Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

[Great Pebble]

Thanks. I'll bow out now as I can see I'm wasting my time.

If anyone expects to change anyone elses opinion, on this or any other matter simply by stating something as fact without explaining the thought behind it and investigating the practicalities involved ... They are wasting their time.

 

[Lurch]

You're not wasting your time friend, we're all increasing our knowledge a little here.

Sure grass grows without fert, all plants will grow without fert but not with the sort of yeild required for feeding the ever growing planetary population. The sources of organic fertilizer you quote are available but in no where near the volumes required.

Currently a non-arable (i.e. livestock farm) will apply fert to it's pastures at least once a year. This is so that the stock can have enough feed through the summer and to enable the land to produce excess to be harvested (typically by silage) in the winter time. Organic waste (i.e. the dung produced over winter and bedding spoil) is applied to the land throughout the winter or when the land is dry enough in spring in addition to the artificial fertilizer.
Composted domestic waste is not produced in the volumes required to apply to fields to replace artificial requirements, artificial fertilizers are also produced to specific requirements for the crop grown and the type of land which it is to be applied to.
Some farm land cannot have artificial fertilizer (or organic for that matter) applied to it, such as fell land. The resultant drop in grass yeild and nutritional content means that stocking levels are vastly lower and the type of animal which can be grazed is significantly different (more rangy smaller beasts).

 

[Pappa]

I was only quoting a plant which can grow without fertiliser, I wasn't refering specifically to pasture land. Pasture fields are often fertilised with silage? Isn't silage organic? [Edit: Sorry Lurch, your last post wasn't there when I started this one]

And Lurch, maybe I wasn't brought up on a farm and know little about farming practices, but to be fair, you are rubbishing organic methods without knowing anything about them yourself.

Nick, I'm not wasting my time trying to change any one else's opinion. I'm wasting my time defending my own when I feel the arguement is going nowhere.

Pappa

 

[Lifthasir]

The composting effect reduces my grass clippings to about 25% after 10 days o
so - FACT. I do tend my heap - which speeds the process. Come and see
for yourself when I start cutting it again in a couple of weeks.

I wish we could live organically - but not all ofus can. I try my best - but ultimately
fail.

We don't have the land to revert to organic farming 100% - not with our current
population levels. Talk to any farmer, they'll tell you. It's the same with livestock. If
all livestock were raised outside 'organically' the price of meat would much more expensive and in short supply.

The 'green' movement is making some inroads - but it is not going to solve all
the problems. It can make a difference, perhaps a significant difference given time but it cannot sustain large populations.

I for one don't support the mass starvation of poorer people just so the more well
off can indulge their 'green' conscience and eat better food.

 

[Great Pebble]

I for one don't support the mass starvation of poorer people just so the more well off can indulge their 'green' conscience and eat better food.

And this is the nub of the problem. As the developing nations ...err... develop... How do you tell a guy who has just made enough money to buy the car his father could only have dreamt of, not to buy one?

 

[Lifthasir]

Tax...tax...tax...the only blunt instrument...but then it makes us look wrong
for defeating communism!!! Hence the Global Warming 'myth'...convince people
that by NOT buying the new car they are preventing the world from imploding
within the next 50 years!!! Like I said before, I don't mind if it works - just don't try
to convince me that it's true...

 

[Great Pebble]

The net result of raising the tax can either be:

Reduced use of whatever it is you're taxing or an increase in wages, with resultant increases in production and marketing in order to cover them.... Take you pick

Add:- Basically what I'm saying is that you can't one one hand (marketing) tell people they should aspire to something and then on the other tell them not to (appeal to their better nature).

 

[bushtuckerman]

The problem of keeping society, and different nations equitable is certainly a moral one, but is it really a practical one? What i was driving at is that these decisions may be made for us.

I think perhaps we all have different questions we are asking, and this is confusing, there are huge numbers of questions to ask after all. My question, is orientated towards the likelyhood of the survival of the human race, past the hurdle we currently face. Some of the participants in this thread seem to be arguing (pointlessly) that the world cannot support a growing population...now, how this has become a basis for some of the arguments is baffling. In what way could any species, on any planet indefinately support an increasing population? if our population continued to rise in indefinately in the way it is now, then we would be on the phone to Rent-A-Planet pretty sharpish.

