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So what should we do? Live in mud huts as masses of unwashed hippies struggling to get crops to grow?

Well, almost. Live in dirt bag houses as masses of washed humans of whatever persuasion, not struggling to get crops to grow because it is not as difficult nor does it require so much water as you imagine.

Dirt bag houses? Is that what it sounds like? Yes. Yes it is. But once they're plastered up, the only way you can necessarily tell that they're any different from any other houses is that they're better. They're much like an adobe structure. They're low cost in the way that adobe is low cost, but they're even lower-labor because you don't have to press any bricks. They have greater tensile strength because they're held together with barbed wire in between the courses of bags, which are like sand bags and which can be natural or synthetic as you like. The ultimate effect is like that of rammed earth, but without the forms and without the ramming. I can go on about this at some length, but it should not be necessary. Northern California is currently on fire like a motherfucker, so a building style which is non-flammable is particularly attractive to me right now. However, it's not ideally suited to earthquake country. Luckily, it's not the only option.

In fact, there's loads of "alternative" building styles which we could be using which would have lower environmental impact and energy costs, most of which have been used with broad success for at least dozens of years, often hundreds of years, sometimes thousands.

Do you realize how much more farmland we'll need to sustain the current population if we don't have those fossil fuel based fertilizers?

Oh, stop. Just stop. This is such a boring, stupid, wrong thing to say. The highest per-acre yields come either from vertical container gardening or, in a more "natural" setting, from organic intensive gardening using guilds. And your fertilizer is shit, just shit. As a society, we in the west have long thrown away our shit, and only recently have we become any good at saving it again. Many if not most municipal sewage treatment plants are now cooking their treated sewage sludge until it can be used for compost. And they even can produce natural gas from the process!

But there are even lower-impact ways to do this, using far less water and energy. For low-density populations, the Bason Toilet (sorry for PDF) refines the composting toilet into a simple and friendly device which won't stink up your home. Within a year, crap becomes rich compost that can be directly applied without risk, toxic medications aside. For higher-density populations, Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems (or, obviously, AIWPS) permits a larger-scale version of the same operation but tapped off of the typical municipal sewage line system, and with methane capture. You get to keep your flush toilet.

I still vote for limiting population growth, especially in countries that depend on international aid.

Sure, I'm not against it, but the best way to do that is to educate people and give them free birth control. Then you also have an educated society. That's got to be a good thing, although in itself it doesn't fix all the world's problems or anything. That should go without saying but I want to eliminate some of the obvious responses which might descend upon this comment.

We should also attempt bootstrapping a stable industry in space before things do get too scarce.

Now you're speaking my language. The only way out is through.

You are co-opting the term organic to mean something extra.

Well, no, no I am not. Here we go:

"In the late 1930s and early 1940s Sir Albert Howard and his wife Gabrielle Howard, both accomplished botanists, developed organic agriculture. [...] In the United States another founder of organic agriculture was J.I. Rodale." OK, so now we have decided who might get to define terms, yes? Let us continue. "Howard observed and came to support traditional Indian farming practices over conventional agricultural science. Though he journeyed to India to teach Western agricultural techniques he found that the Indians could in fact teach him more. One important aspect he took notice of was the connection between healthy soil and the villages' healthy populations, livestock and crop. Patrick Holden, Director of the UK Soil Association quoted Howard as saying "the health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible." The maintenance of the soil is critical. Guess what they do with poop in India? Anyway, moving on. "To Rodale, agriculture and health were inseparable. Healthy soil required compost and eschewing poisonous pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Eating plants grown in such soil would then help humans stay healthier, he expounded." Now, where you do you think compost comes from?

Anyway, as usual, even a quick scan of Wikipedia would have proved my point. And in fact, that's what I did. But this idea was based on a conversation I had with my lady some years ago. She doesn't remember it at all, and I don't remember it very well, so I don't remember precisely what she stated at the time, so I had to go to WP. I didn't even use google. Why not quickly glance at the readily available materials which cost you nothing, before claiming that someone is wrong? While you're reading WP, you could also look up Biodynamic Agriculture, a sort of spiritually-guided precursor to organic gardening which is gaining traction today. I think some of their rituals are a bit hilarious, but the basic fundamental principles basically cover all the original founding principles of "organic" gardening. Agriculture is a cyclical system.

