggest "it might just require the end of wasteful materialism" and joke about soylent green.
Energy hungry synthetic nitrogen is the reason for something between 1/3 and 1/2 of crop yield. The ending of famines in Europe was the result of railroads more than any other factor. This allowed grain to be shipped from places with good crops to places where the crops had failed. Railroads allowed cities to grow, and cities do far less ecological damage than spread out humans. The article I wrote for the oil drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485 got a lot of these comments, so many that another blog picked up on the discussion: "If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the comments, you find the dissonance on full display. On the one hand you have a person saying that there may be an energy answer after fossil fuels. On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable than cheap energy." Keith _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
