this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Desalination and verticle farming. The tech has been around for a while, but the poor rich people don't want to miss out buying this year's model yacht.
Vertical farming is not actually efficient. https://youtu.be/8BXHu_yXVQk?si=3-xdPPgce3xRmbpu
Desalination is ~~expensive~~ energy intensive and vertical farming is to ~~expensive~~ labor intensive. We could do them but they are massive inefficiencies when other options are available.
For better resource utilisation we could go vegan, except for animals exclusively eating grass/hay and waste products. But doing that would increase the price of meat and milk products, while making other foods cheaper and more available.
Sadly we can't have people only eating meat on some days, like in the "good old days", better use up all of earth before handling it of to the next generations.
PS: Sorry, I'm feeling argumentative today.
No, you're good. And that right there is the basis of the problem: costeffectiveness. There is so much more that the world could have, but those that have the money to make things only want to make those things if they can make a certain amount of profit. Making a profit isn't good enough if it isn't a lot of profit.
For example: solar. When I was a kid, all I would hear is how solar is so inefficient that it would be cost prohibitive to power everything off solar. Now it's just a matter of time.
The cheaper options aren't even cheaper, we're just ignoring the cost and subsidizing them. Suppose that a gallon of oil cost how much it took to produce, but also how much it costs to scrub the resulting CO2 from the air, clean up any spills and scrub any CO2 made during production and transport, plus pay the additional medical bills of the people who's health is affected both in production and from the resulting air pollution? That price would be a hell of a lot higher, but we instead just pretend we aren't paying those costs (even though we are and will).
But yeah, the people with the most money and the ones making the laws don't have to pay those costs now. They can just pretend nothing is wrong til they're dead, let someone else hold the bag later.