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Rising Energy Demand Hits Water Scarcity 'Choke Point'
WASHINGTON - Meeting the growing demand for energy in the U.S., even through sustainable means, could entail greater threats to the environment, new research shows.
About half the 410 billion gallons of water the U.S. withdraws daily goes to cooling thermoelectric power plants, and most of that to cooling coal-burning plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. One of the things missing from the discussion, then, is the recognition that saving energy also saves water, contends Circle of Blue. (photo by Flickr user Argonne National Laboratory) The study was carried out by Circle of Blue, a network of journalists and scientists dedicated to water sustainability, and could have implications not just for the relationship between energy demand and water scarcity in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world, as well. "It is not just that energy production could not occur without using vast amounts of water. It's also that it's occurring in the era of climate change, population growth and steadily increasing demand for energy," explained Circle of Blue's Keith Schneider, who presented the findings in Washington Wednesday.
"The result is that the competition for water at every stage of the mining, processing, production, shipping and use of energy is growing more fierce, more complex and much more difficult to resolve," he said. About half the 410 billion gallons of water the U.S. withdraws daily goes to cooling thermoelectric power plants, and most of that to cooling coal-burning plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Meanwhile, climate change is leading to decreased snowmelt, rains and freshwater supplies, says Circle of Blue.
One of the things missing from the discussion, then, is the recognition that saving energy also saves water, the group contends.
The U.S. government has not been blind to the conflict between energy and water needs. The first part of a report commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 2005 laid out the consequences of not paying enough attention to water supply issues in increasing energy production. The second part, which would have laid out a research agenda and begun developing solutions, has yet to be made public, says Schneider.
He says the U.S. Department of Energy has declined repeated requests to explain why the report has not been published.
Energy demand in the U.S. is expected to increase by 40 percent as the U.S. population rises above 440 million by 2050. The water supply will not be able to support that growth, Schneider says.
Renewable sources of energy will certainly be a large part of trying to meet that energy demand, but these, too, come with a hidden water cost.
In 2009, the U.S. dedicated 23 million acres of public lands in six states for new solar electricity-generating plants as part of its economic stimulus package, which apportioned nearly 100 billion dollars for clean energy projects. Though the plan appeared promising, environmentalists soon began to point it could have damaging, unintended consequences. Schneider notes that criticism of the impact the water-cooled solar plants could have on water priorities in the U.S. Southwest even came from within the government.
"In arid settings, the increased water demand from concentrating solar energy systems employing water-cooled technology could strain limited water resources already under development pressure from urbanization, irrigation expansion, commercial interests and mining," wrote Jon Jarvis, then head of the National Park Service's Pacific West Region, in a February 2009 internal memo. "Solar generating plants that use conventional cooling technology use two to three times as much water as coal- fired power plants," Schneider noted.
In other countries, the threat of water scarcity is even more pertinent.
Egypt, for example, has a population of approximately 82 million, but an annual water quota of about 86 billion cubic meters - and the population is expected to rise by more than 10 million people in the next decade.
Yet 30 European blue chip companies are set to invest 560 billion dollars over the next 40 years to build solar power plants in North Africa as part of the Desertec Industrial Initiative. Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia have agreed to work with the initiative. Comparing this project with the U.S.'s, Schneider notes that in an environment that faces even greater water scarcity than the southwestern U.S., such projects could prove disastrous. Circle of Blue calls the intersection of a rising demand for energy and diminishing supply water a "choke point", but energy development - whether of the fossil fuel or renewable variety - is just one aspect of the water scarcity crisis that is unfolding in various regions of the globe.
Yemen is widely seen as the place where this scarcity will hit first and hardest.
"Analysts are worried Yemen could be the first country in the world to effectively run out of water," said Christine Parthemore, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where she studies the intersection of natural resources and security issues. She spoke at a separate event Wednesday.
Yemen, which has no rivers and cannot afford desalination, is drawing water at around 400 times its replacement rate, she says, and this looming crisis is compounding other issues in the region, like the fact that Yemen has become a key recruiting spot for groups like al Qaeda.
"We are about to see water wars in the future," said U.S. General Anthony Zinni. "We have seen fuel wars; we're about to see water wars."
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81 Comments so far
Show AllI must research this heretofor unheard of "water cooled" solar concentrating plants.
