TEDxTC - Jonathan Foley - The Other Inconvenient Truth

The Other Inconvenient Truth: How Agriculture is Changing the Face of Our Planet

We typically think of climate change as the biggest environmental issue we face today. But maybe it's not? In this presentation, Jonathan Foley shows how agriculture and land use are maybe a bigger culprit in the global environment, and could grow even larger as we look to feed over 9 billion people in the future.

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[Rudy Steffen]

Max Weissman,

That is a deeply anthropocentric position that you hold. From your point of view, humans should utilize every last resource on Earth for our own devices and forget about the millions of other species that share this planet. We do not need to consume the cows and by halting our forced production of them, we thus free up 45% of landmass on Earth (see International Livestock Research Institute). Then we can plant more productive crops for the world and use far less land

[Sunil Pachar]

Lot of agriculture is being done to feed the animals are bred for human diet. Simple common sense tells that it is inefficient energy cycle. If human beings can directly eat vegetarian diets we shall be able to eliminate lot of pressure on earth resources.

[deltaxcd]

amd so what? with current consumption rated we will eat entire solar system in few thousands or maybe milion years at best while sun itself will last for like billion years so sooner or later we will hit our end of consumption and this entire mega civilization will die.

to make things even worse you need to use lots of energy and mass to drive space transport systems so asteroid mining will be quite inefficient.

[MrFlowerpower5000]

False. There are vast majority of metals in space. Plutonium can also be bred, Malthus

[goyavesETmangues]

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Agriculture was a very very bad idea from the start. It is interesting that it is used as a marker of 'civilisation' which shows that the western-centric notion of civilisation goes hand in hand with exploitation.

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PERMACULTURE is the only way forward. It is doing wonders in Africa especially the Sahelian region and has even stopped desertification in some cases

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[goyavesETmangues]

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"what happens to the quality of life?" Whose quality of life?? By thinking that the quality of life may be affected by fairer allocation of resources, you exhibit the egotistical and selfish tendencies of most westerners who put their comfort first, before the lives of millions. What about OUR quality of lives for a change?

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BTW space is NOT a resource, it wasnt created for white men to exploit and destroy it like they are doing the Earth. This mindset is what is killing us!

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[goyavesETmangues]

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"No it it's an inefficient use of resources issue at it's core"

Joshua Picket, you are totally right!!

As long as these greedy westerners will keep on wasting all the Earth energy, we will be fucked!

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Westerners/white people would rather think that it is better for brown people to disappear from the surface of the Earth than face their disgusting wastage and SHARE!

We have enough energy and food for everybody yet people are going hungry and most of them are brown in the global south

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[goyavesETmangues]

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The Malthusian claim of 'population issue' is deeply oppressive at its core

When it first emerged, it was used against the poor that were blamed for shortage in food despite their low consumption. Today it is used against brown people while white people in the west are the ones that keep on wasting food and energy

It is RACIST and CLASSIST

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If one American can use more water per day than a family of four in Ethiopia, it is definitively NOT a population problem

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[Upendra Sainath]

''PERMACULTURE'' is the ONLY SOLUTION !!!