Nature

The internet is filled with people projecting how we can feed 10 billion people in 2050. Here are a bunch, the result of searching on "how we will feed 10 billion people." I ask rhetorically, "If you think we can feed 10 billion people sustainably," why don't we live sustainably now? More to the point: why aren't you living sustainably now? Why are nearly no humans anywhere on Earth living sustainably? The answer is we can't live sustainably with 7.9 billion, let alone 10 billion. You can only reach their fanciful results with untenable, unrealistic assumptions, ignoring other problems that overpopulation is already exacerbating and that will increase, like biodiversity loss and desertification. If you believe I'm wrong, prove me wrong by living sustainably yourself…

I co-presented with my friend Johan Jorgensen of Sweden FoodTech, who was in Dubai running a multiple-day event at Expo2020 on food and technology. He knows my work in sustainability leadership and food so invited me to co-present. Good food means preparation. I helped him and his team prepare by giving them a recipe, including where to find nutritional yeast in Dubai. I was supposed to lead a workshop like this in person in Sweden. Johan and I had planned as much as we could one year, including my sailing, until the pandemic made it impossible. This video shows our first time collaborating remotely. Here's the video. The stew finishes cooking about 39:00, soon after which he gives some to his daughter to test it.…

I've gotten in the habit of posting my electric bills. Today I got my first bill for 2022. Last year my record low was $1.40 (plus fixed costs I can't do much about). I'm switching this year to writing kWh instead of dollars since it's the more basic unit. Low numbers generally mean more happiness, health, and freedom. Environmentalists who pollute a lot like to spout that individual actions don't matter, but they're less happy, healthy, and free. I hope some day they'll join us who believe leadership matters that living by one's values helps more than telling people to do what you don't. Be happy now! I value sharing electric bills since I can't hide power use and hence pollution from it. It includes…

I asked before if you could think of how to pollute without fossil fuels, or if you could. You could point to, say, mercury or animal feces as non-fossil fuel pollution, but what use of mercury comes without using fossil fuel? Can we get high enough concentrations of poop without fossil fuels? Nuclear fission and fusion require fossil fuels to create their plants and one could argue that as non-renewable resources, they're a form of fossil fuels. New question: Can you think of how to use fossil fuel without polluting? I'm finding it hard to think of an answer. With nearly all pollution at least partly resulting from fossil fuel use and nearly all fossil fuel use resulting in pollution, it seems fair to conclude…

I used to think polluting was an inevitable consequence of living. The best we could do was minimize it. But thinking about our ancestors who lived for hundreds of thousands of years in a region, they weren't polluting. It seems to me the concept of pollution must be recent. I've been challenging people with the following question: can you pollute without fossil fuels? Or a similar question: could people before fossil fuels pollute at all? It's easy to pollute with fossil fuels: artificial fertilizers, pesticides, forever chemicals, greenhouse gases, and so on. Without them, it's not so easy. One person suggested the methane that cows emit, but methane as part of the ecosphere's carbon cycles isn't a problem. The carbon in it comes from plants…

I've written about the San bushmen from southern Africa. Lately I've been learning about the Hadza, who live in Tanzania. They've both lived on the order of 100,000 years gathering and hunting. I'll write about the Hadza, but it applies to all cultures we drill for oil and mine for resources. Here's a trailer for a documentary I recommend to learn about them: https://youtu.be/2dQWDz4nKbY Here is a link to the full documentary, which it doesn't play here, so you have to click to watch it. I set it to start at a scene that prompts the headline to this post. If you don't feel like clicking, it shows the territory the Hadza being reduced by agriculture and encroaching by others. Here's a still from that…