Ianhill said:
I have to agree with hillhater on this one the problem is so widespread and ingrained we fool ourselfs that it can be fixed in 20 years or so.
50 years ago people believed that it was impossible to feed 8 billion people. Simply impossible.
Yet look at where we are now. There are more obese people in the world than undernourished people. Far from perfect obviously, but obviously the world is not starving to death.
Feeding 10 or 11 billion people is not even a challenge, it's the easiest thing to do even with todays food production. The grain harvest of densely populated Germany on just around 10% of its area could feed 200 million people.
It happens that we feed almost all of it to animals which usually turns 10kcal into 1kcal and it happens that we throw away 30% of our food and it happens that more than 50% of our population is overweight, many of those so much that it costs them many years of healthy life.
The same with energy. We do not have an energy problem, we do have a sink problem with CO2 and our atmosphere.
Germany is a heavy importer of fossil fuels and resources, but our CO2 import/export balance is more or less even (depending on data), because we are one of the largest exporter of machinery, tools, cars, chemical products in the world.
So if our society in a highly industrialized, wealthy and densely populated land with a rather cold and cloudy climate is able to get the CO2 emissions to net zero the rest of the world can do that easily, even with 10 billion or 11 billion people. Most countries have much better resources on renewable energies per capita than we do.
It's not a matter of technology, all we need is already invented, it's only a matter of will.
A recent study made an computer based optimizing on the lowest possible costs for a -95% reduction in CO2 emissions until 2050 (which would be compatible with the agreement of Paris 2015)
More details:
https://www.fz-juelich.de/iek/iek-3/DE/_Documents/Downloads/transformationStrategies2050_talk_detailedResults.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
It will cost 1,85 trillion Euro until 2050. (and includes the import of some hydrogen,because it is a cost optimizing system and its often cheaper to produce it elsewhere)
This sounds much. but in comparison isn't.
The refugees crises from 2015+ will cost us an estimated 0.5 to 0.8 trillion Euro in long term social costs (totally avoidable if people would stop fighting that shitty pointless wars for nothing)
The reunification from 1990 (similar time frame of 30 years) did cost around 3 trillion Euro
Energy imports of fossil fuels will cost us around 1 trillion Euro to 2050 anyway on todays low prices.
will it happen? I don't know.
At the moment there is very heavy opposition against new wind power plants and the CDU lead ministry for economics is trying to sabotage the entire projects and willing to kill 10,000 jobs while they promised subsidies of 2 million Euro for each single job in the remaining lignite industry.
This is very difficult to understand, but many things Homo sapiens does is difficult to understand.
If we fail, if the world fails, it is not because we are so many people and it is not because we didn't have the technology, it is only because we willingly destroyed our ecosystems for no real benefit at all.
the same as we fought hundreds or thousand pointless wars for nothing good at all. It's a fault in our brains or in our societies.
People whining about having a wind power plant within their view, people whining about electricity costing 2ct more per kWh, people whining because the need to recharged when they make that 1000km tour once every 3 years. Whining about nothing at all.
And those same people are just shrugging when it comes about destruction of the worlds ecosystems, when they talk about mass scale genocide. ("world can not support so many people, they(sic!) all have to die") They simply don't care, they even deny the problem and are willing to actively sabotage any solution.
We live in a world where 1 billion people have become to fat to move and where 1 billion people go to bed hungry. We are a perverted species and I'm sure that we are able to destroy the very ecosystems that keep us alive.
We don't need to. Change for better would actually be very easy. It's just a matter of will.
Thunderfoot has a video up showing just how much of a pointless gesture 20 million trees are to the co2 situation, U.S alone needs to plant 40 million a day just to cover their own daily pollution
This is rivial.
If biomass could consume as mich CO2 as we produce there would be no need for any fossil fuels, we just would burn the wood. As it happens that did't even work 100 years ago.
Photosysnthesis with it's real efficiency of around 0.1% will not save our lifestyle, but photovoltaics with its efficiency of 10% will do.
Planting trees is very good for other reasons, but so far we are burning them and cutting the down on large scales in most countries.
Ianhill said:
The true answer to all this ? Money needs careful looking at it's not helping equality, political agenda tied into business development for the rich has to stop we can not allow the rich to have control of the money sector much longer, country's have negative interest rates poverty is increasing there's more and more protesting yet media cover what suits their political alignment it's all horse shit in all the developed country's same old bullshit sold over and over.
To which class do you belong?
To the poor or to the rich?
I'm rich. I have a nce warm flat for myself, I can eat whatever I need and if I would I could turn myself into a 200kg bobble of fat easily, I do easy work, I get health care, people like me probably will live 90 years and for most that die earlier its their own fault. I don't own a car but I could change that in one day and I could even buy two or three cars if I wanted to do so.
Hell, I own 6 electric bicyclces which is a hobby of course, but a bit off the reasonable and sane path (at least it takes to make 100 electric bicycles to consume the resources of building a single car). I am able to travel around the world and can see almost any place I want to see. My life is frocking good. I live a life kings couldn't have dreamed about just 200 years ago.
If I'm not one of the rich people in this world, who would be?
You are telling me you are a poor guy in this world?
What does your life lack that "the rich" take away from you?