Photovoltaics have no water involved except for battery water.
The solar concentrating promoted by some utilities whole purpose is to heat oil in a pipe to turn a turbine, I do not understand why they would cool anything down if they are attempting maximum heat.
I suspect this "water cooled" system is a big industry design that ignores the simple solution of using waste heat as a cogeneration energy source.
Perhaps the point the authors are trying to make is that in our rush to institute renewable forms of energy we do not do so at the expense of something even more important - water ....
I am trying to figure out what solar system they are referring to, all the renewable systems I know of do not use significant amounts of water.
It would be very like a large utility to choose the one renewable system that is enviornmentally harmful.
Doing practically nothing for 40 years, ain't much of a rush.
The rush is to fracKing and tar sands which poison Billions of gallons of fresh water monthly.
yes, you are right - each well of shale fracking or cracking of rocks requires 5 million gallons of water and there are about 2,000 wells alone in Pa in 2 years and they want 2,000 wells in one county in NY alone and the fracking is not done only once but several times in the life of the well . Each time the fracking cracks more rock about 1 mile under the ground and nobody knows were exactly these cracks will form and communicate with the aquifer -- the entire fluid has unknown chemicals included that the industry will not reveal but we know that one of the reasons for using the chemicals is said to be to inhibit the growth of bacteria underground-- that is the definition of being poisonous- to be able to kill life.
The EPA is studying hydrofracking right now you can submit until next Tuesday Oct 28 a comment about that. Google epa and hydrofracking and you will be able to submit a comment at hydraulic.fracturing@epa.gov
why so much fracking and massive gas released-- of course the price is low but the
big oil is used to just harvesting quickly and then leaving town before the environmental problems mount.
I have been keeping an eye on this one.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2009/September/middleeast_September70.xml§ion=middleeast
Another monkey wrench here is that Israel has been trying secure a contract to have water transported from Turkey via ship and proposed pipeline. It hasn't worked out too well.
That said, overuse and water rights (ownership) are the real issue, so called "global warming" should not be used as an excuse.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/amnesty-international-israel-curbing-water-to-palestinians-1.5307
This is classic overuse of a resource and why wars start. The Litani river is also a big issue in this case.
Here is the original deal which failed.
http://www.uswaternews.com/archives/arcglobal/6israturk4.html
The recent incident at sea Israel had with Turkey all but insures that this agreement will never happen. The only other option Israel has is the Litani river. This is hugely problematic.
Any attempt to take the Litani might now be a very big mistake.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=119501#axzz10O7jOubt
Frank, agreed. As you and glenn have said, leave it to the corporatocracy to poison and f*ck up even renewable energy.
Simple physics. You can't extract energy from heat. You can only extract energy from the _flow_ of heat from a heat source to a heat "sink." Hot oil in a pipe can not turn a turbine, but it can be used to turn water into steam, and then the expanding steam can turn the turbine.
It works to just release the steam to the air when you're done with it, in which case you are basically using the Earth's atmosphere as your heat sink. It works,... so long as you have a sufficient supply of water. Otherwise, you need to capture and cool the steam and re-cycle it. Most large-scale power plants actually do keep the primary water in a closed system because that greatly simplifies the maintainance of the boilers, but then they still use some source of "secondary" water to cool the water in the primary loop.
The giant cooling towers that you see on big power plants is where the primary water is cooled by the vaporization of secondary water. The huge clouds of "steam" that issue from the tops of the cooling tower are water that was pumped out of the ground, or out of rivers and lakes, being returned to the atmosphere.
Thanks for setting Glenn Ford straight on this matter.
And as far a photovoltaics, they are are much less efficient on an energy-per-square meter basis than solar-thermal power.
But, one would think that seawater could be used for condenser cooling water so no cooling towers are needed.
Seawater and river water are used at some plants to cool directly rather than using cooling towers. However, especially in the case of rivers, that also changes the local ecology by raising the water temperature. Nothing is without consequence...
Yeah, but in this case the cooling water is coming from a very big body of water (Mediterranean) for which there would be no thermal pollution to speak of.
There are a lot of reasons to speak of thermal pollution in the Mediterranean or elsewhere before you get to where you have measurably raised the temperature of the entire ocean.
