The earth needs a hero (day 128)

There are three times more people than there were in 1950.  And we all have to have jobs, be fed, housed, and contribute something of value.  I remember how the web made the world seem much more populated, but that was a perceptual awareness trick.  The reality of tripling the population on the earth is staggering on a much deeper level.  I picture the earth having to yield more crops, the fresh water having to hydrate those crops plus all the extra people, the cattle needing to be raised for meat eaters, the extra land for all that, etc.  We are leaning pretty heavily on a very thin biosphere.

Someone recently said to me: "I'm not worried about oil depletion.  We'll find another source of energy, perhaps even more powerful and renewable."  I shudder at the thought.  A lot of the population growth was fueled by oil.  A more powerful source of energy would kill us.  We'd get drunk and crash.

The climategate scandal and the Copenhagen talks illustrates two things for me:  a) we desperately want to believe that the biosphere can sustain what we are doing and more, so we can keep doing it; and b) doing nothing until absolute proof that we need to something still seems like a sane approach. (side note:  I prefer to think in terms of biosphere instead of earth,  because the extremely thin biosphere is the part of the earth that is actively producing and supporting life)  Climategate would be nothing more than a typical academic quarrel if we all agreed that this is a game of probability, not absolutes.  The probability of the biosphere being able to support another tripling of the human population is low.  The probability that we'll breathe easier in five years if we don't do anything different is extremely low.  The probability that we will willingly give up something is also low.  I didn't expect much from the Copenhagen talks but I secretly hoped for a hero to save the day.

A song for this post.