Bread

The impact from a human living off the land shouldn’t be that great. After all, once upon a time we had no consumer durables and most everything we acquired directly aided our moment by moment effort for survival. At that time fewer than a million people traipsed over all the land. A million people spread all over Earth’s land mass wouldn’t have had much of an effect.

Today we’ve turned the tables on being subsistence survivors. Readily available energy allows everyone to have copious quantities of consumer durables. And mechanization enables food for all; at least if we distribute it fairly. Yet the crux of these benefits lies with the accessibility of cheap energy. Our food production needs mechanization. It also needs fertilizer. Lots and lots to the amount of hundreds of millions of tonnes. Bread, a standard for many people’s meals, has had its fertilizer production assigned with 43% of its total greenhouse gas emissions. Mostly from the energy used to make the fertilizer to grow the bread’s grain. Seems we can’t even make bread for our table without the energy use having a side effect.

While the end of accessible, cheap energy may ameliorate the production of greenhouse gases what would it do to the dining experiences of over 7 billion people? Could seven billion people return to a subsistence hunter, gatherer state? Do you want to compete with your neighbor so as to catch and eat that mouse that just went by?
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