The Global Food Crisis

[Illuminatus Primus]

I was rather amazed at the state of such things even a couple of years back in Canada, which is generally accepted as having better assistance for those at the lower end of the scale. While I was there I was astounded at the number of food banks and soup kitchens in operation there. Much like with rice cookers, I'd not encountered them before living in North America. There are some similar organisations here, but they tend to be geared towards redistribution of excess from industry, such as expired products from supermarkets. The sell by date generally having a margin built in...whereas in Toronto there were nearly a tenth of the population relying on them according to the statistics.

IP, you need to stop to consider how many people are already near the limit of their means simply covering the basic essentials of food and shelter...and how devastating even a minor rise to those costs will be given the scale of people falling into that bracket.

Well, this is all anecdotal crap. In order for it to really be established as proof of the slow crawl of civilization toward disaster, it needs to be established that people were fine before and fucked now because of these issues in particular. It remains to be seen if food production constraints and price hikes will persist, but the MAIN reason its serious in the FIRST WORLD is incidentally because there's been trouble in the financial markets and lay-offs. Certainly we've all experienced by proxy the difficulties of Broomstick and her husband. However, in the U.S. she would've been fucked five years or even ten years ago because health care was just as much of a problem and recessions always suck. That does not mean they are interrelated with food price increases and fuel cost increases, but these have served to kick people while they are down. We're talking about serious issues here, and for people to conflate the unrelated or events without establishing the evidential burden of being related, just leads to hysteria. Vague impressions and subjective feel does not a cogent argument make.

[Surlethe]

I love how, instead of thinking that maybe the recent rise in the real price of oil and gasoline have changed peoples' preferences in cars, you jump straight to "Economic theory doesn't work, and when it does work there's a seven-year lag-time."

Newsflash: the RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices did not happen 7 years ago. It is this RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices that the market is responding to; not stuff that happened in 2000 and 2001. What part of this is difficult for you to understand?

Didn't US gasoline demand actually shrink from last year in the first quarter for the first time in years?

[Illuminatus Primus]

So all the people who need food now, all over the world, can just get themselves fucked for a seven year period? Maybe wait that long to buy food? Brilliant argument there.

Except he said people will adjust in the U.S. and supply will meet demand, and you know it. Furthermore, your claim was predicated on the idea that somehow rich people will bid the poor into outright starvation to remain obese (odd, the Americans with the buying power tend to be the thin fit ones). A dubious claim with no evidence.

And here you go demonstrating a basic idiocy once again. Soviet stores were not completely empty themselves--people had to wait because of the lack of just a few basic staples, you dumbshit. They were called Bread lines for a reason!

Oh please, by the time depletion to Soviet-levels occurred, you would not have open CostCo's! And furthermore, you're talking about specific foreign brands of rice going up in price or running low and extrapolating that to the unavailability of whole classes of food (bread).

[Master of Ossus]

Didn't US gasoline demand actually shrink from last year in the first quarter for the first time in years?

I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me. If you have a link to that data I'd really appreciate it, but I'm not actually sure where to find it.

[Surlethe]

Didn't US gasoline demand actually shrink from last year in the first quarter for the first time in years?

I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me. If you have a link to that data I'd really appreciate it, but I'm not actually sure where to find it.

I have a vague memory of hearing that on an NPR news update. Google-fu gives this article, though that's more recent than I remember hearing this tidbit of information. (Edit: and it's not first quarter numbers, just one week in April).

Interestingly, if my memory of economics has not entirely deserted me, that gives the price elasticity of gasoline demand to be very roughly (% change in demand)/(% change in price) = 6.8%/22% = 0.31. This is a useful piece of information.

[phongn]

I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me. If you have a link to that data I'd really appreciate it, but I'm not actually sure where to find it.

EIA information on consumption is available here. However, it doesn't have March 2008 data yet, so Q1 numbers can't be compared there.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I love how, instead of thinking that maybe the recent rise in the real price of oil and gasoline have changed peoples' preferences in cars, you jump straight to "Economic theory doesn't work, and when it does work there's a seven-year lag-time."

Newsflash: the RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices did not happen 7 years ago. It is this RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices that the market is responding to; not stuff that happened in 2000 and 2001. What part of this is difficult for you to understand?

