Eating the Planet

I would like to venture a personal theory regarding the steep rise of gasoline and food prices recently hitting the world markets. I believe that this phenomenon signifies that the human race is reaching the limits of growth to our current strategy of using planetary resources.

You may recall Paul Ehrlich, who wrote a book in the 1960s entitled "The Population Bomb". He got his share of mockery for it, because the world famine that he predicted never happened. Brilliant scientists figured out ways to grow crops from superhybrid grains, and used massive amounts of petroleum based fertilizers to further increase yields and maintain fertility of overworked soils. But here in 2008, we are hitting a speed bump.

The problem is partly one of increased population- there are 6.6 billion of us now. But it is also an even bigger problem that we have increased expectations. Back in the day, Indians and Chinese were happy as long as they did not starve to death. Now, they want pork, beef, chicken, and a car. Sure, why not, but here is the thing. Everybody on our planet wants those things. If everybody were to get those things, well, we would need 2.3 planets to grow it. We don't have 2.3 planets. If everybody were to achieve the standard of living of North Americans, it would not last long, and would be followed by a collapse. As Bill clinton said at Georgetown University in 1997, "The thing that I fear most is that China will get rich the same way we did in the West". Well Bill, that fear was well founded. They plan to get rich our way, by eating the seed corn.

Okay, what are the possible solutions to this mess? We could kill each other fighting over the pie in a vain effort to get the biggest slice. We could try to grow a new pie by a massive worldwide effort to replace fossil fuel with renewables (so far, too dumb and lazy for that). We could forge international treaties to divide the planetary resources and to use them in a sustainable manner (but we don't like or trust people in other countries, so that is out).  or we could just pretend that the rising prices for fossil fuels and food prices do not mean a thing.

In our efforts to scramble around and suck up resources, we are actually going down dead ends. We decided to solve our fossil fuels shortfall by growing biofuels, and that is actually making the food problem worse as corn is diverted from the food chain.

Energy is food and food is energy, and we ain't got enough of either. You can tell me all you want about how the resources of planet earth are inexhaustible and shortfalls will just help us find the next big thing. But our track record is not good on this. We go from unsustainable A to unsustainable B, and nothing is solved, longterm.