In Limits to Growth, a '70s era tome lauded by both environmentalists and doomsday conspiracy theorists, MIT scientists made a number of predictions about population growth, food production, etc, using the data available at the time – and were immediately lambasted by the media and politicians as being fear-mongering, since they hinted that collapse would likely come in the 2nd half of the 21st century. Recently, investment guy Joachim Klement revisited the predictions, adding data from this century. The results were… not great, with some indicating that we’re living in the peak of human development like literally right this minute.

    • A_S_B@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      The things is that we arriving at a limit on population growth under the current methods of production. There is a limit on how much cattle, chicken, pigs, etc we can actually raise. Now, if the whole world turned vegetarian, we probably could have much more people on earth. So much land is used to make livestock feed that could instead be used to grown actual food.

    • will@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      I think the food production chart Is the least believable of the bunch for just that reason. We already know how technology can improve yields and distribution, and there are many, many places where it’s not yet used. For that matter we globally already produce way more calories than we consume, they just need to be distributed better.

      • The_v@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        We currently grow our food for maximum profit on minimal inputs and labor. In many species we are reaching the maximum genetic yield potential under these conditions.

        With some heavy investment into irrigation systems, protected culture, and optimal growing methodologies, we can produce 10x our current production on 1/4 of the land area.

    • will@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Haha fair, but he cites his sources which you can go confirm yourself. Also investment guys typically like growth and the data says this might be all the growth we get so it lends a tiny bit of credence (not that there aren’t a dozen ways to make money by selling things short)