Because prices in the $3.00's were present a year ago, dumbass--gas was more than $4.00 a gallon in the Chicago area. Before that, we've been paying in excess of $3.00 a gallon here in the Pacific Northwest for years and years. Gas prices simply haven't climbed all that much; they're actually lower than they were last summer.

Anyway, Valdemar has already demolished your precious free market arguments so many times that I will not repeat them here, and it's irritating that you persist in such beliefs when they've been disproved in debate here numerous times.

IN response to the next paragraph: There has been no recent rise in the price of gasoline that I've seen. Prices were already in the $3.20's in the Pacific Northwest back in 2005.

I'm not strawmanning you--you claimed that we would have Soviet-style bread lines. That claim is so OBVIOUSLY indefensible that you're falling over yourself backpedaling, but it's not "misrepresenting" you to point out that your stated view in this thread is that people will have to wait in the US in the next 8 months to get basic foodstuffs.

No, it really isn't indefensible. You're just choosing to interpret it as excessively as possible.

We past tense did something that will happen in the future?

I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Beautiful red herring and pointless dodge. Rice is not a food staple in the US--our annual per capita consumption of rice is a small fraction of that of many other countries in which it is a staple. Not having enough of a staple foodstuff is the point of the Soviet bread-line, dumbass, and the rice situation in the US is in NO WAY analogous to this. Any reasonable person who reads the thread will instantly recognize your arguments on this point as bullfuckery.

Rice is a staple in my region--we have the highest per capita rice consumption in the country, except maybe southern California.

[Keevan_Colton]

I was rather amazed at the state of such things even a couple of years back in Canada, which is generally accepted as having better assistance for those at the lower end of the scale. While I was there I was astounded at the number of food banks and soup kitchens in operation there. Much like with rice cookers, I'd not encountered them before living in North America. There are some similar organisations here, but they tend to be geared towards redistribution of excess from industry, such as expired products from supermarkets. The sell by date generally having a margin built in...whereas in Toronto there were nearly a tenth of the population relying on them according to the statistics.

IP, you need to stop to consider how many people are already near the limit of their means simply covering the basic essentials of food and shelter...and how devastating even a minor rise to those costs will be given the scale of people falling into that bracket.

Well, this is all anecdotal crap. In order for it to really be established as proof of the slow crawl of civilization toward disaster, it needs to be established that people were fine before and fucked now because of these issues in particular. It remains to be seen if food production constraints and price hikes will persist, but the MAIN reason its serious in the FIRST WORLD is incidentally because there's been trouble in the financial markets and lay-offs. Certainly we've all experienced by proxy the difficulties of Broomstick and her husband. However, in the U.S. she would've been fucked five years or even ten years ago because health care was just as much of a problem and recessions always suck. That does not mean they are interrelated with food price increases and fuel cost increases, but these have served to kick people while they are down. We're talking about serious issues here, and for people to conflate the unrelated or events without establishing the evidential burden of being related, just leads to hysteria. Vague impressions and subjective feel does not a cogent argument make.

That's possibly the stupidest thing I've heard in a very long while...it doesnt matter if people are fucked now so long as they would have been fiucked before...

People had serious problems with diseases that we have all but eliminated now. AIDS isnt a problem because you'd have been fucked by polio or small pox in the past, progress isnt something to strive for! Lets maintain the status quo and keep the right percentage of people totally buggered...

The fact is none of these things happen in a vaccum is the point I was making. You need to look at how they will interact with other ongoing problems. Taking for example these food problems, have you considered how much fertilizer is actually derived from petrochemicals? It's a fuckload...so...say that the amount of fertilizer available goes down, that reduces yields...rising fuel prices cause increased overheads for farmers, causing price rises...and then you add in a problem with supply of other staples...and yippee...you have a problem which is of far greater magnitude that it would be in isolation. When you have several problems all coming to a head together it creates a problem that is bigger than the sum of its parts because you lose a great deal of flexibility in possible solutions.

Everything has to come from somewhere, and if you've got several problems at once the places you can borrow from to shore up each problem rapidly dwindle.

[phongn]

Because prices in the $3.00's were present a year ago, dumbass--gas was more than $4.00 a gallon in the Chicago area. Before that, we've been paying in excess of $3.00 a gallon here in the Pacific Northwest for years and years. Gas prices simply haven't climbed all that much; they're actually lower than they were last summer.

