Sunday, March 1, 2015

Is wealth causing the Climate change? #Hungergedon imminent?

Current direction of human behavior leads to "Climate Change". It has been disputed and discussed for decades and most of experts now agree: Humans cause climate change (statement made for sake of discussion without references- sorry). The climate change causes change in multiple directions affecting sources of food and negatively correlating with food availability.

I am not going to write about the fossil fuels and overusing technology and dependence on energy. Or at least not the energy powering our "necessary" and "life enhancing" devices.
I am going to talk about special "direct" kind of energy that fuels mankind. Food. As it seems with growing population and diminishing of "fossil fuels" we will face "OIL" crisis in anticipated 30-50 years (accounted partially for new technologies in the car industry - this although is not at the focus of this post). Well reading stories written by population experts we might face more serious "energy crisis" sooner - feeding the planet crisis. Not to say we do not have the "Hunger" crisis already, but so far it is mostly about distribution inequality rather than complete lack of resources.

With the current efficiency of farming and the agriculture there will be lack of food resources by 2040 for anticipated  population of 8 to10 billion people. Well, one may say "I belong to the top 10%" so counting on continual distribution inequality, I and my family will have something to eat whatever cost - right? Extremely expensive, but not dying of hunger...

Well hunger brings in people desperation and the worst behavior. This comes with war, violence, terrorism, diseases etc. So this means statistically even the top 10% will be affected and suffer more compared to current status quo.
OK I got shifted away from my title: Wealth and the Climate change.

Here comes my punchline/paragraph indicated in Title: 

The feeling of being wealthier makes people shift their food choices and preferences. For example. Soon as people start making more money they start buying food that they were being deprived of before. This is visible on shift from Pork to Beef in poorer countries when they experience growth of median incomes. Beef being more expensive because growing beef requires more resources. More land, more time spent in maintenance and of course, more time needed to grow to slaughter size. Not even talking about competition of Dairy and Beef industry, with different outcomes (people do not realize that this are really two different businesses, beef cows are different breeds than Dairy cows etc..).

Simply said it requires about 10 times more resources per time unit to produce kilogram of beef than pork or chicken (Based on article in Smithsonian Magazine  (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/beef-uses-ten-times-more-resources-poultry-dairy-eggs-pork-180952103/?no-ist)). Over all producing animal proteins requires more resources than plant proteins do. [Even more dramatic comparisons here: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat].

So wealthier we get as a society more resource demanding food we choose and closer to #Hungergedon we are.  Obviously it is becoming good Earth's citizen practice to shift (or reduce) from red meat towards poultry and ultimately to Veggies..





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