2011/10/25 Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>:
> The bad news is that the population is now approaching 7 billion. The good
> news is that the growth rate and fertility rate are falling, and
> contraceptive prevalence is above 60%, although not increasing. so future
> trend look good.
I do not see why this is good or bad news. With eCat we can have
vertical agriculture, because we can remove the only obstacle why we
do not have yet vertical farming, that is the obstacle of producing
cheap light. With rapidly evolving LED-technology and eCat this
obstacle is completely removed and we can increase the productivity of
land by factor of 200 or more and water and nutrients can be fully
recycled. And production automatized.
This means that there are over two gigahectares of fertile land mass
freed from horizontal agriculture. That is plenty of land mass for
both humans and nature. Vertical agriculture means, no (GM-)
pesticides and no erosion.
Therefore, if we have unlimited source for energy and electricity
price is 5 dollars or less per MWh, vertical agriculture is cheaper
than horizontal farming. And if we can do this, then there is
absolutely no reason, why we should worry about the welfare of nature.
(Of course we do need to worry, but we can rise the environmental
conservation standards by several orders of magnitude from today's
standards.)
–Jouni