Thermal pollution is not the worst effect of nuclear plants, but nuclear plants are a prime example of thermal pollution. Anyone who imagines that thermal pollution causes no problems to sealife should check the environmental changes around existing plants.
One minor point. Most of the water in the cooling towers will eventually be pumped back into the river or lake, once it is within a few degrees of the river/lake water. The steam, as you said, represents water that is sent elsewhere, disrupting the local water cycle.
I thought that when steam expands, it cools. That's why turbines have a series of stages, each larger than the last to handle the increased volume of steam. In a perfect turbine, the final stage would allow the steam to expand to ambient temperature and pressure, wringing the final drop of power from it. If the humidity at that stage is 100%, then the steam will condense and the water become recylcleable. So where does the heat go?
Never mind - I just worked it out. When the steam condenses, it releases its "heat of condensation" as pert of the phase transition. You have to exhaust that heat somehow. It's not usable as part of the power generation process because the water you would be heating with it (the condensed fluid) is already at the same temperature anyway.
Furthermore, you can work out from the J/l of water's heat of condensation just how big a pant you would need to do the closed-cycle process for a given power output. Mind you - that might change if you keep the whole unit sealed and have the final stage (condensation) work at a different temperature and pressure to normal atmospheric.
I wonder what the limits are? How does the J/l of the heat of condensation of water vary with pressure? ... it's a non issue: if the final stage is any hotter than ambient, then you necessarily are wasting energy. The real problem is the very low specific heat of air. What you really need is a massive heatsink that is protected from the sun during the day and allowed to radiate the waste heat into space at night.
But the only material that's actually useful for a heat buffer that big is - you guessed it - water.
So. You have a big dam. It has a blanket over it to limit evaporation. You draw cold water from its base and exhaust warmer water into the top layer. Arrrange things so that the blanket is reflective and insulating during the day to keep the water cool and black and conductive at night to facilitate radiation. There's your heat sink. How much water would you need? How much surface area? How deep would you need it to be so that the hot water at the top does not warm the water at the base? You'd want to put barriers in underwater to stop currents between layers during the day, but that would enable convection at night. Maybe just an insulating diaphragm to keep the layers separate. At dawn, you'd open holes in the diaphragm and pump some air into it to float it to the top. Heck - leave the holes in it, and manage it's buoyancy by pumping air into/out of it.
Yeah, it'd work. Maybe. Big job, though.
Glen here is a little about the type of plant you mention.
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JSEEDO000117000001000057000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes&ref=no
One of the tricks is to keep the fluid, be it water or another fluid such as oil at an optimal temperature range for best performance.
Quite frankly I like Hydro Electric combined with limited Wind such as community scale systems. The problem with large scale wind is that other plants need to take the slack up when the wind resource is unavailable. These plants need to be kept up to temperature so that if needed in the event of a failure or other issue at the wind plants, they can quickly go on line to take up the load. This poses the problem regarding costs to other plants for the fuels they use so that grid reliability is maintained. Also Wind Turbines need electricity from an outside source to operate, then again so do other plants.
We need to have a good, low cost and reliable energy mix. The Grid is steadily improving but energy conservation helps a lot.
I do like the concept of Fuel Cell technology but thus far cell contamination and ability to run non-linear loads are hurdles that need to be addressed.
You sound like a BP commercial.
I am sorry you feel that way. Unlike BP or Enron et.al I have a soul that's not for sale. I was involved very much with renewables and energy in general. A commenter here said it perfectly that the corporations even screwed up renewables (which I know all too well).
Heck, even conservation has been screwed up. Two good examples are suppose that everyone used less water or electricity. The utility starts losing revenue and will request rate increases, this because the loss of revenue means that shareholders will get less and other obligations may not be met. This includes tax/fee revenue loss.
The same goes for gas,fuel oil,diesel etc. of which a significant portion of the the cost we pay per gallon is tax/fees.
Then again these are tradeable commodities so a little market manipultion or some geo political issue would result in higher prices for those conserving and higher profits for wall street/hedge funds
Al Gore is getting divorced, why does he need a huge new mansion? How many homes does John Mccain have? (he forgot too).
I hope you can agree that this is nearly no win situation with corporate profits being kept private while losses are paid for by the public (fascism). To turn this around is going to take a lot of work.