My understanding is that these days many if not most sewage plants are actually cooking their wastes for maximum methane production, capturing it and selling it or burning it on site for power production, where they used to try to minimize it and then flare off the unwanted product. The sludge is sold on for agricultural use. There's an "organic" version of this process known as Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems (AIWPS) which also produces algae, which can be used as a fuel feedstock... and clean water, even separating out heavy metals. And all it takes to make it is some piping. If you want to also capture the methane, then you also need some other goodies including a sheet of plastic, and you'll probably want a liner for catching the heavy precipitates, but there's not a whole lot to it. And of course, we could be making a whole lot more use of composting toilets, for example the Bason (sorry for PDF, but it's really the best link I know so far. Someday I will build one, and then I will make a nice page on it... even if it is full of shit)

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds of chemicals.

You're right and you're wrong. In theory, you're right. You look at what the plant needs and you give it that. But in proper practice, you're wrong. You simply return the shit to the soil and the system works cyclically, if you plant guilds. It's monocultural so-called "green revolution" farming (which turns nations and indeed whole continents brown) which causes soil depletion. Most of these crops aren't even rotated any more!

In fact, in earlier times people would literally sell their cess pool contents (not really septic tanks, but the same general construction) to Nitrate manufacturers for the purpose of extracting the Nitrogen compounds to be used in explosives. Cheaper ways of getting that accomplished can be had today, but in theory you could use the stuff that is flowing out of your toilet if you cared.

We could be using AIWPS to convert our waste into fertilizer, algae as a fuel feedstock, and methane gas, while cutting our water use. Or we could use composting toilets to turn crap into soil directly without any special facilities. By adding compost to your crap and letting it sit for a year (with occasional aeration) you turn it into soil that you can lift out of the digester by hand if you choose, it's that well-cooked.

The simple fact is that we only need to produce industrial fertilizers with an explosion risk because we are engaging in inherently destructive farming practices instead of employing a cyclical system which existed before we did.

More ideas here http://www.openideo.com/open/how-can-we-improve-sanitation-and-better-manage-human-waste-in-low-income-urban-communities/concepting/ecological-toilets-compost-or-biogas-networked-entrepreneurs-everybody-wins

Ok, right, you can still use coal... but add the post-combustion treatment to reduce pollution and ways to grab the CO2

I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, or at least to take a look back at the USDOE's Aquatic Species Program, in which the gas output of coal plants is filtered through algae ponds, sequestering up to 80% of the CO2 output while improving algal growth rates. There are probably hundreds of opportunities of this type out there, like collecting methane from sewage ponds, which using AIWPS simultaneously offers extremely low-cost and high-effectiveness sewage treatment while using "traditional" plumbing and sewage connections. And of course, for those of us who live too far out into the boonies for such connections, there's direct composting toilets, like Van Lengen's Bason Toilet which with a greywater system can eliminate the need for a septic system and the accompanying maintenance.

Basically, if it's not about pond scum, it's about shit... and pond scum.

Or instead of turning it into dirt on-site (which may be prohibited by local regulations) or processing it into biodiesel you process it into methane and fertilizer.

If you have room and can do it legally a bason toilet is simple and excellent.

County.

Go read it for your self: http://www.openideo.com/open/voting/brief.html
Third paragraph below the sub-title "The Opportunity"

There are already many different programs in place for this, from Absentee Ballots (by mail) , to free handicapped bus service for those still wanting to go to the polls. By some accounts even the dead can already vote.

It seems like this is redundant, as states and local government already reach out to their handicapped citizens. Government posturing seems to be the primary emphasis here, to get the last possible government dependent person to vote, regardless of cost, and woe be to anyone who stands in the way, or suggests that anyone who wants to vote already has the opportunity, and that there are those who simply don't want to vote.

Follow the link in TFA to the mission statement and notice this nugget:

Cognitive disabilities: intellectual, developmental, remembering, concentrating

If someone can't remember who they wanted to vote for, or is too mentally challenged to form and opinion why include them in this process at all? (especially when some states require a sound mind to vote).

More troubling was this paragraph:

While each country has its own election system, and we have only a limited ability to change that, we can focus on making elections more accessible, through new technologies, communications tools, and processes.

What? Excuse me? This sounds like the groundwork for more meddling in the business of other countries than improving anything in the US.