Habitable Land Mass of Planet Earth Is Shrinking
Lots of folks wonder what our civilization will look like as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. What happens when the amount of arable farm land falls, potable water gets scarce, and hundreds of millions of people’s ancestral homes are under water? Some speculate that the result is a population so desperate that it becomes ungovernable.
This article in Vanity Fair looks at the shrinking availability of habitable land, resulting from extreme temperatures, e.g., the parts of India and Pakistan that no longer support human life for several months of the year, as evidenced by the 1000+ heat-related deaths so far this summer.
Craig,
Doom ! Doom ! pestilence and disaster ! O woe betide us, for the gods have surely forsaken us!
Yeah right, that’s been the cry of every seer and marketplace prophet for millennia. Except it hasn’t ever actually happened.
Well the gods probably have forsaken us, but then we have long forsaken them. Humans have always placed their faith in their own courage and abilities, and so far (with a few hiccups) we’re still doing just fine.
Every year we adapt,grow stranger and better equipped to deal with our own destiny.
We produce more food per acre that any other generation, yet we are plagued by prophets of doom (with zero experience in farming) telling us we’re doomed!
We over produce food in vast quantities. If necessary, with current technologies and resources, we could feed 28 billion.
The article in Vanity Fair is so full of holes, inaccuracies and faulty logic, yet preaches directly to the faithful.