Professor Post's famously expensive hamburger is supposed to help feed the world. There are many in favour of this (and other) solutions to our food problems. There are others who are more sceptical.
N=(N0)e^rt where:
(N0)=initial population=(N2013)=7E9 (or 7 billion)
Dissenters to Professor Post's hamburger generally fall into three categories I am told by my local paper. People who think it's just plain gross to make food in a chemistry lab, people who think it is immoral to play with genetics, and some people are worried about corporate monopoly on our supply of food. Down and dirty descriptions which cannot begin to express the complications of reality. So people who disagree can quickly and easily formulate their arguments against these three points.
I agree with all of them to a certain extent. However, there is a fourth point I find more important than any of them.
We do not need more food.
Adding food to the system* isn't going to help anything, really, and might hurt long term.
Suppose that we increase the amount of available food for human consumption in the world by 2-fold. What would that truly mean? That we would be able to feed twice as many people? Well, break out those Algebra skills**, we've got a few equations we could run. How many people could that support? Twice as many as now? 14 billion? If you think that's an OK number of human beings to be running around, you obviously do not understand what a billion means. Sorry to be condescending. Image twice as many people on your roads. Or twice as many cities. Twice the people in your neighbourhood and in your schools. Twice as many people trying desperately to flee their dangerous country for more prosperous climes. Twice the competition for resources and twice the war.
And then, in 40 short years (our doubling rate. that's 2053, by the way), when we have finally reached 14 billion and the synthetic hamburger cannot feed everyone, we all start starving again. We still have starvation, but now twice as many people cannot get enough to eat.
I think it is more likely we would end up wasting twice as much food. Right now, we probably manufacture enough food to feed everyone. We just throw it all away. I, for example, work at a 'small' elementary school (K-6, approximately 300 kids) in Jefferson County in Colorado, in the US of A. Every day, we throw away enough food to amply feed a village of about 25 people. They'd have to find something else in the summer, maybe a day care, but for 3/4 of the year, we got it covered. We don't even compost it. It's just shipped to the landfill. If we didn't supply the over-wealthy with a thousand percent of what they needed, perhaps there'd be a little left over for everyone else.
We do not show many signs of changing this greedy behavior. The rich in the world do not, as a rule, share. Private schools apparently do not have kindergarten. Distribution is a challenge. Even if this does solve some distribution problems (and doesn't get monopolized by a corporation), it will only create a worse situation.
Right now, all over the world, there is the illusion that we don't have a serious problem. That there is enough food. That we can go ahead and reproduce alls we want. If even more food is supplied, it will reinforce that illusion, but not change the fact that it is an illusion. Then the population will grow again. Now it is a balloon about to pop. So we re-enforce the balloon and pump it up until it is about to pop again. That isn't a solution. It is not long term.
What we really have to do is stop pumping up the balloon. There isn't enough space for other parts of our system. We could grow test-tube burgers until we don't have any real cows left, that'll save a lot of land (space for those 14 billion) and get rid of a profession. Perhaps we can do it with milk and eggs and chickens too. Create burgers out of grasshoppers and eggplant and soy beans.
What we really have to do is stop pumping up the balloon. There isn't enough space for other parts of our system. We could grow test-tube burgers until we don't have any real cows left, that'll save a lot of land (space for those 14 billion) and get rid of a profession. Perhaps we can do it with milk and eggs and chickens too. Create burgers out of grasshoppers and eggplant and soy beans.
And then we will have 30, maybe 40 billion people...
Who we will not be able to feed. And we will need a new solution.
It is called "Shifting the burden to an Intervenor" and it is not a stable solution. It does not fix the system. It requires figuring out more and more intense solutions.
*A System:
The universe is a system. It is essentially closed, and infinitely complex. With in the entirety of the universe there are a trillions, quintillions, of other inter-related systems. Like your own body. It is a system complicated enough that we cannot describe the whole equation. Within that, there is your circulatory system, skeletal system, etcetera. Systems are beautiful things. When one thing is changed, that effect ripples through the entire aparatus, eventually affecting other systems around it, which will ripple back. Nothing exists in isolation so that, yes, even the minute beating of a butterflies wings might have astronomical implications in enough time.
**Algebra Skillz:
If population continues to grow the way it is now, based on:
Supposing that there is about 1.5 × 108 km2 (150 million km2) of land space on earth, 14 billion (1.4 × 1010 or 140 × 108) people would average out to be 140 people per 1.5 km2 (or about half (0.56) square miles). Or would we just double our waste? Fill up our landfills with rotting food faster. Would we still have the disparity in distribution?
Supposing that there is about 1.5 × 108 km2 (150 million km2) of land space on earth, 14 billion (1.4 × 1010 or 140 × 108) people would average out to be 140 people per 1.5 km2 (or about half (0.56) square miles). Or would we just double our waste? Fill up our landfills with rotting food faster. Would we still have the disparity in distribution?
or:
N=(N0)e^rt where:
(N0)=initial population=(N2013)=7E9 (or 7 billion)
e = 2.71828 (the special log number)
r = a rate of 1.7% (or 0.017)
t = 987 years between now and the next millennium
Then by the year 3000, we will have about 1.36E17 people. Or 136 Quadrillion people.
This right here is why we need better mathematics education.
***External Links:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/scientists-serve-up-burger-grown-in-lab-from-cow-stem-cells-for-the-first-time-monday****PS:
Thinking about population is inherently and enormously depressing. But it is very important to understand.
I'm going to go do something happy. And promise never to have children of my own.
