Rory wrote:So, some very basic research on google has given me some crude (no pun intended) population figures. It took all of human history, until the early 1800s to top out 1 Billion folk on our fair planet. It took until 1930 to double that. This doubled again in the seventies and has nearly doubled in the same time span.
Oil’s relationship with agriculture had nothing to do with that? I mean, 10000 plus years to get to 1 billion. Then 130 years (with limited petrochemicals – pre-modern industrialization) to 2 billion and, 80 years (the boom years) to add another 5 billion people?
It’s a conspiracy, engineered by big oil?
More people means more wombs means a greater potential to expand population. Combine with sanitation, medical technology, and selective breeding for bigger animals, milkier cows and shorter fatter grain plants.
Solar powered communes: do you know how much intense industrial refining is required and toxic chemical residue produced from current solar panel production? You’re also going to need a lot of fossil fuels to get your ‘green’ panels btw.
We needed a lot of coal power to set up the first oil drilling rigs. We needed a lot a horse power to drag the coal out of the ground. We needed a lot of human muscle to hack through the rock to get to the coal, and previously to coppice woodland and produce charcoal. The current source of energy is required to produce the future source of energy. Took a lot of fossil fuels to build all them nukes. Better to use it for micro-hydro, solar, geothermal, &c..
Are 7 billion people going to get potable water from their commune backyard, artesian wells?
Seven billion people are getting water quite adequately at present with extremely limited oil use.
Why indeed does modern industrial agriculture have to be this way? Do you have a fleet of solar powered tractors; wave powered harvesters and nuclear trucks ready, to get the food from seed to dinner table anytime soon?
We're already producing more than enough biofuels for agricultural usage, although that's not an ideal solution it is already here. Plenty of electric trains about too.
If you don’t then some people are going to go hungry and be upset as a result: Likely within our lifetime. There isn’t going to be a technological white knight to save a large extent of the planet’s inhabitants.
A rather large percentage of the world's inhabitants don't live a western life where food is entirely dependent on being tractored and shipped anyway.
I am not an advocate of big oil. For better or for worse, we as a species went 'all in' with our oil chips (a once in a species-lifetime bonanza) and the world cannot easily be changed into agrarian, communal living. There will be a lot of disruption as the change occurs, possibly for the better in the long run: however, far too many folk are entrained to the current, oil-industry paradigm for a shift to happen peacefully and without bloodshed. I wish it were otherwise.
You might not want to advocate for the oil companies, but by pushing the line that they are the only thing standing between us and the oilmageddon which will kill us all slowly and painfully and wipe out our civilisation that's exactly what you're doing.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