To be blunt, Marina, that doesn't quite sound right. You make it sound like PacNW prices have continually sustained >= $3/gal prices for "years," when that generally has occurred during the traditional summer driving season; it was not until last year that prices started to be sustained around $3/gal or higher.


(Data sourced from the EIA)

[Illuminatus Primus]

Because prices in the $3.00's were present a year ago, dumbass--gas was more than $4.00 a gallon in the Chicago area. Before that, we've been paying in excess of $3.00 a gallon here in the Pacific Northwest for years and years. Gas prices simply haven't climbed all that much; they're actually lower than they were last summer.

As far as I can tell, you're an amnesiac. Six year Seattle data; notice the gas price is not 3.20/gallon in 2005. Ditto Portland and Spokane. Here is Dallas. Here is Atlanta. six-year data on Seattle, WA, Birmingham, AL, and the U.S. average. As you can see, you guys are hardly out in left field.

Anyway, Valdemar has already demolished your precious free market arguments so many times that I will not repeat them here, and it's irritating that you persist in such beliefs when they've been disproved in debate here numerous times.

Are you arguing that there is NO price elasticity of demand in gasoline? I suppose the number Surlethe just calced is bullshit?

IN response to the next paragraph: There has been no recent rise in the price of gasoline that I've seen. Prices were already in the $3.20's in the Pacific Northwest back in 2005.

You are wrong.

No, it really isn't indefensible. You're just choosing to interpret it as excessively as possible.

He's choosing to define it in such a way that the Soviet-style might actually mean something.

Rice is a staple in my region--we have the highest per capita rice consumption in the country, except maybe southern California.

Then it isn't really indicative of country-wide trends, now is it? And people do not NEED rice. Soviet citizens needed cereals and they were not available. Furthermore, it is still specific foreign brands of rice as he pointed out repeatedly.

[Terralthra]

I love how, instead of thinking that maybe the recent rise in the real price of oil and gasoline have changed peoples' preferences in cars, you jump straight to "Economic theory doesn't work, and when it does work there's a seven-year lag-time."

Newsflash: the RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices did not happen 7 years ago. It is this RECENT rise in oil and gasoline prices that the market is responding to; not stuff that happened in 2000 and 2001. What part of this is difficult for you to understand?

Because prices in the $3.00's were present a year ago, dumbass--gas was more than $4.00 a gallon in the Chicago area. Before that, we've been paying in excess of $3.00 a gallon here in the Pacific Northwest for years and years. Gas prices simply haven't climbed all that much; they're actually lower than they were last summer.

List of gas prices weekly over the past few weeks, and a graph of the past few years.

Gas prices have risen 80 cents in the past two months, and approximately twice that since 2005.

Any anecdotal claims about how gas prices may or may not fluctuate in your region is pretty obviously sophistic. Gas prices have risen recently in the United States.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That's possibly the stupidest thing I've heard in a very long while...it doesnt matter if people are fucked now so long as they would have been fiucked before...

People had serious problems with diseases that we have all but eliminated now. AIDS isnt a problem because you'd have been fucked by polio or small pox in the past, progress isnt something to strive for! Lets maintain the status quo and keep the right percentage of people totally buggered...

Sure, this is all true. But this is NOT what AV, J, Marina, et al seize on these threads for. They do it because they want any bad news to support emotional claims of crisis such as the obvious melodrama by Marina right here and now.

Point of fact is the world is fucked up, and there is a HUGE difference between the transient fuck-ups and local disasters that have occurred umpteen times in the 20th century to a general failure of modern civilization. Not that we should NOT be on watch for it, but correlating ANYTHING with it on emotional grounds is the definition of crying wolf.

The fact is none of these things happen in a vaccum is the point I was making. You need to look at how they will interact with other ongoing problems. Taking for example these food problems, have you considered how much fertilizer is actually derived from petrochemicals? It's a fuckload...so...say that the amount of fertilizer available goes down, that reduces yields...rising fuel prices cause increased overheads for farmers, causing price rises...and then you add in a problem with supply of other staples...and yippee...you have a problem which is of far greater magnitude that it would be in isolation. When you have several problems all coming to a head together it creates a problem that is bigger than the sum of its parts because you lose a great deal of flexibility in possible solutions.

