Archives
July 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
4:12:00 PM EDT
Energy, Population, and Food
by Dave Cohen
In 1798, an Anglican curate by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 - 1834), theorized that population growth would always exceed essential resources. This leads to an accelerated death rate by starvation and disease of the “surplus” population. He theorized this idea in the absence of easily obtained data that would support his proposition. The basis of his doctrine is quite simply stated. "Population increases in a geometric ratio, while the means of subsistence increase in an arithmetic ratio." He spent most of his life thereafter as a scholar and teacher.
He published his work as an Essay in 1803 and spent much of his life pursuing empirical information on the subject of human population growth.
What Malthus could not have known in the period 1798 - 1803 was that the industrial revolution was just under way, and that the use of fossil energy would revolutionize the production and distribution of food.
Did increased food production take care of the starvation problem? Actually, it did not. Human population growth took off faster than food production, exactly as Malthus predicted. In 1800, world population was about 900 million. There was also wide spread poverty in the world. The world’s agrarian economies simply could not supply sufficient food fast enough to avert disasters similar to the Irish potato famine.
In the year 2005, world population stands at 6.4 billion. The world’s industrial energy intensive economies still do not supply enough food to maintain populations in places like famine ravaged central Africa. Indeed, it is estimated that 6 million (or more) children die each year as a direct result of insufficient food. That is about 16,000 per day or one every 5 seconds.
This raises a very important question. What will happen to food production and distribution, when fuel shortages become acute? The answer to that question depends on our ability to find a suitable substitute for fossil fuel. It is currently forecast that by 2050, combined petroleum and natural gas production will have fallen by over 50% from today’s levels while world population will have simultaneously increased by 50%. If a suitable substitute fuel is unavailable, a huge population dieoff becomes inevitable and may lead to an economic catastrophe in our country as well as the whole world.
A long term solution to the problem is an implementation of a hydrogen fueled society derived from fossil fuel free renewable energy resources and water. Is this doable? Do we have the energy sources? The answer to each of those questions is, “Yes indeed!” If that is the case, I ask, “Why haven’t we yet started the project? Why are we wasting our time debating a search for 6 months worth of oil on Alaska’s north slope? We have an infrastructure to build, so why aren’t we building it?”
The politcal problem that we face is lack of informed leadership. We are not moving forward as we should be. There is no structure in place to take us there. We need a program with a clear objective, as we had in 1960 when President John F. Kennedy instructed NASA to take us to the moon in a decade. ...and they did.
Written by jdc2485 Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
4:12:00 PM EDT
Population and Energy
Energy, Population, and Food
by Dave Cohen
In 1798, an Anglican curate by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 - 1834), theorized that population growth would always exceed essential resources. This leads to an accelerated death rate by starvation and disease of the “surplus” population. He theorized this idea in the absence of easily obtained data that would support his proposition. The basis of his doctrine is quite simply stated. "Population increases in a geometric ratio, while the means of subsistence increase in an arithmetic ratio." He spent most of his life thereafter as a scholar and teacher.
He published his work as an Essay in 1803 and spent much of his life pursuing empirical information on the subject of human population growth.
What Malthus could not have known in the period 1798 - 1803 was that the industrial revolution was just under way, and that the use of fossil energy would revolutionize the production and distribution of food.
Did increased food production take care of the starvation problem? Actually, it did not. Human population growth took off faster than food production, exactly as Malthus predicted. In 1800, world population was about 900 million. There was also wide spread poverty in the world. The world’s agrarian economies simply could not supply sufficient food fast enough to avert disasters similar to the Irish potato famine.
In the year 2005, world population stands at 6.4 billion. The world’s industrial energy intensive economies still do not supply enough food to maintain populations in places like famine ravaged central Africa. Indeed, it is estimated that 6 million (or more) children die each year as a direct result of insufficient food. That is about 16,000 per day or one every 5 seconds.
This raises a very important question. What will happen to food production and distribution, when fuel shortages become acute? The answer to that question depends on our ability to find a suitable substitute for fossil fuel. It is currently forecast that by 2050, combined petroleum and natural gas production will have fallen by over 50% from today’s levels while world population will have simultaneously increased by 50%. If a suitable substitute fuel is unavailable, a huge population dieoff becomes inevitable and may lead to an economic catastrophe in our country as well as the whole world.
A long term solution to the problem is an implementation of a hydrogen fueled society derived from fossil fuel free renewable energy resources and water. Is this doable? Do we have the energy sources? The answer to each of those questions is, “Yes indeed!” If that is the case, I ask, “Why haven’t we yet started the project? Why are we wasting our time debating a search for 6 months worth of oil on Alaska’s north slope? We have an infrastructure to build, so why aren’t we building it?”
The politcal problem that we face is lack of informed leadership. We are not moving forward as we should be. There is no structure in place to take us there. We need a program with a clear objective, as we had in 1960 when President John F. Kennedy instructed NASA to take us to the moon in a decade. ...and they did.
Written by jdc2485 Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
