With dwindling resources and an increasing human population do you think the world can remain stable for the present day civilisation?
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With the proper application of certain technologies, better efficiencies and methods, the earth could maintain the present population and more quite comfortably in the future. Some have suggested the earth could support as many as 30 billion people with high tech methods in place. There's more than enough land available...the entire global population today could fit in the state of Texas with room to spare.
We are still using technology from 100 years ago in powering our cars at very inefficient rates...a gas engine wastes perhaps 70-75 percent of the fuel it uses as heat loss. We've basically wasted two-thirds of the fossil fuels for cars and trucks in the last 100 years. Better methods could be developed. Some hybrid models and clean diesels get well over 80-100 mpg. Aerodynamic cladding on semi-trucks could save billions of gallons of fuel per year.
Food is another resource that is widely wasted...the US alone wastes some 40 percent of food between the farm and the fork. It's estimated we waste the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil per year in food wastes and the energy to produce/store/transport them. Vertical farming methods or aquaponics could grow crops year-round with much less use of fuel, water, pesticides, fertilizers, etc...and grow abundant amounts of crops closer to urban areas where needed/avoid natural disasters or bad weather. A form of soil called Terra Preta can improve crop yields up to 350 percent over poor soils and sequester carbon for centuries...mitigating global warming concerns. Saline tolerant crops could open up a half million square miles of extra farm land for biofuels or for human/animal consumption. Israel and other countries are working on saline tolerant crops.
All in all, there are plenty of new methods and technologies which can enable us to sustain a growing population on earth. The question is will we deploy them?
We are still using technology from 100 years ago in powering our cars at very inefficient rates...a gas engine wastes perhaps 70-75 percent of the fuel it uses as heat loss. We've basically wasted two-thirds of the fossil fuels for cars and trucks in the last 100 years. Better methods could be developed. Some hybrid models and clean diesels get well over 80-100 mpg. Aerodynamic cladding on semi-trucks could save billions of gallons of fuel per year.
Food is another resource that is widely wasted...the US alone wastes some 40 percent of food between the farm and the fork. It's estimated we waste the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil per year in food wastes and the energy to produce/store/transport them. Vertical farming methods or aquaponics could grow crops year-round with much less use of fuel, water, pesticides, fertilizers, etc...and grow abundant amounts of crops closer to urban areas where needed/avoid natural disasters or bad weather. A form of soil called Terra Preta can improve crop yields up to 350 percent over poor soils and sequester carbon for centuries...mitigating global warming concerns. Saline tolerant crops could open up a half million square miles of extra farm land for biofuels or for human/animal consumption. Israel and other countries are working on saline tolerant crops.
All in all, there are plenty of new methods and technologies which can enable us to sustain a growing population on earth. The question is will we deploy them?
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