That's a lot of nice supposition, but why don't you actually research whether yield failing is attributable to fertilizer price increases, rather than just supposing it MIGHT be reasonable and then connecting things on that basis. That is conspiracy-type reasoning.

Everything has to come from somewhere, and if you've got several problems at once the places you can borrow from to shore up each problem rapidly dwindle.

It'd be nice if someone did their homework before simply supposing it might be true.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes, yes, you're all quite right, and I'm a deranged idiot. Argument conceded.

[Keevan_Colton]

I'm not saying that price of fertilizer will increase, I'm saying that it's derived from oil. And with dwindling supplies of that guess what you get? Dwindling supplies of fertilizer...

Fertilizer increases crop yields, this is what it does, it's what the name is all about. I'm not talking prices, I'm talking physics...less supply of fertilizer (due to less oil to make it from, either due to economics or the simple fact that there isnt enough to go around) means that you have less stuff to boost crop yields with. That is a definite problem, and one which needs serious consideration. It's not an "if" sort of problem, it's a "when" sort of problem like the end of oil. We need to start seriously thinking about how we're going to keep food production up to the current level without the fertilizer we use to fuel our crops...

There are of course other alternatives, but due to the other problems that are tangentially related, such as problems with fungal attacks on some crops strains (meaning that others have to pick up the slack) it results in having less "play" in the system.

Personally I just wish folk would work more with energy as a system for accounting rather than dollars and pounds, because at the end of the day without energy to do shit, they're only worth the paper they're printed on (and that only because it can be burned for energy).

[Illuminatus Primus]

I'm not saying that price of fertilizer will increase, I'm saying that it's derived from oil. And with dwindling supplies of that guess what you get? Dwindling supplies of fertilizer...

I hope you don't think that was an earthshattering reply. Demand will remain consistent or fall. Falling supply manifests itself as high prices way before physical and persisting shortages will manifest.

I have read all the peakist/sustainability literature, thank you, I am well acquainted with its assertions.

Fertilizer increases crop yields, this is what it does, it's what the name is all about. I'm not talking prices, I'm talking physics...less supply of fertilizer (due to less oil to make it from, either due to economics or the simple fact that there isnt enough to go around) means that you have less stuff to boost crop yields with.

I'm sure this sounds very strong and powerful to you. But declining supply WILL manifest itself as high prices before there will be physical shortages (haven't you heard the point of peak oil is not that there is no oil but "the end of cheap oil"?). Do you think the military, government, and the extremely rich will not have access to petrochemicals themselves long after PO has priced out the lower and middle class? The most important loss of access is by those with low buying power as supply falls relative to demand and therefore they are bought out by rising prices. Has this occurred?

Furthermore, fertilizers do not have to be synthesized purely from petrochemicals. Energy is the quintessential dimension. If we had limitless fusion power, we wouldn't die for lack of fertilizer because of no oil or natural gas (by the way its more natural gas than oil, bub).

That is a definite problem, and one which needs serious consideration. It's not an "if" sort of problem, it's a "when" sort of problem like the end of oil. We need to start seriously thinking about how we're going to keep food production up to the current level without the fertilizer we use to fuel our crops...

No shit, but that is completely a red herring as to this food crises unless you show that fuel prices or fertilizer availability is one of the quintessential causes. Otherwise it is...BASELESS SPECULATION AND SUPPOSITION. You haven't put a dent in my arguments.

Personally I just wish folk would work more with energy as a system for accounting rather than dollars and pounds, because at the end of the day without energy to do shit, they're only worth the paper they're printed on (and that only because it can be burned for energy).

I'd like to believe you came up with this on your own, but I know better.

[Keevan_Colton]

I'd like to believe you came up with this on your own, but I know better.

No, you clearly know fuck all. Particularly since you're agreeing entirely with what I'm actually saying; that if we didnt have an energy problem we wouldnt have any problem with fertilizer because we'd be able to use more energy to manufacture it from other sources. But we dont have that excess generating capacity (the wonderful things we could achieve if we did...)

And yes, of course it's poor people that are fucked hardest, because rich people have more room to manuever to deal with problems due to their increased resources. You can use one thing to ofset a problem with another, such as using more energy to deal with a problem or using more resources of another type...such as using wheat or potatoes instead of rice for staple food in a diet...but get too many of these little problems rolling together and you've got serious shit. That's why you have to try and keep them small so that the next problem to manifest isn't the tipping point. (Another little physics thing, equillibriums and all that wonderful stuff) because if you let them mount up you can end up running out tools to solve the problems.

