The Developing Future of Publishing

Posted via email from pirategirljack's posterous

re: UN calls for greener food production to feed world in 2050

"aimed at helping developing countries boost clean energy technology, sustainable farming and other initiatives, the survey said.

The survey said the 2007-2008 food crisis and higher food prices “revealed deep structural problems in the global food system” that produce high carbon emissions and lead to a warmer climate, as well as more polluted land and water."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/un-calls-for-greener-food-production-to-feed-world-in-2050/2011/07/05/gHQAVnlqyH_story.html

There's an opportunity here: If we of the First World really have an obligation to fix everything, why not really fix it? Third World countries are only making horrible messes of themselves because they don't have the infrastructure and the resources to use the resources they have properly, and they're taking the cheapest, fastest ways to catch up with us. So, why not help them? It's not competition: it's mutual survival. If the whole world is at the same level, no one is getting cheated, so we should find a way to get them there.

And here's the opportunity: All those Third World Countries don't have infrastructure like we do. There isn't the need to dismantle a US food system to get something better in place. We could (or the UN could, or the World Health Organization could, or a new entity meant for this could) build an ideal infrastructure for them, and show them how to support it, maintain it and keep it healthy. The Third World could show the rest of the world how it's done, elevating them above that mental space where everyone seems to think there's nothing Africa or South Asia can offer the rest of the world other than manufacturing.

It's not simple to do, I know. There's issues of imperialism and local instability and we'd have to have the country as a whole behind the plan, but I think it's a very simple idea. Make Everyone Better. Isn't that a better goal than Bigger Faster Cheaper Now?

re: 2050, the year we all eat each other

Quotables, because Mark Morford is so very quotable:

"It's not like it's easy being here on the planet 40 years from now, around the year 2050, the time when the new U.S. census data indicates, after much sighing and general wringing of hands, that we as a rapacious and relentlessly procreative species will be exploding all over ourselves in numbers that, at first glance, seem entirely ridiculous and untenable and doomed, but which, when you look at them more carefully, are completely ridiculous and untenable and doomed.

Here it is: A mere 40 years from now, the world population, which just recently reached a sweating, gasping seven billion, will be well over nine billion. Ethiopia and Nigeria are on track to grow the fastest, nearly tripling in population, along with similar patterns in other "high-fertility" African regions, which is all kinds of absurd given that continent's struggles to adequately feed and water even a fraction of its current population.

Minorities will soon flip to the majority in America, much to the horror of Arizona, Texas and many, many panicky Tea Partiers, who very much believe that God really wants America to look exactly like a giant Idaho Wal-Mart, only with more gluten.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/06/notes070611.DTL#ixzz1Rij7BuBC"

"America will retain its place as third largest in the world, mostly by birthing 100 million more confused coffee slurping fans of reality TV (308 million now, 423 million then), some of them very beautiful, life-affirming and totally cute in those jeans, but many of them mal-educated, broke and living with their parents -- and by the way, if you're around 25 and reading this right now, that parent is probably you.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/06/notes070611.DTL#ixzz1RijXSzwT"

"Sure, we've managed to avoid complete cataclysm so far. But only barely. It turns out we are fabulously good at reproducing like drunken rabbits. It's everything after that where we seem to lose our collective minds.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/06/notes070611.DTL#ixzz1RijsB3mu"

"Some experts argue that the human species, if we did ourselves right, could sustain all those bodies fairly well. We have plenty of physical space. Plenty of natural resources, even. It's simply a matter of distribution, of economic health/wealth, conservation, environmental protection, careful resource management. Also, consciousness, awareness, spiritual evolution, a shared sense of humanity and ethical mindfulness. I know: Good luck with that.

Nevertheless, some say we're fully capable of sustaining 10 billion humans. We just don't seem to have it in us to do what it takes. We're terrible at efficiency, long range planning, distribution of wealth and power.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/06/notes070611.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1RikFxWWP"

"The wolf is lurching ever closer to the door. In fact, he's almost here. Unless that's just the UPS guy with a new iPad 2, yoga books and our new wine club delivery. Gosh, maybe it's not so bad after all. Guess we won't know until we open the door.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/06/notes070611.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1RikpVGib"

I love the snark, but snark aside, this is what people are actually talking about more and more often: can we survive the way we have been? I think the answer is no, not entirely. And I think sometime soon it's going to be a Big Deal and we'll have to start taking Drastic Measures to keep things going. Probably in my lifetime, or my kids' (though, really, I hope I can witness it, because that's something amazing, isn't it, the end of everything we think we know?).

My favored solutions are also, apparently the expensive ones that will probably get dropped in favor of, like, police states and wartime-rationing mentality, but I think they're better ideas: Vertical farming in cities to feed the people who live there, home farming to feed individual families as much as possible, extensive terraforming of marginal areas using ancient methods of making a place livable, and then sending people to live there--give them some incentive, some reason that's better than slums and death and crime, and then send them there. Space colonies to create more space. Clean, new energy to reduce the need for coal and oil until it's just a footnote--water and wind and geothermal are super-efficient, and we can mine natural gas off garbage dumps which we have plenty of. New planned cities that function as organisms, not horrible sprawling eyesores. 

There are people who know how to do this stuff, we just have to decide, as a planet, that we're willing to take the chances and pay the costs to make the whole planet better and cleaner and more sustainable. I think the decision will have to be made this century.