Biofuels

[GreenLabel]

We are artificially sustaining life in areas where natural selection should be left alone to take its course.

You mean like Scotland?

[SupremeSpod]

You mean like Scotland?

Now you come to mention it...

[GreenLabel]

Now you come to mention it...

It was the first place to spring to mind when I read your first sentence above.

[TimberWolf]

Plenty of stuff is grown in Africa and Australia already. Build dams, irrigate, expand. It's not always drought proof, but then nothing ever has been. Yet somehow we're still here.

That aside, there's still the option of more efficiently using the farming we've got. Compare the stuff they're doing in Europe these days in terms of yields from the land with what's going on in Africa. Bring all of our existing farms up to the standards of, for example, the Dutch, and you'd have more food than you knew what to do with.

Current farmland isn't sustainable, let alone awkward farmland. First of all you've got to find an energy source, because modern farming practise makes a net energy loss, even with the sun's input, and fossil fuels aren't sustainable. A mind boggling huge energy source.

[GreenLabel]

Current farmland isn't sustainable, let alone awkward farmland. First of all you've got to find an energy source, because modern farming practise makes a net energy loss, even with the sun's input, and fossil fuels aren't sustainable. A mind boggling huge energy source.

Dig up more coal. Build more nuclear power plants and pull some uranium out of the ground. There are greenhouses where vegetables are grown that are heated using the exaust heat from nearby data centres. Pig farmers harvest methane from the pig carp and sell it to electricity companies in some countries. Some communities are using small, portable generators on the top of old rubbish dumps to generate electricity from the methane in the rotting garbage below. Geothermal power is starting to take off.

Okay, so some of it is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but it's early days and it shows that there are new, creative ideas emerging and advances being made. Some will fail, others we haven't even contemplated yet will succeed.

It's a mistake to underestimate mankind's ability to innovate and adapt.