Tuesday, August 19, 2008

KUNSTLER, too many people, too little food, too little oil, too little time!

KUNSTLER, too many people, too little food, too little oil!

GOOD MORNING FLINT MI USA!,
Posted by Terry Bankert 8/19/08

BANKERT Q: When will there be too many people on the planet? How does this number affect out lives?

KUNSTLER: “ It has been estimated that the world population stood at about one billion around the early 1980's, which is roughly about when the industrial adventure began to gain traction....World population is now past 6.5. billion...”[1 at pg 6]

BANKERT Q: Will the increase in population result in an inability to feed ourselves?

MALTHUS: (1766-1834), an English country clergy man educated at Cambridge....proposed that the human population if unconstrained, would grow exponentially while food supplies grew only arithmetically, and therefore population growth faced strict and inevitable natural results. [1 at 6]

BANKERT Q: How can this be true, until recently we have had plenty of food?

KUNSTLER: Malthus was certainly correct but cheap oil has skewed the equation over the past hundred years while the human race has enjoyed an unprecedented orgy of nonrenewable condensed solar energy accumulated over eons of prehistory.....The cheap oil created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period non much longer than a human life time, a hundred years.[1 at 7]

BANKERT Q: If oil is fundamental to food production, availability and cost and the supply of oil is diminishing as demand rises moving resources away from food production what will happen to us?

KUNSTLER: ...that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves arc toward depletion, we will indeed suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population.....that the ecology of the earth will not support.[1 at 7]

BANKERT: These time they are a changing. Of course we will react to diminished oil and the increase in food costs by changing our farming techniques, become more local, and seeking out alternative fuel. Our community should recognized the importance of new ideas and support the leaders who bring them. We have local leaders bringing a Swedish King and a BIOFUEL project to Flint MI.....Thank them!

posted here by Terry Bankert 8/19/08
http://attorneybankert.com/

SOURCE: [1]James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, Grove Press NY, 2005 http://www.kunstler.com/bio.html 75152/17196

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