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Comment by Isamu | Hacker News Reader

> But a more data-oriented approach will still get people to the conclusion that we're on the clock until billions of people starve to death.

You’ve piqued my interest, where can I read about this data oriented approach that leads to this conclusion?

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Most people live in cities [0] and requires ~2,000 k/cal a day. The systems required to feed people are complex and energy demanding. There are 8 billion humans which is a large number relative to the amount of food we can store.

It is a matter of time until we have a multi-billion person famine. Hopefully multiple centuries away if the transition away from oil to something else works out. Something like the year without summer [1] could be even more catastrophic, for example. Or wars, particularly of the nuclear variety.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

The problem with such prediction is that it presumes that the population would grow at a accelerating pace, while the opposite is happening.

For me it's not about population growth so much as societal risk; our current population is only sustainable due to a complex web of interdependent systems.

How often do complex societies break down or decline in such a way that the complex systems which keep our urban populations alive are compromised?

The more people we have, also the more people we have available to keep these systems running and figure out new replacements. Assuming the caloric ‘profit margin’ stays positive anyway.

We seem to be so far past breakeven food/water/warmth that most of our efforts are spent getting all sorts of other stuff, though?

It's recent, I'll grant you that. I can't even think of when there was rationing in the west? Shortly after the war? At least the current grandparent generation seems to have childhood memories of that.

But to me, it looks like we've figured out those basic necessities to the point where at least ordinary variation in harvest won't be making us hungry. You could call that being noise proof.

The danger is that we systematically alter how the planet works, so that is not just bumps in annual crop yields, which we also seem to be doing, but it's not clear that we've messed up our basic necessities pipeline yet. It's also not clear that we'll inevitably do that.

One risk is that our systems are now extremely efficient, and one aspect of efficiency is that it tends to eliminate “unnecessary” buffers and stockpiles. Just-in-time manufacturing pulls supplies in response to demand. The global food supply chain still has buffers and stockpiles (e.g. grain bins) due to the seasonality of growing, but if hydroponics becomes the dominant method of agriculture (say, in a world with a more chaotic climate that needs to be kept at bay by greenhouses), then highly efficient farmers could optimize out all of their resiliency.

>I can't even think of when there was rationing in the west? Shortly after the war? At least the current grandparent generation seems to have childhood memories of that.

there was a pandemic a few years ago in which various western countries experienced shortages and in some cases rationing of some things.

There is rationing of water usage in many parts of the world, including parts of Western countries in which people live in water constrained areas, although that rationing is for garden usage - not drinking water.

I'm sure similar things can be thought of.

Obviously you don't mean those forms of rationing, you seem to mean large rationing of many different necessities and materials. But the fact that these rather minor forms of rationing exist in contrast to that in place during WWII does indicate that the system is not as able to handle all needs as well as you and a few other people in this thread seem to believe.

on edit: added word "exist"

The Netherlands managed to dramatically raise crop yields after WWII by intensive farming methods like building a massive amount of greenhouses. The crop yield per hectare is insane as a result. It was as a response to WWII that this system of farming was adopted.

So if we reach a point of mass starvation many counties will adopt similar strategies and drastically raise crop yields.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33763087

It is a tradeoff though, crop yield is one thing, but most of the produce from the NL is bland, tasteless, full of chemicals, something that would have been considered unsuitable for human consumption earlier, and achieved at a cost of great environmental degradation.

That’s true, intensively farming in a small country will come with serious downsides. But if it’s a choice between starvation vs mass producing bland food and creating pollution, there is only one choice to make.

> most of the produce from the NL is bland

Credible Citation needed.

> full of chemicals

So what? You're also full of chemicals.

> something that would have been considered unsuitable for human consumption earlier

Actually our standards for consumption have gone up a lot. People used to eat all sorts of stuff when danger of starving was higher and population was poorer.

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