"For most of mankind...nature has been, and remains, scarcity,
disease and natural — note the adjective — disasters. Our flourishing
requires affordable, abundant energy for the production of everything
from food to pharmaceuticals.
"Poverty has probably decreased
more in the past two centuries than in the preceding three millennia
because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic
growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth
bega
n in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels.
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| photo credit: blogs.scientificamerican.com |
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"Matt Ridley, author of “The Rational Optimist,” notes that coal
supplanting wood fuel reversed deforestation, and that “fertilizer
manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a
given amount of food.”...capitalist commerce...is the reason the portion
of the planet’s population living in “absolute poverty” ($1.25 a day)
declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981. Even
in low-income countries, writes economist Indur Goklany, life
expectancy increased from between 25 to 30 years in 1900 to 62 years
today. Sixty-three percent of fibers are synthetic and derived from
fossil fuels; of the rest, 79 percent come from cotton, which requires
synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. “Synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides derived from fossil fuels,” he says, “are responsible for at
least 60 percent of today’s global food supply.” Without fossil fuels,
he says, global cropland would have to increase at least 150 percent —
equal to the combined land areas of South America and the European Union
— to meet current food demands," George Will.
Extended quote taken from this article:
"Pope Francis Fact-free Flamboyance"
