"Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the Earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves."
- Chief Seattle, 1854.
According to Johan Rockstrom, we are quickly entering uncharted territory when it comes to many of the Earth's regulatory systems. The Earth is a holistic organism and changes in one system affect others. Starting in the mid 20th century, man has started to cross many barriers of what scientist argue is sustainable. Furthermore, systems are not linear and we are at risk of reaching a new unknown equilibrium that may jeopardize human civilization as we know it. Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" is just the tip of the iceberg.
Since the end of the last Ice Age humanity has had two Agricultural Revolutions. The first one was ten thousands years ago in the fertile cresecent as man first left the nomadic life to domesticate plants and animals. The second, was allowed by the Haber-Bosch process in 1910, which, together with pesticides and oil powered trucks, set the stage for the "Green Revolution" in the 1940's. Our whole food industry still sits upon these technological innovations. According to Vaclav Smil, one of Bill Gates favorite writers, the greatest human invention the last 100-150 years was the Haber-Bosch process:
"People are obsessed with the progress of electronics and high speed machinery and things like that, but first things first. If you ask 'what has been the most important invention of the past 100, 150 years?' It's been the synthesis of ammonia."
As humanity continues to increase in the coming decades from 7 to 9 or 10 billion people and as the developing world acquires developed standards of living, continuing to insist with this system places our civilization at risk. Blindly continuing to repeat the past would be the equivalent of driving straight off a cliff.
An alternative solution that has been developing in recent years is Aquaponics, which combines aquaculture and hydroponics. It has the benefits of being local, uses 10% of fresh water as regular agriculture, does not need chemicals, uses less land area and provides higher yields. Or simply, does more with less. Its main drawback is that it still can't compete economically with our industrial food system. However, MIT, Fujitsu and many other players are entering into a market that has the potential to change mankind (more on this on later posts). It is a revolution that when looked from a systems perspective just makes sense. It is a matter of developing the technology in the coming 5 to 10 years to take aquaponics to a price point that disrupts humanity's most important industry.
Our responsibility as a species is to take this challenge. I, personally, would like to tell my grandkids that in the early 21st century we were able to revert the damage done and receded to cities, leaving nature to grow back again. I fear that, if we don't, Chief Seattle's words might prove prophetical:
Our responsibility as a species is to take this challenge. I, personally, would like to tell my grandkids that in the early 21st century we were able to revert the damage done and receded to cities, leaving nature to grow back again. I fear that, if we don't, Chief Seattle's words might prove prophetical:
"That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the Eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival."
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