politics and food - "everything i want to do is illegal"

[John Kilduff]

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If agribusiness is in fact unsustainable, it will stop. It's inevitable. The "problem" will fix itself. Someone will come up with some other business model.

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This is just silly. If all the topsoil has blown away in a region, or land become saline through poor irrigation practices, or gets laced with dangerous chemicals like DDT - permanent damage has been done, and the problem does not fix itself, at least not for a long time.

Your argument is like saying: If cutting down the rainforests is indeed unsustainable, it will stop. The "problem" will fix itself

The trouble, pvn, is that there will be no more rainforest remaining, which is very bad for the world economy and future generations.

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People ARE willing to pay more for it, and the market DOES supply it.

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Yes, I said as much.

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What's the hole? That not enough people share your preferences? The history of mankind is *built* on "unsustainable" activity. Yet progress continues. Unsustainability is what drives improvement.

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Actually, no. Previously unlimited resources is what has sustained unfettered capitalism. But those limits are approaching for the first time in history - with oil, with forests, with ecosystems, with arable land, with clean air.

The hole is people not realizing or not caring about the burdens they have to bear until it's too late. Consumers are simply stupid when it comes to complex issues where benefits aren't easily realized. And the nature of capitalism means that someone will always chase a buck - and damn the consequences. You yourself agree that the market can supply almost everything that people want to buy. If the thing that people want to buy is the last skin of an Asian lion, or the last ivory of an African elephant, someone will supply it, if not kept in check.

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If you want stagnation, you can have it, nobody will stop you.

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Long term sustainability is not stagnation. But it does cost, and people simply aren't smart enough to pay it. Fast food proves that.

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Phil153,

I agree with your points about the limits of certain natural resources approaching being reached for the first time in history, and I think that many free-marketeers simply disbelieve this or choose to ignore this (on the flip side, some resources that appear to be in jeopardy may actually prove to be more resilient than expected).

I think the great problem pushing these developments, though, is not so much capitalism as it is population growth. If the world's population were much smaller, these looming issues would be very much less threatening. As the world's population increases, these issues are being forced to the forefront.

I think the world's population would be a reasonable match with the world's ecosystems at - and I'm just guessing here - perhaps about one-tenth of the world's current population. The natural world evolved for a mix where humans were far less dominant over natural species and where humans had far less power to curtail or destroy wild species and natural environments.

The level of population during the time when the continent was populated by Indians only would be a good natural balance, in my opinion. Of course, Europe and some other regions had long exceeded such human population levels, anyway.

It wouldn't be necessary to jettison all our present technology if the globe hosted only one-tenth of the humans it currently hosts. A modern lifestyle would still be a good and convenient thing.

Humans at lower population levels could easily fit in with the natural world and pressure the natural environment and resources hardly at all. In fact, the main reason there is so much emphasis and debate today (and during the 20th century) about capitalism versus communism or other economic systems, in my opinion, is largely because that is when the human growth population really exploded. The more people are forced to live very close with others, and the more people use limited natural resources, the more talk and concern there will be about "management" and "organization".

It might be interesting to speculate on what life would have been like with the population levels of 200 years ago, yet with all of our current modern conveniences. My guess is that that would have been better for humans than either of the historical time periods that actually unfolded, past or current.

As for the future, I don't see much hope of great human population redution save for calamitous occurrences, either natural or man-made. In my opinion, that's just too bad, because humans are ruining the natural world and are doing so mainly because there are just too many humans on the Earth (from a naturally balanced perspective). The ironic thing is, that too many humans will also be bad for humanity and already is to a significant extent.

Ah the irony of the universe. Humans have already wiped out 90% of the fish in the oceans; maybe the natural world will have the last laugh someday with a plague that wipes out 90% of humanity. Maybe that plague will be started by a mutant virus from some recombinant DNA experiment, who knows?

I hope there won't be some calamitous way that the human population gets reduced, and I would prefer to see a slow reduction by lower average fertility rates around the world; but a slow reduction in birth rates below replacement levels appears unlikely at present.

A calamitous crash WILL happen eventually, if population growth is not checked. Every natural population that grows wildly and remains unchecked eventually crashes; I see no reason why the population of humans should prove to be an exception to that rule.

Then, you'll no longer have to worry much about natural resources being overpressured due to capitalism - as long you're one of those who manage to survive the calamity.