Glenn - I had the same thought. I mean, I knew it would require some energy to build and maintain but had no idea it would use THREE TIMES the amount of water as coal plants!? That just doesn't sound right. Does anyone know anything about the authors of this article?
These commercial plants they are building are NOT photovoltaic---they are solar thermal power systems---they only use the suns energy to make heat and generate steam! What!??! You expected power companies to invest in sustainable energy? LOL!
I believe I know what kind of solar concentrating plants they are describing. Some plants have parabolic mirrors, concentrating sunlight and converting water to steam. The steam drives a turbine which turns the generators. This kind of solar requires a coolant.
One thing that surprises me: why would you have to desalinize ocean water if it is just being used as a coolant? Couldn't Yemen just pump seawater through the cooling pipes? I presume the water that is converted to steam and then recondensed into liquid form would have to be freshwater. Am no engineer, obviously. Any answers out there?
Your right, the fact is they could use liquid sodim as the primary and oil as secandary in closed system, with proper design it colud be run as hot as possible with no loss except thermal radition.
Better yet put it in stationary orbit and beam the power down by laser or microwave. Less loss that way. Also in a proper orbit it would always be in sun-light.
As for water, well if want to breed you'll have to pay. Where I'm at they want to ship water to So.CA and develop more homes and business here, were pretty much at our capicity. In fact we could lost 50,000 homes and have a comfortable margin for drought. Try telling the growth nuts that though. All the MSM says is grow or die, when if fact if continue to grow we will die.
Damm Humins iz Stupid!
>^^<
BrightSource is a company developing its first solar power complex in California’s Mojave Desert. They use dry cooling technology.
The details of the project are here:
http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/projects/ivanpah
This is what they say on the website
"Employs a closed-loop dry-cooling technology, which reduces water use by 90 percent. Will use 100 acre feet per year, the equivalent of 300 homes’ annual water usage; and nearly 25 times less water than competing technologies."
I always wondered if some of the get-rid-of-Saddam crowd were not only thinking about Iraq's oil, but also their water resources.
I think you may be right about that...check out the "TEAM" on this site http://www.earthwaterglobal.com/index.htm
Not mentioned here, unless I skipped over it, are the water requirements of extracting petroleum from oil shale and tar sand deposits. Needless to say, this occurs in arid regions, where water is already at a premium.
I heard a radio ad that said "Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink!" And that's GOOD news because right now you can invest in water, the world's next oil!
In other words, privateers are certainly out to control water and profit mightily.
Well, there you go, the "free market" will fix everything.
If theres enough money in it we could send remote ships to the asteroid belt, Shifting 100mega ton ice comets from belt to earth could be made to pay. :) if we got time like 5 to 10 yrs. solar sails could be used instead of rockets. it just takes longer.
Also someone would need to go to prospect for the best water content.. (JOBS) I guarentee people would be lined around the block for percentage wages.
>^^<
Seldom do any of these articles, scientific or editorial, adress the cause of our water, energy problems: Our extravagant use of all resources that support our lifestyle and fill the coffers of public utility giants. Rarely to we hear politicians speak of conservation; it's always alternative energy. We have an economic system based on growth and planet with finite resources. The last thing Industrial giants, utility giants and big AG want is induviduals and communities supplying their own power, food, and maybe even making their own stuff from local materials instead of cheap shit that ends up in a landfill in few short months. We might even come up with more local innovation if we spent as much time talking face to face with our neighbors as we do on our little toy communication devices.
Right on Phil
Phil how would we supply our own power?
Pitbulls, on big hamster-wheels. I just got a year old pitbull and christ all she wants to do is run. 3 more and I got 24/7 energy that I can sell. For dogfood $$ :)
>^^<
The human population of this globe is far too great.
One child per family, worldwide for the next few generations. Empower women.
Or less!. if we could get back to around two billion we might just make it to the next millienium.
>^^<
Agreed. Good points.
I wonder if we cut way back on our military resources, how dramatic would be the saving in both water and fuel. Many other natural resources are used and abused as well.
We still'd have the people to feed, and house. It wouldn't be as great as that. unless we leave them there, using their water :) but no it wouldn't work. We still'd need to put contraceptives in the water, or start nutering for jay-walking, maybe execution for second DUI.
