> I mean for every two tons of produce we produce today, we produce one ton in this scenario. What do you think that looks like for our country?
Well, the ~33% of food that gets wasted in the US would probably need to be handled a lot more carefully. Probably the obese people would need to eat less. And the strategy of growing the population every year through migration might need to be rethought if more farmland can't be found. Plus maybe there'd need to be more fertiliser produced. That involves fossil fuels.
The US has an explicit strategy of growing the population every year. That is a strategy that eventually leads to famine. Pointing out that global warning might lead to famine is less scary than pointing out that business as usual certainly leads to one - the poulation of the US doubled since 1950 and that is equivalent to halving the food production per person. In fact, letting natural population decline take hold would solve both problems and let the smaller population enjoy higher living standards.
> Let's say that India faces the same problem - that's a nuclear armed state. How does that play out?
They're switching over to industrial farming as far as I'm aware, they're probably going to be fine. Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India looks like a 50% reduction in farmland would knock them back to 90s levels of production efficiency, and they were mostly ok in the 90s. That is value not calories though, doing a precise estimate is probably more than I can manage for a comment.
> Remember the power outage in Texas?
Civilisation in Texas didn't get anywhere near to a collapse. I'm no expert on 450CE Rome, but from what I do know it looked nothing like modern Texas. I wish I could trade for problems like that and enjoy Texan electricity prices. I don't mind having to be ready for an emergency, that is already something that I need to do. Texas got a good deal on that one.
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I want to stress here that I'm on board with the idea that these are all catastrophic risks that could end badly. But that is business as usual for humanity, we ignore a lot of catastrophic risks on an average day. These are all things we've faced before and faced anyway without the climate changing at all. Cheap energy is the best bet to manage those risks and turning away from it is madness.
Well, the ~33% of food that gets wasted in the US would probably need to be handled a lot more carefully. Probably the obese people would need to eat less. And the strategy of growing the population every year through migration might need to be rethought if more farmland can't be found. Plus maybe there'd need to be more fertiliser produced. That involves fossil fuels.
The US has an explicit strategy of growing the population every year. That is a strategy that eventually leads to famine. Pointing out that global warning might lead to famine is less scary than pointing out that business as usual certainly leads to one - the poulation of the US doubled since 1950 and that is equivalent to halving the food production per person. In fact, letting natural population decline take hold would solve both problems and let the smaller population enjoy higher living standards.
> Let's say that India faces the same problem - that's a nuclear armed state. How does that play out?
They're switching over to industrial farming as far as I'm aware, they're probably going to be fine. Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India looks like a 50% reduction in farmland would knock them back to 90s levels of production efficiency, and they were mostly ok in the 90s. That is value not calories though, doing a precise estimate is probably more than I can manage for a comment.
> Remember the power outage in Texas?
Civilisation in Texas didn't get anywhere near to a collapse. I'm no expert on 450CE Rome, but from what I do know it looked nothing like modern Texas. I wish I could trade for problems like that and enjoy Texan electricity prices. I don't mind having to be ready for an emergency, that is already something that I need to do. Texas got a good deal on that one.
---
I want to stress here that I'm on board with the idea that these are all catastrophic risks that could end badly. But that is business as usual for humanity, we ignore a lot of catastrophic risks on an average day. These are all things we've faced before and faced anyway without the climate changing at all. Cheap energy is the best bet to manage those risks and turning away from it is madness.