Slashdot Mirror
Father of Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, Dies at 95
countincognito writes "Norman Borlaug, a genuinely remarkable man and the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture, has died of cancer at his Dallas home aged 95. His life's work on developing high-yield, disease-resistant crops has been credited with having saved an estimated one billion people from famine, and one billion hectares of forest and rainforest from being cleared for agricultural production."
The only thing limited about our resources is our willingness to learn how to manage them properly. We spend most of them for stratification, to exclude each other from their use with our fences, than anything else. Does anybody think that Africa would be "starving" were it not for all the wars and poaching of those resources by outsiders? "Green" revolution...Pfft! Try a PEACE revolution. And let some big, giant Roomba do your harvesting for you. That'll leave you some time to chase the wife around the hut for awhile...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
1 - large scale energy intensive ag controlled by multinational corporations has replaced and displaced subsistence and native farmers
2- exacerbated unfair land distribution
3 - creation of single ubiquitous strains of crops farmed only in 1 country increases risk of ag. collapse
4 - heavy reliance on pesticides and herbicides
5 - erosion of biodiversity
6 - overall food security
7 - decline in quality of diet
OK then, here we go...
Fusion reactors will give us a source of cheap, green energy - this in turn will be used to build massive hive cities, some stretching a mile or two into the sky, some almost entirely underground. Our vehicles will fly or travel through tunnels, freeing up a great deal of countryside areas. Likewise, the entirety of the area taken up by agriculture will be done away with - vat grown food is the wave of the future! Huge weather machines and atmospheric scrubbers will work ceaselessly, first to bring CO2 levels down, then to stop any possible future effects of humankind on our environment.
I'm not saying this will definitely come true, or even is likely to - but all of these technologies are being researched right now, and could well be widespread in 100 years or much, much less. Using these methods, the planet could easily sustain tens of billions of people (well fed and comfortably housed) without any negative effect on the environment. I'm talking about technological advancement - it's not predictable. Will it be fast, or very very fast indeed? Or will there be a nuclear war, wiping out all ~6 800 000 000 of us in one go?
Be smart, help people!