Butch Femme Planet - View Single Post - Maude Barlow on Water: The Myth of Abundance

Esme nha Maire · 01-13-2018, 03:05 PM

I can't thank you enough for this thread, Katzchen. I hadn't heard of Maude before, but she's most definitely now amongst the women I admire most for speaking out so clearly on this subject. If anyone reading this doubts what Maude is saying, I urge them to look up information on the Aral Sea, and see how it has changed since 1950.

I think many (most?) people just don't grasp the rapidity with which population increase, power increase, resource increase has happened with our species. Each day follows on, much like the next, why shouldn't tomorrow be much the same? Except, of course, it isn't. I became interested (and worried about) the environment back in the 1970's, and it's patly due to that that I'm on my horticulture degree course now.

Me and two of my colleagues on the course I'm on were tasked with doing a presentation on urban agritech. It was interesting seeing the reaction of my young colleagues (all in their twenties) on the salient points of our presentation; population increased from 3 billion (the year I was born) to double that by 2000, is currently in the vicinity of 7.5 billion (though the rate of increase is now slowing) and is predicted by the UN to hit around 11 billion (median estimate) by 2050.

That's a hell of a lot more extra people just since I was born, all needing and using water, power, resources. It's a heck of a lot of extra waste heat from our industries being dumped into the environment, not to mention the gaseous wastes affecting the composition and thermal properties of our atmosphere. It's a heck of a lot of extra food that's needed to feed all those extra humans too, and growing food consumes water, so we're in competition with our own food for water that we could be drinking!

Quite frankly, anyone seeing the data and able to grasp simple maths would have to be unsound of mind to carry on to think that we can carry on as we have this last few centuries. Or, possibly, sufficiently immoral to not give a damn about future generations, and happy to just take the money from their political patrons and spout arrant dangerous nonsense about the various crises that face us imminently as a species.

Yes, there are various technologies that may be able to help somewhat, from water desalination and purification methods that use very little energy, to hydroponic techniques that can produce ten times as much of certain edible crops (most not giving much in the way of calories, as yet) per unit area (but those require the construction of units that use resources and help cause other problems!). The conclusion we came to is that technology might be able to hold off a widespread crisis in food supply for ten to twenty years longer than it's liable to happen naturally, but no more than that. (incidentally, currently the world still grows sufficient food to feed everyone - the major reason that people are starving is due to our insistence on treating food as a luxury that must be purchased, rather than a human right. But we're putting the environment under severe strain growing our food the way we currently are, and coudlc ause ecosystem collapse).

The best advice I'm able to give anyone is to be as frugal with resource usage as you can, learn how to grow some form of food if you can, and for youngsters to have no more than one child per couple. for a generation or two.

Ultimately, we MUST control our numbers and behave more rationally as a species if we want anything like our 'civilisation' to continue.

01-13-2018, 03:05 PM	#3
Esme nha Maire Member How Do You Identify?: Tomboyish eccentric antique femme Preferred Pronoun?: She/her Relationship Status: single Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: UK Posts: 642 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 2,196 Thanked 2,089 Times in 541 Posts Rep Power: 19310768	I can't thank you enough for this thread, Katzchen. I hadn't heard of Maude before, but she's most definitely now amongst the women I admire most for speaking out so clearly on this subject. If anyone reading this doubts what Maude is saying, I urge them to look up information on the Aral Sea, and see how it has changed since 1950. I think many (most?) people just don't grasp the rapidity with which population increase, power increase, resource increase has happened with our species. Each day follows on, much like the next, why shouldn't tomorrow be much the same? Except, of course, it isn't. I became interested (and worried about) the environment back in the 1970's, and it's patly due to that that I'm on my horticulture degree course now. Me and two of my colleagues on the course I'm on were tasked with doing a presentation on urban agritech. It was interesting seeing the reaction of my young colleagues (all in their twenties) on the salient points of our presentation; population increased from 3 billion (the year I was born) to double that by 2000, is currently in the vicinity of 7.5 billion (though the rate of increase is now slowing) and is predicted by the UN to hit around 11 billion (median estimate) by 2050. That's a hell of a lot more extra people just since I was born, all needing and using water, power, resources. It's a heck of a lot of extra waste heat from our industries being dumped into the environment, not to mention the gaseous wastes affecting the composition and thermal properties of our atmosphere. It's a heck of a lot of extra food that's needed to feed all those extra humans too, and growing food consumes water, so we're in competition with our own food for water that we could be drinking! Quite frankly, anyone seeing the data and able to grasp simple maths would have to be unsound of mind to carry on to think that we can carry on as we have this last few centuries. Or, possibly, sufficiently immoral to not give a damn about future generations, and happy to just take the money from their political patrons and spout arrant dangerous nonsense about the various crises that face us imminently as a species. Yes, there are various technologies that may be able to help somewhat, from water desalination and purification methods that use very little energy, to hydroponic techniques that can produce ten times as much of certain edible crops (most not giving much in the way of calories, as yet) per unit area (but those require the construction of units that use resources and help cause other problems!). The conclusion we came to is that technology might be able to hold off a widespread crisis in food supply for ten to twenty years longer than it's liable to happen naturally, but no more than that. (incidentally, currently the world still grows sufficient food to feed everyone - the major reason that people are starving is due to our insistence on treating food as a luxury that must be purchased, rather than a human right. But we're putting the environment under severe strain growing our food the way we currently are, and coudlc ause ecosystem collapse). The best advice I'm able to give anyone is to be as frugal with resource usage as you can, learn how to grow some form of food if you can, and for youngsters to have no more than one child per couple. for a generation or two. Ultimately, we MUST control our numbers and behave more rationally as a species if we want anything like our 'civilisation' to continue.