Of total land area circa 10% is developed, 10% arable and a shade over 25% permanent pasture for livestock[1], and a few other minor agricultural uses. Of the rest we have forests, permafrost, deserts, mountains, marsh, scrub and other marginal land. The best crop and pasture land is long gone. What's left with potential appear to be the places we need to not lose - rainforests and such. God help everyone if we are able or need to start farming former permafrost.
Changing farming through mechanisation, artificial fertiliser and de-population of agriculture has been a steady march since WW2 (mostly). All leveraged on fossil fuel, and mostly a one-time dividend.
Past capacity as the rest close the development gap (you can't just miss that out), based on all resource use, and associated pollution - environmental overshoot - not mere calories. Not just a baseless assertion as we are assessed to be 70% beyond the ecosystem's capacity to absorb[2] right now. We've been beyond it for years. We're on borrowed time even without more development. Overshoot day[3] has gained a fair bit of publicity in recent years, but there's plenty of different measures all pointing to the same trends and issues.
With that level of accelerating overshoot, the planet can barely cope - the list of global scale and population related issues is huge. Yet coming en masse as a "surprise" is mostly to be expected given the growth curve. So there seems precious little headroom left, even if we do miraculously work to achieve zero carbon by 2050. Not expecting us to get anywhere near it any more though. Pretending population is just fine, or "growth is vital" as TFA claims is, whilst the globe does almost naff all to become sustainable is, frankly, nuts.
Of total land area circa 10% is developed, 10% arable and a shade over 25% permanent pasture for livestock[1], and a few other minor agricultural uses. Of the rest we have forests, permafrost, deserts, mountains, marsh, scrub and other marginal land. The best crop and pasture land is long gone. What's left with potential appear to be the places we need to not lose - rainforests and such. God help everyone if we are able or need to start farming former permafrost.
Changing farming through mechanisation, artificial fertiliser and de-population of agriculture has been a steady march since WW2 (mostly). All leveraged on fossil fuel, and mostly a one-time dividend.
Past capacity as the rest close the development gap (you can't just miss that out), based on all resource use, and associated pollution - environmental overshoot - not mere calories. Not just a baseless assertion as we are assessed to be 70% beyond the ecosystem's capacity to absorb[2] right now. We've been beyond it for years. We're on borrowed time even without more development. Overshoot day[3] has gained a fair bit of publicity in recent years, but there's plenty of different measures all pointing to the same trends and issues.
With that level of accelerating overshoot, the planet can barely cope - the list of global scale and population related issues is huge. Yet coming en masse as a "surprise" is mostly to be expected given the growth curve. So there seems precious little headroom left, even if we do miraculously work to achieve zero carbon by 2050. Not expecting us to get anywhere near it any more though. Pretending population is just fine, or "growth is vital" as TFA claims is, whilst the globe does almost naff all to become sustainable is, frankly, nuts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Ecological_f...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day