The rapid population growth over the past 200 years brings humanity to the problem that Robert Malthus described at the beginning of the 19th century. Its essence lies in the fact that the population of the Earth is growing much faster than its ability to feed this population. And, despite the fact that a lot of time has passed since then, and there have been two whole revolutions in agriculture (one associated with the invention of mineral fertilizers, the second with the advent of mechanization), which made it possible to increase its efficiency by an order of magnitude, the problem of lack of food remains with humanity.
Indeed, despite all the measures, the number of hungry people in the world is growing every day. As a percentage, the illusion is created that everything is fine - if at the beginning of the 19th century, about 30% of the population were hungry, and today this figure has dropped to 13%, but the total number of hungry is impressive: about 900 million people. And these are only those who are hungry, and if you add to them about 2.5 billion people who do not get all the necessary diet of vitamins and nutrients and about 1.5 billion people who do not have access to clean water, the picture is simply terrifying. According to the WHO, approximately 75% of the world's population lives, in one way or another, lack of some kind of food or vital components.
Humanity, in general, has become interested in its global problems relatively recently. The questions of our survival at the global level began to appear no more than 100 years ago. Many committees and organizations have appeared, one way or another related to forecasting the future of humanity and solving its main problems. The depletion of our planet's resources requires humanity to make decisions now.
In 1972, a report was presented to the Club of Rome (an international think tank that analyzes the relationship between man and nature) on the possible consequences of the uncontrolled growth of the planet's population and the consumption of its resources. The report considered 12 scenarios for the future of the planet, depending on the actions taken by humanity; the forecasting period was no more than 200 years, the scenarios did not provide for a nuclear war or space cataclysms. The forecasting results turned out to be very interesting. Despite the fact that none of the scenarios ended with the complete extinction of mankind, most of them boiled down to the fact that the human population, having reached its peak within the next hundred years, will decrease by an order of magnitude in the next hundred due to lack of food and world hunger.
The computer model used in this analysis was revised twice, and the calculation was repeated twice - once in 1992, the second in 2004. The result is the same. There are only two possible scenarios allowing humanity to preserve its population and leave the level of consumption the same, but both are very unpleasant for a modern "well-fed" society. These scenarios imply a very serious birth control, reduction of environmental pollution and restrictions on the implementation of large financial projects. The latter implies not involving humanity in dubious adventures on a global scale (for example, turning the rivers of Siberia back, building a giant power plant in the Sahara, etc.), since financial shocks are sometimes no less dangerous than environmental shocks.
Environmentalists have a funny term - "economic debt day". Its essence lies in the fact that it shows on what day of the year mankind uses all the renewable resources of the Earth that it produces in 1 year. Renewable resources include, first of all, the recovery of oxygen from carbon dioxide and the purification of the amount of water necessary for mankind from pollution. For the first time, ecological debt was noted in 1970 and its day fell on December 29, that is, the Earth did not have enough two days to renew the resource consumed by its biomass (this includes not only humanity, but all animals and plants of our planet). By the beginning of the third millennium, the day of economic debt shifted to October 2, and now it falls on August 8.
If the use of renewable resources continues at the same pace, in 15 years the environmental debt day will fall on June 30, that is, everything that the planet renews in a year will be spent in six months. In fact, this means that we will need two Earths to continue our existence at the pace we are used to.
Thus, by the beginning of the 21st century, mankind has come to a point where its influence on the biosphere cannot remain without consequences. One or two more centuries and we will be on the brink of extinction, since we will "eat" everything that we have in stock. Is there a way out of this situation? It must be, because we are intelligent and cannot help but take care of ourselves. Action is urgently needed to reduce consumption and reduce fertility. We need to be more rational about the resources we have available.
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For a long time, questions have been raised about the time to move to "industrial" food production, that is, to produce food either with minimal use of fertile land, or without them at all. The most radical ideas suggest moving away from renewable resources in food production altogether - simply synthesizing products for human nutrition in factories, keeping natural ingredients to a minimum. About half a century ago, such ideas were not even considered, since the level of technology did not allow such a thing even in experiments, however, the development of biochemistry has now opened new horizons for humanity. Over the past 2-3 decades, we have mastered a lot of new technologies: plants with modified genes that can grow under almost any conditions; cloning of living things; artificial food and so on.
Naturally, the influence of such food components on the human body has not been studied enough, in addition, there are many opponents of such a rapid introduction of such technologies into our lives. And they can be understood - it is not known, for example, how genomodified or artificial food will affect humanity. However, we cannot wait long, we have too little time, and there are too many of us. Ahead of us is another historic turn that may change the life of our species. And it depends only on us whether we can pass it without problems …