>^^<
In other words it's the the needs of the ever expanding empire, where 'globalization' assures that local resources don't exist. All resources are global and up for grabs. The empire will buy its way out of this as does with all of its catastrophes. The problem for Americans is that the cost of this empire is falling on the backs of the middle-class. The people who built the country can't pay for an empire, no matter how hard they work. Get ready for the new mercenary-class. You can read about them in IRON HEEL by Jack London
Hoa binh
Dear since 1492:
I love that book. You can read IRON HEEL for free, by downloading it from gutenberg. Sadly, a lot of people don't know about this book. I learned about it from reading Howard Zinn!
The biggest water source in my neighborhood, the Great Lakes, is being laid claim to by the Republicrats and corporate pigs, causing economic havoc and chaos, breaking the state of Michigan, so they can bargain with us for the water.
People in Michigan still haven't woke up to the fact we are being driven into the ground by money sucking politicians, an Israeli interest senator, and a lame Republican stilled by the words of lobbyists out of Dow et al.
Our education, employment, and environment, are being selectively destroyed by these criminals. Nestle (aka Ice Mountain) sits in the middle of the state doing the very thing others will come to do, be it inside or shoreline.
Michigan needs to say NO to oil leases and coal plants; instead build wind turbines along the shores with a posted...NO CORPORATE TRESPASSING
And Michigan needs to find its voice, and its courage, to put ourselves back to work
as Gilligan helped the Professor...
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/pedal-powered-electricity-generator-windstream/#comments
RE: "We are about to see water wars in the future," said U.S. General Anthony Zinni. "We have seen fuel wars; we're about to see water wars."
Look at who's saying this. Who is responsible for the largest and most brutal and systemic violence regarding control of fossil "fuels"? The US military. So who might we guess would be the primary belligerent in the "water wars"? A clue: it's not Yemen...
Yes...and look who is on the team of EarthWaterGlobal http://www.earthwaterglobal.com/index.htm ...and there just so happens to be a megawatershed under Iraq!
Good info! Of the 3 "founders" of EarthWaterGlobal, two come from investment banking and the other is a military contractor. Capital and coercion...longtime bedfellows.
It's like peeling an onion, layer after stinking layer, makes you want to cry.
Gee!! and all the Bush's wanted is to rebuild the Temple in Isreal so Jesus would return, and lead the illuimati to heaven for their good works. As for the rest of us, well look further in the christian bible,, "hint" it starts with an "A" and ends badly.
>^^<
http://www.sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/CarryingCapacity.aspx
From the link:
Basic Biology
"One of the earliest concepts related to the issue of scale is that of carrying capacity. Biologists define carrying capacity as the maximum population of a given species that can survive INDEFINITELY in a given environment."
That's it folks, Basic Biology 101. See anything in there about infinite growth? Nope just the basic fact that any given environment can only indefinitely sustain a certain level of a population. It is absolutely amazing that such a basic concept can be so utterly ignored by our "great" leaders and economists.
I suspect we have long surpassed the sustainable human population for this planet. Over the last few years, I've been reading about, peak water, peak soil, peak fish, peak precious metals, and the big one, peak oil. None of that sounds too sustainable to me.
At first the Earth seems like kind of a big planet in a way, but when you really think about it gets a lot smaller real quick. Most of the exploitable resources are found only in the first few miles of the crust. Same with the atmosphere. The bulk of it is just a few miles thick.
So here we are, billions of us busily gobbling up resources in this thin outer skin of the planet. Some of the resources we are using could be renewable if we acted responsibly, but others, some very important to the existence of our society, like oil are not.
In so many different areas we seem to be delusionally racing head long into the solid wall of finite resources with no thought given to the long term. Our fossil fuel usage has warmed the atmosphere to the point that the arctic ice is melting. So what are our worlds governments reaction to that? The BBC has been airing stories about that the last few days. It turns out that all the countries that boarder the arctic are dividing it up so they can start exploiting the oil and gas that's up there as soon as they can get at it.
So folks it appears this whole experiment in "advanced" human civilization is winding down and probably won't end well. The entrenched views of the elite economic minds only do the status quo, so they will be of no help. The only questions that remain are how much longer this ultimate Ponzi scheme has, what is the real sustainable human population number, and how do we get to that sustainable number from where we are now.