Is not the most important question one of how we, as a race, will behave (and be forced to behave) in the coming years? If so, then don't we have the possible outcomes of the following(?):

1) mass extinction, human race wiped out completely
2) mass extinction, some humans survive and a 'back at square one' scenario is reached.
3) the function of population growth of humans begins to slow, due to external pressures
4) the function of population growth of humans begins to slow, due to internal pressures
5) a combination of 3 and 4
6) as a consequence of either 3, 4 or 5, the population starts to hit a 'plateau' phase, one which can be supported by available resources for a length of time.

I may be talking bullsh*t, but that is how i see our predicament. internal pressures may be conflict, or possibly just a natural genetic response to over-population in some manner. external pressures may include rising oil prices or whatever, but these are just details, and don't change the overall question: how many of us will survive??

The moral obstacles we encounter are moot to the above question, but are very important in terms of what it is we preserve of ourselves. personally, i cannot see the whole fo the human race being wiped out, i think we are far too versatile. what i believe is threatened is our way of life, and this is where 'equity' comes into it.

 

[Lifthasir]

Well..it is mainly about population. Western societies have a stable if not a falling
population. The population of the UK would have dipped slightly had it not been
for mass (illegal) immigration. Africa is the next candidate for massive population
increase. It can't sustain it's population as it is so there will be more misery ahead there.

We are seeing a plateau of resources now. We know we can't go on as we are.
But who is going to give in first?

There are several promising technologies such as Tesla's capacitor which may
have merit.

When the tsumani hit over a year ago - it brought home to me just how much debris,
fridges, cars, chemicals would have been swept into the sea with the bodies.

If mankind dies out, I doubt the other animals will care (or notice). By dying out,
it would be greatest gift of all to the envirnoment. One species sacrificed for the
sake of thousands of others...odds like that are hard to come by!

 

[Lurch]

And Lurch, maybe I wasn't brought up on a farm and know little about farming practices, but to be fair, you are rubbishing organic methods without knowing anything about them yourself.

I'm not rubbishing them, I'm just pointing out that there are huge challenges to the widespread adoption of them. Such challenges that it would not be possible to meet current demand if they were forcibly universally adopted.
I'd prefer a more organic solution, but this will mean that the current population is unsustainable.

 

[bushtuckerman]

Well..it is mainly about population

Of course, the underlying theme of my post.

We are seeing a plateau of resources now. We know we can't go on as we are. But who is going to give in first?

By the looks of things, Sweden.

I was talking of a plateau of the population, resources will be depleted at some point, all except the renewable ones. perhaps a global population plateau would be reached, sometime in the future, where these renewable resources are the limiting factor to its size.

 

[bushtuckerman]

One of the problems i had with this idea before was that species/civilisations need to grow in size if they are to be successful, 'if you don't grow, you die' is a phrase i have herad several times. But, perhaps this does not necessarily have to be a problem in terms of the overall population of the earth, since as you said before, some nations' populations are increasing while others are not, so there could just be a competition between these various groups of people; some improve, some fail, but on average the earth is able to support its population...maybe.

 

[tomtom]

I'd prefer a more organic solution, but this will mean that the current population is unsustainable.

but are the current agricultureal(sp?) practices of this country sustainable?

 

[Pappa]

I'm going to pose a straightforward question. It has been suggested here that population in the UK has grown so much, organic farming can no longer sustain the increased population.

In 1951 almost all horticulture in the UK was performed organically, the population at the time was roughly 50,000,000. In 2001, the population was roughly 60,000,000. Putting aside the scientific advances made in organic growing over the past 50 years, is it possible that a 20% increase in population can remove the ability of organic farming methods to sustain the population?

 

[Lifthasir]

Pappa, you're wrong. Pre-war Britain imported huge amounts of food. Parts of
the population also suffered serious malnutrition. The consequence of the Second World War
was that our supplies lines from across the 'Empire' were
cut by the Germans. Hitler attempted to blockade Britain into surrender by
starving us out. It very nearly succeeded. It was only prevented by two things:
1. savage rationing
2. the courage of the North Atlantic convoys

This is all elementary history.

Also, it was noted that after the war, when we moved away from importing
North American/Canadian wheat, levels of nutrition started to drop in our bread.
(i.e. selenium).

Rationing continued after the war and was gradually phased out by the 1950's.