[Master of Ossus]

Because prices in the $3.00's were present a year ago, dumbass--gas was more than $4.00 a gallon in the Chicago area. Before that, we've been paying in excess of $3.00 a gallon here in the Pacific Northwest for years and years. Gas prices simply haven't climbed all that much; they're actually lower than they were last summer.

And that has bearing on what they were like SEVEN years ago?

Anyway, Valdemar has already demolished your precious free market arguments so many times that I will not repeat them here, and it's irritating that you persist in such beliefs when they've been disproved in debate here numerous times.

Ad hominem. My economic views support my position that your original statement was absurd, but anyone on the street could tell you that much.

IN response to the next paragraph: There has been no recent rise in the price of gasoline that I've seen. Prices were already in the $3.20's in the Pacific Northwest back in 2005.

You're from the Pacific Northwest? I'm not seeing prices over $3.00 in 2005 at this time of year. And even that ignores little details like the rest of the country. Moreover, 2005=/=2000 or 2001.

No, it really isn't indefensible. You're just choosing to interpret it as excessively as possible.

How can you interpret "Soviet-style breadlines" so as to make that a reasonable analogy for something in the US? Give it up. It's CLEARLY meant to refer to something that isn't happening, here, and if you ask people on the street what image that sort of language conjures up, they'll confirm my analysis of it.

I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Fair enough. What were you talking about, though?

Rice is a staple in my region--we have the highest per capita rice consumption in the country, except maybe southern California.

Really?
1. What is the per capita consumption of rice in your area?
2. Are you seriously saying that if the Pacific Northwest were magically unable to get rice tomorrow (but still had access to other foodstuffs) this would be comparable to Soviet breadline situations? Even this discounts the fact that we're talking about very specific kinds of imported rice.

[Admiral Valdemar]

This article seems to have a little discussion on some of the major issues affecting our economies today.

[Illuminatus Primus]

No, you clearly know fuck all. Particularly since you're agreeing entirely with what I'm actually saying; that if we didnt have an energy problem we wouldnt have any problem with fertilizer because we'd be able to use more energy to manufacture it from other sources. But we dont have that excess generating capacity (the wonderful things we could achieve if we did...)

Then the problem is energy and not petrochemicals specifically like you said. The difference is meaningful to the discerning. Furthermore, you still have no shown any evidence that any food production has been effected by fertilizer availability in anyway. Until you do, that's a fucking theoretical concern which has zero to do with a news article, and simply supposing they are related is crying wolf and unhelpful. We need more science, reason, and analysis, not half-ass handwaving.

And yes, of course it's poor people that are fucked hardest, because rich people have more room to manuever to deal with problems due to their increased resources. You can use one thing to ofset a problem with another, such as using more energy to deal with a problem or using more resources of another type...such as using wheat or potatoes instead of rice for staple food in a diet...but get too many of these little problems rolling together and you've got serious shit.

Evidence this is happening or will happen? For sure. Because you're still missing my point - which is pissing into the wind without evidence or analysis certainly isn't science, certainly is not public policy, and certainly is not good communications and public relations. And condescending as you might be, those are quite important.

Again, future supposition and mere possibilities are not good substitutes for reasoned, well-supported arguments.

hat's why you have to try and keep them small so that the next problem to manifest isn't the tipping point. (Another little physics thing, equillibriums and all that wonderful stuff) because if you let them mount up you can end up running out tools to solve the problems.

God you're a fucking idiot. What is your education, the prestigious UK School of Internet Toughness? Can you even spell lucidly or use correct grammar? Reading your shit is always painful. Anyway, "tipping points" and equilibriums in this context are not in the realm of physics. Find the physics equilibriums, are they what you're looking for? The tools of economics and systems analysis are quite crucial here, what we need to do is compensate for systemic issues caused by the failure of classical economics to incorporate biophysical limits and specifically plan for possible systemic failures and limit breaching where and if they occur.

Is it really so hard for you to Google a string of articles and tie them to an argument as opposed to just swearing and swaggering from your Internet tree club buddies? Is it that hard to cite anything or produce anything other than bleating and supposition? I can take even some alarmism from AV, J, aerius, and Marina because when it comes down to it I may sometimes disagree in the details but they can fucking spell and write and cite sources. You're just a know-nothing hanger-on.

