Famine and Peak Oil

I've got a presentation in a few hours, and I'm uploading my power point notes here, in case the computer can't read my thumb drive for some reason.

Peak Oil and Famine

A Trial Thesis

• Famine is caused by injustice in food distribution, not underproduction of food.
• Peak oil will not change this situation.

Elaboration & Clarification

• Peak oil will force a massive reorganization of the food chain.
• But this will only lead to additional starvation if people react to it unjustly
• Preparation for the agricultural reorganization should focus on institutions of justice,
• Preparation for should not be an attempt to match food production to population levels.

Outline

• Background on Famines and Forecasting
• The current size of the buffer
• Alternative sources of nitrogen
• The value of systems thinking over productionism

On famines

• Famines are not correlated with the underproduction of food, and rarely caused by them.
• Famines can occur when food production is at a high.
• Food production can drop as much as 70% in a poor region without triggering famine.
• Famines come with a particular group loses access to the food stocks

On Forecasting

• You forecast to help deliberate
• You deliberate over what you have control over (Aristotle)
• The goal of forecasting is to develop a range of possible outcomes of differing desirability that you have some influence over.
• Given this, many cornucopias and catastrophists are forecasting irresponsibly.

The Size of the Buffer





Where is the food missing?

• Congo
• Rwanda
• Burundi
• Angola
• Zambia
• Tanzania
• Ethiopia
• Central African Republic
• Mozambique

Alternative Nitrogen Sources

Alternative Feedstocks for Haber-Bosch

• Hydrogen from electrolysis
• Coal, low-quality hydrocarbons

Biotech sources

• Engineering non-leguminous plants to form a symbiotic relationship with Rhizobia
• Engineering a nitrogen fixing microbe to operate at an industrial scale, independently of green plant symbiosis.

4. Productionism v. Systems Thinking

Productionism

• “Productionism is the philosophy that emerges when production is taken to be the sole norm for ethically evaluating agriculture” (Thompson 1995)
• “There are no philosophically sophisticated defenses of productionism,” although Earl Butz is a kind of productionist icon.(Thompson 1995)
• Malthusianism is pessimistic productionism.

Sustainability as systems thinking

• Identify boundaries of the system
• A system is sustainable if it is free from internal threats. (Thompson 1995)