It should also be noted that many working class people couldn't afford meat
before and after the war - hence such dishes as tripe and other 'offal' based
recipes. Now there is nothing wrong with offal. In fact it is very nutritious.

In fact the UK was importing vast amounts of food during the Victorian age - and
not just finger food for the rich!

School milk was introduced by the government because huge numbers of
children were malnourished, had rickets and other disorders.

There is one thing to note. As a nation we are becoming obese, so there is some
'fat' (excuse pun) which could be removed from the system. However, the
modern desire for processed and refined carbohydrate foods is perhaps more
to blame than gluttony.

Malnutrition in the UK was as bad in parts of the population in the first half of
the 20thC as it is today in parts of Africa today. Infant mortality was awful. The
UK has only very recently evolved into a well fed, well nourished general
population. And only in the last 10-15years into an over-fed one.

 

[Pappa]

I'm not talking about imports or the war, and I'm perfectly aware of our elementary history. We still import food and 1951 was after the war (Hitler was dead). I'm talking about whether we would suddenly run out of organic fertiliser because of a 20% rise in population. We have masses of the stuff, it literally grows on trees . Nearly everything we produce that's not made out of metal or plastic can be converted in to it. It's just not going to run out that easily.

 

[bushtuckerman]

I'd prefer a more organic solution, but this will mean that the current population is unsustainable.

but are the current agricultureal(sp?) practices of this country sustainable?

Precisely.

 

[Lifthasir]

Pappa, as we didn't grow sufficient food for ourselves before or after the
war, it's obvious that even if 100% organic fertilizer were used for what we
did grow, it wasn't enough then and it can't be enough after a 20%
population increase.

In 1951 we were importing massive amounts of food. Witness the elder
generations tales of when 'oranges' became available again or when
bananas arrived. In 1951 our farms were only producing a percentage of
our food intake. Whatever that percentage was and how many it could have
fed if not supplemented with imports would give us a rough idea of an organically
sustainable population. And remember that during the war, we had a couple of
million men or so overseas, a low population growth and 'armies' of women
farming as much land as possible - with extra land ploughed that had never been
ploughed before. People living on concentrated food stuffs such as powdered
egg and powdered milk.

I first mentioned population control on page 2 of this thread:

The only way to avoid a global energy crisis is population reduction. If we
don't do this, we'll have to set aside a few hundred million barrels of oil
to produce fertlizer otherwise we will all starve!!!


We passed the point of organic food production a long time ago.
Remember that not all fertilizer is poison. It's the weedkillers that are the
problem.

The 'stuff' we could use for fertilizer isn't any where near enough. Compost
doesn't enrich the soil enough for wide scale crop production. If you compost
all the stuff your household creates each year, you may have enough for a
flower bed and a few hanging baskets. A lot of our farmland is and always has
been poor. It needs more than a few potato peelings as fertilizer. Finland had
to address a severe selunium shortage within it's population because it's
soil is quite barren of the stuff.

Oh and fertilizer doesn't grow on trees. You can
compost leaves but on their own they don't offer much at all. Compost isn't 'fertilizer'. If all farmers needed
to do was sweep up the leaves in parks and collect restaurant left-overs - why
would they pay through the nose for fertilizer?

Compost and manure is ok if you're growing a few veg in the back garden or
on the allotment.

A good start would be to ban most foods. Identify a handful of staples and stick
them. E.g everyone gets two ounces of butter, half a cabbage and 4 spuds
every two days. Two pints milk a week plus 5 fruits of the season and a
state multi-vitamin mineral pill. All cakes, sweets etc. banned.

 

[Pappa]

Remember that not all fertilizer is poison. It's the weedkillers that are the problem.

Sorry but that is wrong. All synthetic fertilisers are produced from sources that are not part of the earth's natural nitrogen cycle. All this additional nitrogen is having detrimental effects on the environment.

Anthropogenic Nitrogen
Turns out, nitrogen may be even worse for the climate than carbon dioxide – and it's not going away: "the consequences are likely to be even worse than 'just' global warming. Human health, biodiversity, ozone levels and global climate are already being affected. And if we thought the carbon problem was tricky to sort out, we're in for an even nastier shock." New Scientist.
Complete article:

STOP five people on the street and chances are they will be able to tell you that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. Stop another five and ask them about nitrogen emissions, and they will probably stare at you blankly.

