Share food from land - References and quotes Philosophy 2021 REFERENCES AND QUOTES ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS “Fossil fuels not only supply 85% of our energy needs, much of which is used to produce food, they also provide the raw materials for a substantial portion of our economic production, including ubiquitous plastics and, even more importantly, the fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides that help provide food for nearly 7 billion people. At this point, we do not have the technologies available to support 7 billion people in the absence of fossil fuels.” 82, 83 Use of solar energy. 19 trillions of tons of oil equivalent/year. “Over the eons, life has evolved to capture enough of this energy to maintain itself and the complex ecosystems that life creates. It would appear that the “order” of the global ecosystem over billions of years has reached a more or less stable thermodynamic disequilibrium.” 89 “Virtually all energy captured from the sun is captured by chlorophyll. In the absence of the evolution of some alternative physiological process for capturing sunlight, it would seem that our planet cannot sustain more low entropy than it currently does for any extended period.” 90 Ecosystems, structure and functions. Structural elements act together to create something greater than the whole - ecosystem functions. E.g energy transfer, nutrient cycling, gas regulation, climate regulation, water cycle. Variability, ignorance and uncertainty important when analyzing ecosystem. We don’t understand how ecosystem function emerge from the complex interaction of ecosystem structure. Fotnot 2 Thresholds. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on boundaries 94 Uncertainty of renewable biotic resources. Carrying capacity. 98 Critical depensation (minimum viable population), carrying capacity and maximum sustainable yield. 99 Minimum viable population and maximum sustainable yield vs uncertainty. Maximum sustainable yield will vary dramatically. Great uncertainty regarding minimum viable population. 101 Population breaking down to harvest and ecological mechanism poorly understood. Same for fish as plants. Removal of ecosystem structure can greatly affect ecosystem function. 102 Running out of water. “The dominant use of water (70%) is agriculture, so a water shortage will probably translate into hunger before thirst.” Depletion of aquifiers 117 I HUMAN APPROPRIATION OF NET PRIMARY PRODUCTION: PATTERNS, TRENDS, AND PLANETARY BOUNDARIES. HANPP and biogeochemical cycles 378 HANPP and biodiversity 379 HANPP and planetary boundaries 380 NPP is a limiting factor 381 HANPP and ecolocial footprint. Passes the ecological limits by 20-30% counting ecological footprints. 382 I ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS Important of green plants, they slow down entropy. All other organisms speed it up and this is what all environmental issues are about. 353 Astronomical difference between the amount of the flow of solar energy and the size of the stock of terrestrial free energy. 5300 Q hits earth from the sun, half is reflected. Humans need about 0.2 Q. Photosynthesis capture around 1.2 Q. Terrestial dowry 215 Q, stock. 370 I SHRINK AND SHARE: HUMANITY’S PRESENT AND FUTURE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT “As concern grows about the magnitude of human pressure on the biosphere, the global community is increasingly engaged in discussions about the meaning and importance of achieving global sustainability. While much of this discussion has focused on the depletion of non-renewable resources, there is increasing evidence that overuse and degradation of renewable resources pose a great risk to global society (e.g. MEA 2005). Collapsing fisheries, carbon-induced climate change, deforestation and the loss of cropland to erosion and salinization are some of the most prominent examples of challenges that threaten the ability of ecosystems to continue producing critical renewable resources and services.” . “To achieve sustainability before this overshoot causes potentially irreversible declines in the productivity of critical ecosystems, society will need to meet the dual challenges of shrinking global demand and sharing this reduction in a way that is acceptable and viable for the entire global community. As one of the largest-scale human land-use activities impacting ecosystems, agricultural practices will play a particularly critical role in meeting these dual goals.” 467 “Footprints can be divided into six major categories of demand: cropland; grazing land; fishing grounds; forest land; carbon-absorption land; and built-up area. Carbon-absorption land represents the amount of biologically productive land, currently calculated as forest, required to absorb carbon dioxide from combustion of fossil fuels, less the amount absorbed by the oceans. A population’s Ecological Footprint can be compared with available biocapacity, the amount of biologically productive area available to that population within a defined geographical area (a region, country or the globe as a whole). Similar to Footprint, biocapacity is divided into five major categories of biologically productive surface: cropland; grazing land; fishing grounds; forest land; and built-up area.” 11 billion hectare of total biocapacity. We are overshooting, 2002 1 ¼ of biocapacity but in 1961 0,5 of biocapacity. Carbon footprint most of it, increased 700 % since 1961. “Overshoot is possible for a short time, as resources can be harvested faster than they regenerate (e.g. deforestation) and wastes can accumulate (e.g. atmospheric carbon dioxide). If continued for too long, however, overshoot inevitably leads to the degradation and liquidation of ecological capital, the productive foundation on which the natural environment and human society depend.” 468 Agricultural dependence on carbon footprint/fossil fuel. See ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS on oil dependence of food. Zero-sum game in the limit planet, a crop field or tropical rainforest. 473 I HUMANITY’S UNSUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT Increase in ecological footprints. Part of the pie/fair share/social equity 1115 Equitable shares. Footprints per capita: consumption pattern and intensity of natural resource use or waste generation per unit. International externalization of footprints. 1116 Footprints caps on different scales within planetary boundaries. 1117
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