How might we respond to peak oil, peak food and peak population?

[GliderGuider]

Responding to Peak Oil, Peak Food and Peak Population

In my last article I described how I think the effects of Climate Change and Peak Oil will combine to limit the growth of the world's food supply. I believe that a limited global food supply implies a limited global population, and also that a decline in the food supply will result in an overall decline in our population. In this article I expand on how I think governments and individuals might respond if the oil/food/population situation unfolds as I think it will.

Responding to Food and Energy Limits

Because of the size and elasticity of the global food system we will not face immediate general shortages of food. This rules out a global famine or anything approaching it. Regional situations will be different of course, and there will be increasing instances of dire food shortages for reasons as varied as the regions affected. However, I can imagine some responses to perceived limits in the food supply that will be fairly common throughout the world.

On the supply side there will be attempts to keep food production up. These will probably include broader and deeper subsidies for the energy used within the food system. That includes fertilizer and oil subsidies for farmers, gasoline and oil subsidies for the food transportation industry and rate subsidies for the electricity used in food processing. On the demand side there will be an extension of the consumer food subsidy programs already in place in many nations.

There will be a surge in personal food growing, and low-energy agriculture will come into its own. While these initiatives will help, they will not solve the overall problem, as most people have neither the training nor the opportunity to participate. As we have already seen, food prices can rise very fast - fast enough to easily out-pace any ability to bring local or personal food supplies to fruition.

Similar considerations apply to the use of energy outside the food system. Subsidies will be provided for both producers and consumers, but in the face of a declining oil supply with rising prices the subsidies will have nowhere to go but up. This rising price/subsidy spiral will happen even as the demand for energy declines due to recessions and conservation efforts, because energy prices can rise much faster than society can reorganize to reduce its demand.

There are some opportunities for individuals to help their own situations. We will switch to using more to local fuels like wood and dung, many will hyper-insulate their homes, and there will be a surge in human-powered transportation and mass transit. Because of the forms of energy we use in our lives, we can only address price rises in oil, natural gas and electricity with conservation rather than replacement.

There will not be enough time for alternative sources of electricity like wind and solar to provide more than isolated local benefits. As the world economy goes through successive recessionary shocks, the building of new, expensive electrical infrastructure of any sort will become increasingly unattractive due to declining capital availability and dropping demand.

What Might Happen to our Population?

The probable results of a capped food supply can be inferred from biological experiments on laboratory colonies of mice whose food supply has been limited. If the limited food is enough to feed a specific number of adult mice, the observed results have not included a die-off of the adults. Instead, there have been reductions in the fertility of females (fewer live births) as well as increases in early infant mortality.

It makes sense to me that if the overall food supply were to decline slowly, the same mechanisms would continue to play out - only with fewer newborns reaching maturity. There is no reason I can see that this dynamic should not apply equally to homo sapiens as to mus musculus. We are both species that remain subject to the laws of Mother Nature and ecology.

One other response to consider when it comes to limiting population growth is the role of family planning - deliberate fertility control. As local situations become more difficult, and especially if people see little hope for improvement in the short or medium term, more women will begin to think of controlling their fertility.

Such personal decisions were behind the drastic plunge in birth rates we saw as the former USSR fragmented. The birth rate there fell by almost one half in the six years from 1987 to 1993. In fact the case of Russia is instructive, because the rise in the death rate came a full five years after the birth rate began to plummet. This time difference implies two things. One is that that Soviet and Russian women made deliberate choices not to have children, beginning when the situation got bad. The other thing the time difference implies is that unlike the voluntary drop in birth rates, the rise in death rates was due to involuntary factors - primarily declining health due to longer term malnutrition, lack of health care and alcoholism.

In the global scenario we're considering here, the ability of women to access family planning, whether contraception or abortion, is going to vary from region to region. It will depend largely on the local cultural, religious, economic and educational situation. As the economic and educational circumstances of women improve, more of them will have the opportunity to control their fertility, giving them the option of bringing fewer children into a situation that may already be desperate. If their circumstances do not improve or access to such services is limited for cultural reasons, there is a high probability that the world will see a rise in infanticide - regardless of the social taboos against it.

Because of human nature things are unlikely to remain as peaceful in our civilization as they do in a mouse colony. There will be an enormous upsurge in global unrest as more poor countries see themselves being threatened by food and energy shortages. Unreasoning hatreds will flare, predatory trade practices will grow, foreign aid will dry up and regional wars will become more common and more vicious. Poverty will spread due to successive global recessions of deepening severity. The life support systems of medical care and sanitation will eventually begin to disintegrate starting in the poorest nations (as they already have), and life expectancies will probably shrink as diseases increasingly penetrate the adult populations.

As much as it might not seem like it, this is a significantly less dire prognosis than I've been known for in the past.

[FreakinDJ]

1. With more "Snow Flake Babies"

:sarcasm:

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Oh, you wild-eyed Cornucopian, you.

:evilgrin:

[GliderGuider]

3. I'm mellowing with age, it seems, like a bottle of fine wine

Or a loaf of Wonder Bread that's been buried in a landfill for a century or two...

[Dead_Parrot]

6. And, like a fine wine...

...you must be drunk.
:hide:

[GliderGuider]

7. Hey!!! I resemble that remark!

:spank:

[damntexdem]

4. First, peak protest.

Then would come the harder parts.

[GliderGuider]

5. I think we're there. We're all Libyan now.

Or we will be in a few years...

[ironrooster]

8. I believe you're correct. Other things that I see developing

is more cooperation within semi-urban and suburban groups (in a tribal sense). Although the prevailing thought in many doomer-type groups is to purchase a plot of rural land, become a hermit and "ride-it-out" with god, guns and guts, I feel that community gardens and even producing farms on the outskirts of suburban areas will become the rule rather than the exception. I actually see a return of the commons as people die intestate and properties are auctioned off to NFP's. Baring a huge natural catastrophe, the US should be able to maintain some kind of fuctioning society despite the displacement of citizens due to flooding etc. That is not to say that the downward pressures on population won't be severe, but IMO nowhere as bad as in China, India or Africa which despite the prevalent happy talk for the first two - are fucked.

[GliderGuider]

9. Yep, that's pretty much my view too.

I call them the "canned food and ammo" crowd. they represent the fear-based response. Like you I see the more positive response as the one that emphasizes the human need for community. Chindia? Yep, "screwed blued and tattooed," as we used to say.