But a growing number of scientists say that nitrogen is a problem that we ignore at our peril. While we have been fretting about the consequences of a 10 per cent increase in CO2, levels of polluting nitrogen compounds in the environment have almost doubled. If we ignore them for much longer, the scientists insist, the consequences are likely to be even worse than "just" global warming. Human health, biodiversity, ozone levels and global climate are already being affected. And if we thought the carbon problem was tricky to sort out, we're in for an even nastier shock.

"Long term, anthropogenic nitrogen is probably a greater environmental threat than anthropogenic carbon," says Ken Cassman of the department of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. "There are biodiversity issues from acid rain, aerosol issues which impact on human health, and eutrophication problems from nitrates going into water," says Mark Sutton, head of atmospheric sciences at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Edinburgh, UK.

There has, of course, always been a lot of nitrogen in the environment. About 78 per cent of air by volume is nitrogen gas, N2, but until it has been oxidised or reduced into a reactive form, it is neither harmful nor useful to most living things. For hundreds of millions of years, the only route to reactive nitrogen was via bacteria and lightning, which fixed nitrogen out of the air and began a series of transformations through soil, plants and animals, back into the soil, and finally, back into the air (see Diagram).

Then along came the industrial revolution and the first large-scale burning of fossil fuels, which causes nitrogen in the air to react to form nitrogen oxides (NOx). Then a century ago, German chemist Fritz Haber worked out how to make ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, a process that eventually led to the industrial production of nitrogen fertiliser. Soon, levels of reactive nitrogen began spiralling out of control and the natural nitrogen cycle became a bit player. Today as much as 70 per cent of reactive nitrogen cycling through the atmosphere, earth and sea is there as a result of human activity. In fact, the nitrogen "cycle" no longer exists. It's now known as a cascade (see same Diagram), although in reality it's more like a torrent.

But while CO2 has been burnt into the public consciousness as the bad guy of global warming, the nitrogen problem has gone largely unnoticed. This is partly because the nitrogen story is far more complicated. In its various chemical forms, nitrogen can have no fewer than seven apparent charges, or "oxidation states", that are a problem to health or the environment, making its passage through the environment the most complex of the major elements (see Table).

"More nitrogen falls out of the air [as acid rain and particulates] now than farmers used to put on their fields in the 1950s," says John Lawton, former head of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which funded the Global Nitrogen Enrichment programme - a five-year project that ended in early 2005. "But because it's from diffuse sources it's an unbelievably difficult problem to fix."

"What is unique about nitrogen is that the same atom in a molecule of reactive nitrogen can cause multiple effects in the atmosphere, in terrestrial ecosystems, in freshwater and marine systems, and on human health, as it moves through the environment," says James Galloway, who heads the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), based at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "The only way to stop the cascade is to convert reactive nitrogen back to non-reactive N2".

And herein lies the problem. All this extra nitrogen in the environment has overwhelmed the natural cycle, and de-nitrifying bacteria just can't convert the excess back into atmospheric N2 fast enough. And while agricultural sources of nitrogen are mainly a local problem, nitrogen compounds from burning fossil fuels can cross national boundaries, causing acid rain in neighbouring countries and, worse, global warming.

Unanswered questions

Yet despite the scale of the problem, surprisingly little is known about the effects of nitrogen on the environment and health. "We know that at high levels you can get an effect on ecosystems," says Mark Bradford of the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia, Athens. "There may be unexpected effects between low and high levels, but we just don't have the figures yet."

Other unanswered questions are the difference between adding small amounts of nitrogen over a long period and adding a lot very quickly; the effects of different forms of nitrogen on the same ecosystem; and interactions with temperature, carbon and other environmental factors.

What is known, however, is alarming. "With nitrogen there is a clear link with human health, one that we don't have with CO2," says Elizabeth Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

For example, nitrates from farm run-off can get into drinking water, and this has been linked to methaemoglobinaemia, or "blue baby syndrome", in which the nitrates are converted to nitrites in the body, disrupting the ability of haemoglobin to carry oxygen. The condition causes headache, fatigue, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, and in extreme cases a loss of consciousness and death. The syndrome has become a major problem in parts of the US and the Netherlands, which has the highest levels of nitrogen deposition in the world.

