At 11:00 AM 3/30/2009, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
Food security is a fairly significant worry, all things considered. It's nearly impossible to build up safety margin in the food distribution systems of most countries on earth because within one or two generations of any increase in the ability to produce food, the population has expanded to fill the gap, so the nature of the system as a whole is to operate near or at its limit to deliver at all times.
Yep. Though there are countries where this is not likely to be a problem.
The moment global warming starts to impact food production to any significant degree, people somewhere on earth will begin starving.
I agree, though you don't even need that. Lack of low cost fossil energy alone could cause the population to fall by the end of the century to one or two billion people. And consider what diverting corn into alcohol production did to food supplies in Mexico.
It won't affect people of our generation in the wealthiest countries (and the USA is still one of the wealthiest, even in its current weakened state), but it will affect people elsewhere on the planet almost from the moment food production starts feeling any sort of pinch. If it were possible to maintain a margin of production capacity without triggering an immediate population growth in response that eats up that margin completely, then it would be possible to ride out a lot of secondary effects of even fairly major climate change. But the dynamics of the existing systems and population growth together don't allow that margin ..
Most of the world has not escaped from the Mathusian trap. Some parts have. It's going to be a rough situation for a while as one or the other modes prevails.
Keith _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
