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Engineering an improved rubisco into the food supply (or the notional biological carbon capture stream) would significantly boost to the carrying capacity of ou
by unchocked 3y ago
Engineering an improved rubisco into the food supply (or the notional biological carbon capture stream) would significantly boost to the carrying capacity of our planet.
- morkalork 3y agoAlternatively, we could carry the same number of people while preserving more of the planet for wildlife and wilderness.
- onlypositive 3y agoNobody's growing corn in the mountains.
- Auracle 3y agoThe Great Plains also count(ed) as wilderness and have wildlife. Just because it’s not as picturesque doesn’t mean it isn’t an important ecosystem.
- deelowe 3y agoGood news. People are having less kids and population growth may reverse soon.
- noduerme 3y agoWhat are the chances this will result in more food for everyone?
- civilitty 3y agoDepends on how many soylent green factories we build in response to climate change.
- noduerme 3y agoThis goes back to my theory that the people most freaked out about climate change are the ones with kids, who are mad that other less responsible people have more kids, while I'm just chilling here with no kids at all and clearly see that if all those assholes stopped having kids, climate change would be solved within 20 years.
- thrownokids 3y agoMarried vegetarian with no kids living in a major city with no cars checking in — I completely agree.
- isykt 3y agoGo Vegan! It’s easier than you think, especially since you live in a city. No judgements from me if you can’t/choose not to, it does take work. Just a bit of encouragement, and a thank you for making the compassionate and ecologically sound choice.
- m4x 3y agoClimate change absolutely won't be solved in twenty years if everybody stops having kids. What's your logic there?
- hutzlibu 3y ago"if all those assholes stopped having kids" So to save humanity, humanity must be destroyed? Also, who do you think, will take care of you, when you cannot anymore, but there aren't people anymore doing it. Robots? Well, hopefully they can take care of themself then. Or is this the whole idea? Pass everything on to the machines?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- isykt 3y agoThen your money would be worth a ton due to deflation, but unable to purchase anything because the workforce is near non existent… I’m happily child-free myself, but for natural reasons. I’ll let the breeders keep the Ponzi scheme going.
- doubleg72 3y agoIn developed countries..
- contravariant 3y agoAll countries. It just takes a while before the effects kick in.
- PradeetPatel 3y agoExactly, we're all in this together. There is only one Earth and the only way to move forward is to work together and help each other out. International politics does not need to be a zero sum game, a little bit of mutual assistance can go a long way.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- soligern 3y agoNo, India and China are both below replacement rate. Most of South America is. Rates are evening out in sub Saharan Africa as well.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThis is a misconception that should be corrected. Fertility rates are falling everywhere, even in places with the current highest rates like sub-Saharan Africa: https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-across-africa https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-acr...
- ramraj07 3y agoProbably not fast enough. To actually come back to the population we have today would take a really long time.
- onlypositive 3y agoPopulation caps out at 10b and begins to decline again around 2100. That's the current projections.
- ramraj07 3y agoWhich means 2 centuries before we get back to 7 or 8.
- Tade0 3y agoUN projections, which are on the "business as usual" side of things. Plenty of events, like the pandemic, which put immense downward pressure on fertility. Also, the African continent is a net food importer. This could be turned around - particularly by Nigeria, which has the natural resources to produce fertiliser, but so far the observed effect has been a surge (+65%) of imports. With the situation in Ukraine being what it is, I don't think this is sustainable. Niger is currently experiencing a population explosion, which will force it to implement the same policies as Kenya to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe.
- josefx 3y agoGoing too fast will cause other issues. Unless we get a decent world war or another covid going the elderly aren't just going to drop dead.
- Tanoc 3y agoThat's impossible. We'd have to reduce to about half of where we are now just for the fauna to stabilize. We've just taken too much too quickly. In the oceans for example there's population collapse of entire genera in different locations every single year and entire dexoygenated dead areas in the photic zone because of overfishing and damage caused by commercial fleets. According to the IUCN Red List there have been at least ten extinctions every year for the past thirty years. It doesn't help that there's a rivalry going on between which country can post the highest numbers for a mostly meaningless metric in GDP, causing deforestation for livestock, overfishing for export, monocultures spreading dozens of miles for crops that have a fifty percent chance of being burned to preserve prices, and so much mining entire mountain ranges disappear.
- vanderZwan 3y ago> We'd have to reduce to about half of where we are now just for the fauna to stabilize I mean the article states the tobacco photosyntesized twice as effectively, with RsRubisco, which is actually less efficient the GmRubisco. So food-wise it seems hypothetically achievable. I agree we'd need massive conscious degrowth in every other part of the economy though.
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoThe trouble is you need a ton of water and fertilizer to support that growth, and drought combined with soil quality degradation is already a huge problem in a lot of regions, and will only become moreso as the globe warms and, p.s., fertilizer production is heavily dependent on petrochemicals and contributes to CO2 emissions. It could be a huge development, no doubt, but there are many bottlenecks in agricultural production, so we need to be careful not to oversell this as some kind of panacea.
- dtgriscom 3y agoWould it take more water and fertilizer per pound of crop? If not, then that's a wash.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoThe claim was this technology would increase carrying capacity. That implies growing more food, not growing the same amount of food on less land. I agree, as far as being able to use less land for agriculture, this could be a beneficial development. Only problem is that's not how humans typically work.