In California, there is growing concern about how atmospheric agricultural emissions are affecting health. The San Joaquin Valley, for example, produces 20 per cent of all the milk in the US, and Fresno, the biggest city in the valley, and notorious for its smog, has the third-highest rate of asthma in the country. Many believe these statistics are linked. Dairy farms release large amounts of ammonia, which forms particulate ammonium nitrate, and although it is not yet clear whether agricultural fumes or vehicle exhausts are to blame for the smog, on particularly bad days some schools in the valley fly a red flag warning parents to keep their children indoors.

Excess nitrogen compounds are also bad news for ecosystems. Livestock farms discharge considerable quantities of nitrates and ammonia into rivers, lakes and the sea, where they wreak havoc on biodiversity and commercial fisheries. Nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in the Gulf of Mexico, where nitrates flowing from the Mississippi river have created a "dead zone". The zone, one of 146 worldwide, was first recorded in the 1970s, and appears each year when an excess of nutrients from the Mississippi basin is washed into the sea, causing eutrophication, a bloom of plankton and algae. When these organisms die, the bacteria that feed on them go into overdrive, using up the available oxygen, and suffocating anything that can't escape the area. Last year's dead zone covered some 15,000 square kilometres, and appeared several months earlier than usual.

Nitrate leaching also causes acidification in freshwater rivers and lakes. And when nitrogen and sulphur dioxides in the atmosphere combine with moisture, nitric, nitrous and sulphuric acids are formed, killing fish and damaging tree roots and leaves.

NOx compounds from fossil fuels are also causing concern. In sunlight, NOx compounds in the atmosphere react with hydrocarbons to form ground-level ozone, a lung irritant that can cause disease. A 2002 study by the US Environmental Protection Agency pointed to ozone as a factor in the development of asthma. Another study found that children living in communities with higher atmospheric ozone had poorer lung function.

But perhaps the biggest puzzle of all is the tangled relationship between nitrogen and climate change. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is present in the atmosphere at concentrations of 311 parts per billion, compared with 360 parts per million for CO2. But molecule for molecule N2O is a greenhouse gas with over 300 times the global warming potential of CO2. And while some see nitrogen as helping to reduce global warming by stimulating plant growth, hence locking more carbon away, this benefit is likely to be overshadowed by an increased rate of denitrification in the soil, which pumps NOx back into the atmosphere.

But as the nitrogen torrent continues, answers may at last be on the way. A number of projects have sprung up in recent years, with the intention of filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge and pushing the problem up the research agenda. The most recent, NitroEurope, is a five-year European Union initiative expected to start in March. The project, which involves a core of 17 EU states, plus India and China is designed to integrate research between countries on the link between the nitrogen and carbon cycles.

At NCAR, Holland is working on a similar project. In 2003 she brought together soil scientists, air pollution specialists and biodiversity experts to thrash out the main issues concerning nitrogen pollution. The result, in November 2004, was the US Nitrogen Cycle Plan, a tool to generate funding for nitrogen research and stimulate political interest in the problem.

The first step is to find out more about where nitrogen is coming from, and what impact it is having, to shed light on the effects of the nitrogen cascade. The question then will be what to do about it. "We absolutely need a Kyoto-style agreement," says Holland. "Industrialised countries have increased nitrogen deposition fivefold [in the last century], and developing countries are right behind us."

The closest thing yet to a Kyoto-style document is the Nanjing declaration, unveiled in 2004 at the 3rd International Nitrogen Conference by Zhoaliang Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Katsu Minami of the National Institute of Agro-environmental Sciences in Japan, and Galloway. It has since been adopted by the European Union and presented to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) governing council, where it is waiting for more signatures.

The answers to the problems, though, may be difficult to come by. Worldwide, five times as much reactive nitrogen comes from food production as from energy production. That's because it's very difficult to "spoon feed" plants the exact amount of nitrogen they need, and any excess simply drains off into the environment. Similarly, animals use only about 20 per cent of the nitrogen in their feed. The rest comes out the other end and either runs back into the ground or is given off as fumes.

Cow control

Few governments are willing to hit their farmers in the pocket with restrictions on fertiliser use and husbandry. To pre-empt this major stumbling block, the INI is working on ways to reduce inputs to the cascade, while still feeding a growing population.