[Kanastrous]

I'm not saying that price of fertilizer will increase, I'm saying that it's derived from oil. And with dwindling supplies of that guess what you get? Dwindling supplies of fertilizer...

Is coal comparable to oil as a raw material from which to manufacture fertilizer? Could those endless supplies of American coal we keep hearing about, be turned toward supplying fertilizer, to take some pressure of oil consumption?

Or do oil-based fertilizers exclusively use fractions that get cracked out during the refining process, anyway?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Fertilizer, like all petrochemicals, can be synthesized from pretty basic organic substrates (and vice versa - thermal depolymerization) if you have the energy input to drive the process. Its energy, not oil.

[Mayabird]

As a note referring to stuff earlier, just because the media has the attention span of a three-year-old on a sugar rush and forgot about it all doesn't mean avian flu won't cause a pandemic in the future. It still could very well do it. It's still jumping to humans on a small but regular basis with a high fatality rate, and it'd only need a few mutations, just the right roll of the genetic lottery after thousands upon thousands of rolls, to become transmittable from human to human.

[Keevan_Colton]

Oil lets us do things for a fraction of the energy cost it would take from other sources. Yet again you're managing to agree with me while trying to continue an argument out of it...you're really special like that IP.

I've said several times that it's a matter of finite capacity to deal with simultaneous problems. We can solve most problems we can conceive of by simply throwing energy at them. But, energy we're using to solve one problem cannot be used for another...

Do you need me to remind you of the first and second laws of thermodynamics? (And yes, I am aware that the earth itself is not a closed system, however the universe in total is, and we are only getting so much into our little system at a time).

We need energy to build power plants to generate more energy, but if we're using our existing energy generation capacity to synthesis fertilizers, we cant be using it to build more infrastructure. Unlike money, we cant simply print more energy...we have to contend with physics rather than the Federal Reserve...and physics is nothing if not a stickler for the rules.

[J]

Oh, by the way, crops are being wiped out along the Mississippi river as we speak by the worst flooding in years. The growing season is also shortened as farmers now have to wait until flood waters recede before they can plant crops, and that's going to push crop yeilds downward.

Link

Mississippi River flood dooms promising year for many farmers

Associated Press - April 28, 2008 5:14 AM ET

REDWOOD, Miss. (AP) - Karsten Simrall is 1 of the many farmers waiting to see just how much damage the recent Mississippi River flooding will amount to.

He says it's probably going to put people out of business.

Another farmer -- Brad Bradway -- says Lower Delta farmers were hit by "a perfect storm" of conditions and circumstances this spring that will wipe some out and leave many others questioning their sanity for remaining in a business where the margin is as thin as a crop row.

It's impossible to gauge overall agricultural losses at this point, federal and state officials say, but most agree the tab will be expensive and the damage extensive.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says a total of 855,750 acres are under either Mississippi floodwater or backwater from the Yazoo River, which drains much of the board-flat Mississippi Delta into the Mississippi River. About 273,000 of those flooded acres are cleared for wheat, cotton, soybeans, corn and other crops.

[Darth Wong]

Oil lets us do things for a fraction of the energy cost it would take from other sources. Yet again you're managing to agree with me while trying to continue an argument out of it...you're really special like that IP.

I've said several times that it's a matter of finite capacity to deal with simultaneous problems. We can solve most problems we can conceive of by simply throwing energy at them. But, energy we're using to solve one problem cannot be used for another...

Do you need me to remind you of the first and second laws of thermodynamics? (And yes, I am aware that the earth itself is not a closed system, however the universe in total is, and we are only getting so much into our little system at a time).

We need energy to build power plants to generate more energy, but if we're using our existing energy generation capacity to synthesis fertilizers, we cant be using it to build more infrastructure. Unlike money, we cant simply print more energy...we have to contend with physics rather than the Federal Reserve...and physics is nothing if not a stickler for the rules.

Invoking thermodynamic limitations of the Earth is pointless in this case, because the Sun pours far more energy into the Earth system than we can utilize every day. The problem is not the first law of thermodynamics; it is economics and distribution of resources. Specifically, we're incredibly wasteful. The problem is not scientific; it is social. We don't care to make sacrifices, and we don't bother to plan.