Oh and did I forget to mention that all the ships that sunk in WWII are leaking oil. The New Scientist had an article that figures "peak leak" is only a few years away. I figured I toss that last log on modern human society's funeral pyre.
Oh well I hear the Republicans are taking over again. I'm sure Sara Palin and the Tea Baggers will be up to the task of guiding us through the challenges we will soon face. Check their "Pledge to America" I'm sure it's all covered in there.
When applied to human societies, "carrying capacity" is junk science.
- - - - - - -
[C]laims that a given area of land has a certain "carrying capacity" are open to criticism in three different ways. First, the number of people who can live on a piece of land depends largely on their culture, which determines both their needs and their ways of life. The nature and success of their farming systems, for example, cannot easily be predicted in advance on the model of outsiders' [read, first world] cultures. Second, the fact that the question of consumption and technology levels must be raised in any discussion of "carrying capacity" means that the normative issues of what sort of society or economy people desire cannot be evaded when talking of "overpopulation". Third, a given land area's "carrying capacity" will depend largely on what happens outside its borders: upstream deforestation, global commodity price fluctuations, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain and so forth. Local inhabitants will always be justified in pointing out that their land could support a great many more people if damaging external influences were curbed, and on this ground to call into question the presumption of those partly responsible for such influences in suggesting "proper" local population levels.
This latter problem might be evaded, of course, by an attempt to determine global carrying capacity. However, this is usually acknowledged to be technically far-fetched even if the world's peoples could be induced to accept uniform global consumption levels and technology. And it would of course leave wide open the question of which local "populations" would have to be "adjusted" to meet the purported "global" requirements.
Lack of Explanatory Power
One response to such arguments is that, while "overpopulation" cannot be precisely or "objectively" defined, there are at least unambiguous statistical correlations between "population" and environmental degradation on a national scale. On close examination, however, even this assertion turns out to be problematic. Malaysia, for example, although it has only a tenth as many people as neighboring Indonesia, has cleared fully 40 per cent as much forest as Indonesia has done. Central America, with a "population" density of only 57 persons per square kilometer, has cleared 410,000 square kilometers of forests, or 82 per cent of its original forest cover, while France, covering the same land area with double the number of people, has cleared less. And those who would explain the destruction of half a million square kilometers of Brazilian Amazonian forests between 1975 and 1988 in Malthusian terms "overlook the inconvenient fact that although the Amazon forms over 60 per cent of Brazilian national territory, less than 10 per cent of Brazil's population lives there..."
If "population" and "population" density are poorly correlated with specific examples of environmental degradation, "population" increase is equally poorly correlated with rates of environmental degradation. Costa Rica and Cameroon, for example, are clearing their forests faster than Guatemala and Zaire, respectively, in spite of having lower "population" growth rates. Thailand's rate of forest encroachment, similarly, has varied less closely with the rate of population increase than with changes in political climate, villagers' security, road and dam-building, and logging concessions.
To confuse the issue still further, there are many instances of environmental degradation resulting from the outflow of people from a given area of land. In Africa, for example, there are many areas where fallow periods have been reduced, not because there is a shortage of land, due to "population pressure", but because there is a shortage of farm labor due to urban migration. The longer a plot of cleared bush is left fallow, the more labor is required to clear it again for agriculture: hence, it makes economic (if not ecological) sense to reduce the fallow period. In such cases, the problems associated with reduced fallow periods result not from overpopulation but from local depopulation.
Exploitative Relations
Indeed, the closer one looks at the relationship between human numbers and environmental degradation, the clearer it becomes that, at root, the key issue is not simply how many? But how is society organized?
- - - - - - -
Yes, how is society organized? The world is currently organized in a capitalist manner and resource wars, inequality, poverty and global warming are what it has produced. Maybe we should try something else?
Source for above info: http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/%E2%80%9Ccarrying-capacity%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%9Coverpopulation%E2%80%9D-and-environmental-degradation
"First, the number of people who can live on a piece of land depends largely on their culture, which determines both their needs and their ways of life."
"Yes, how is society organized? The world is currently organized in a capitalist manner and resource wars, inequality, poverty and global warming are what it has produced. Maybe we should try something else?"
My guess is the more advanced the society the harder the fall will be. Some isolated tribes/cultures may not even notice the fall of our "advanced" civilizations if/when it occurs.