One possibility would be to genetically modify crop plants so they could fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere. But even supposing this could be done, it would only be a temporary fix: crops are fed to livestock and people who then make their own mark on the nitrogen cascade.

Perhaps a better technological solution would be precision agriculture, the farming equivalent of fuel injection in car engines, in which quantities of nitrogen fertiliser would be matched to the plants' needs. Nitrogen-proofing farms could also help - woodland is particularly good at catching ammonia emissions, so planting trees around livestock farms could help dilute the impact. Finally, keeping livestock inside could enable the air to be "scrubbed" to remove nitrogen compounds before venting it to the atmosphere.

Back in California, cows are already being hit with environmental regulations normally restricted to the dirtiest cars. Any farm in the state with more than 1000 dairy cows must apply for a licence from the state's Air Resources Board. And in the eastern US, the Clean Air Interstate Rule aims to reduce NOx emissions by 60 per cent by 2015. "Agriculture had a historical exemption from some of these rules because farms were not a major source [of pollution] 20 years ago," says Mike Kleeman, an air-quality scientist at the University of California, Davis. "In the future I expect that agriculture will be asked to manage the emissions of ammonia and other organic compounds from their livestock operations."

But ultimately, since nitrogen compounds cross national boundaries, these local initiatives will need to be controlled on a global scale. Nitrogen may not yet be recognised as a global issue on the scale of CO2, but when developing countries catch up with our fuel-guzzling and fertiliser-spraying habits, it won't be long.

Ultimately there is one solution that will definitely work, but we're not going to like it. "By and large the nitrogen problem is very much one of technology-driven societies, and the only solution is a revolution to less consumptive lifestyles," says Brian Moss, professor of botany at the University of Liverpool, UK. "This won't happen voluntarily but it may be forced by the combined effects of climate change, the end of the oil economy, rising populations, economic and environmental refugees and the loss of goods and services from the 70 per cent or so of natural ecosystems predicted to have disappeared by 2050. I'll have popped my clogs by then but if you're under 30, maybe even 40, I think you're in for a very rough ride."

From issue 2535 of New Scientist, 21 January 2006, page 40

As for the rest, I can't really be bothered to keep arguing this through. We're both as stuck in our mindset as each other and it's not going to benefit anyone if we keep on arguing till the cows come home.

Pappa

 

[Lifthasir]

Pappa, you've completely missed the point. No one is disputing that chemicals
and artificial means aren't bad. Or that organic peramaculture is better. It's
just pie in the sky to think it's as simple as making a decision.

But bad and necessary are two different arguments.

The FACT is this. Stop the use of fertilizers and pesticides over night and the
result is apocalyptic starvation with a resulting collapse in society.

There are plenty of people living cushy lives looking at life through rose-tinted
glasses. Life is not idealogy - it is reality.

The reality is that without intensive farming methods hundreds of millions of
people will starve to death. There is simply no getting away from this. I don't
like it - I don't want it - but it is TRUE.

Your big quote also supports what I've been saying on this thread - that Global
Warming and greehouse gases is largely bunkum, or at the most a tiny part
of a much larger problem.

At the end of the day, you can't dispute the evidence. More people alive today
than have ever lived and died. Life expectancy extending every year.

Your 'quote' goes on to suggest that GM is the answer.

Perhaps you want to see a few hundred million people, or a billion people fight
each other to the death over a few remaining scraps of food - just so that
the survivors can live organically.

The OTHER problems with organic are:

1. yields are massively reduced
2. it encourages massive weed growth which requires intensive labour to control
3. it encourages pests which further decimate production
4. whole crops can be lost because of a simple blight.
5. it is labour intensive - compare how many people worked the land a hundred
years ago to how many do so today.

I doubt we have lived in a meaningful self-sufficient way since shortly after the
Norman conquest. And remember that back then, the land was covered with
huge forests, boar, beers, deer etc.

The other problem is the vegetarians (oh yes). They are the ones who want
more cereals, more fruit and veg. How can we possibly live organically
without having livestock to provide manure? Herds must be maintained so that
they can reproduce - yet how are they going to feed inthe meanitme
unless land is set aside to grow their food.

The current world population is approx 6.5 billion. If we could kill about 5.5 to
6 billion people, perhaps we'll stand a chance.

I don't like this scenario. But we are stuck with it.