Can we feed ten billion people?

By popular demand, my link dump posts will continue.

Jeremy asks the $64,000 question (ok, so you can add a few more zeroes to the value of that question due to inflation): can we feed ten billion people? He also answers the question: yes and no.

Another Jeremy wonders: what has nature ever done for us?

Bryan reviews a new book co-authored by John Cook (of Skeptical Science fame) on climate change denial. The book makes the point that there are different kinds of denial and that one kind is simply doing nothing with the knowledge that we have.

"I just want my child to go to a good school." Chris Bonnor points out the effects of this mindset.

Ross Cameron offers some reflections on the royal wedding: "The vows are uttered in public because they are so outrageous they have to be witnessed. In lives bombarded by change, there is something incredibly attractive in the idea of making a promise for life."

Mike Wells encourages us to stop being Australian (especially if we actually are).

What do philosophical arguments sorely lack? Referee hand signals.
H/T Kath.

Onion: Obama's new plan to balance the budget.

And xkcd makes us all feel old.

What others are doing

Jason offers a pastoral reflection upon the Christchurch earthquake.

Kate summarises why climate change is bad for biodiversity, otherwise known as the web of life (though as a couple of comments point out, we're really talking about anthropogenic environmental change, not just climate change, as there are other factors contributing to the current precipitous biodiversity decline).

Jeremy is in search of the biodegradable shoe. He also thinks there are three basic paths ahead for the world over this century.

Bill discusses what he thinks might be the most popular tax in history.

David distinguishes (very helpfully) between stuff and things, and while he's dishing out useful advice, he also gives some tips on how to make trillions of dollars.

Halden is a little underwhelmed by ecumenism.

And Brad relates a tale of two Protestantisms, in which O'Donovan sides with the Augustinian English Anglicans against the Donatist Scots Presbyterians (perhaps unsurprisingly, since O'Donovan is an English Anglican who happens to live in Scotland). If nothing after that last comma made sense, don't worry, the post itself is very readable.

In case you're short on things to read

Eric ponders Animality and the Word of God: where to draw the boundaries between human and non-human animals and what the theological import of that relationship is. He also posts one of my favourite T. S. Eliot poems, which happens to be relevant to the discussion.

Kevin highlights the real problem with genetically modified (GM) food. It's not that it might be poisonous to our bodies, but that it is toxic to our body politic.

Dana offers a a case study in scientific integrity. Though this is his first foray into the Guardian, I've read quite a bit of Dana's writing and he knows what he's talking about (he's also now posted a further analysis of the replies to his Guardian piece). RealClimate recently published a piece with a similar theme but taking an example from a very different field.

Richard wonders whether individual action is pointless, given the scale of the challenges we face. His answer: our actions may not make a difference, but our example might. An excellent paper going into much more detail on the inadequacy of merely personal lifestyle changes can be found here.
H/T Chris Taylor.

Mongabay asks "What's so wrong with palm oil?", and answers in great detail.

Greenfyre wonders what if there had been no BP oil spill? He offers a perspective which was later mirrored by The Onion: ensuring that all the oil reaches its desired destinations is also an ongoing catastrophe of an even larger scale.

And Jeremy compares our present need for rapid and radical social change with what was achieved in the UK during WWII:

"There is no underestimating the scale and pace of change that happened during the war. Coal use dropped by a quarter, general consumption fell by 16%, car use dropped 95%. Sacrifices were made, but as people ate less and often ate better, levels of health and fitness rose accordingly. Infant mortality and the suicide rate fell, and spending on entertainment was one of the few areas that grew."

See also this piece by Caroline Lucas MP.

Debtris

Sometimes, things need to be put into perspective, since our ability to intuit the relative size of very large numbers is generally quite poor.
Video by Information is beautiful. H/T Jeremy, who has also posted a US version.

Taking cars off the road

In measuring the impact of various carbon reduction strategies, communicators often reach for expressing the scale of the effort by saying that it is "the equivalent of taking x cars off the road". Using statistics like this, that bring large measurements down into a humanly comprehensible scale, is generally a good thing when trying to communicate incomprehensible figures, such as tonnes of a gas not being emitted.

However, it does make me think: why don't we also actually take cars off the road? Road transport is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (far from the only or even the largest, but it is a significant sector, accounting for around 10-20% of all emissions, depending how you cut the cake). Of course, there are many strategies already aiming at reducing the carbon tyreprint: public transport, cycling lanes, user-pays road tolls, congestion charges, pedestrian-friendly new urbanism, public bicycle sharing systems, improving fuel efficiency standards, car share networks, car pooling websites, electric vehicles, improving intercity rail connections and more.

So, why then, is the "greenest government ever" announcing an end to the "war on motorists"? What does this mean? For a start, it means the removal of various restrictions on parking and other disincentives to driving, as well as a significant lift in the cap on the rate at which rail prices can rise. And it is not as though there was much a war to begin with, except perhaps for rising petrol prices due (amongst other things) to the apparent peaking of conventional oil production. As Jeremy point outs, "the best thing the government could do for motorists is promote buses and trains", since fewer cars means less traffic. As a recent billboard advertisement memorably put it: "You are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic."

Driving cars (particularly in cities) seems to be another example of thinking "red", seeking short-term personal gain that leads to everyone losing.

Fortunately, in addition to the policy measures listed above, there is something even more effective we can do to ensure we're not stuck in traffic on a warming world. We can choose to drive less, to make fewer trips, to share journeys with others, to live closer to where we want to go (and to make the places we want to go closer to where we live), to renounce desires to go long distances on a whim, to joyfully embrace less.