MCT Campus
As the world continues to house billions of humans, resources are becoming more scarce and our current abundance of food will likely be an extinct luxury by 2050.
According to a study by the Stockholm International Water Institute released at the annual world water week in Stockholm, water used for crops and produce will not be available if the cur- rent trends of the westernized food industry continue.
The world population is ex-pected to reach 9 billion by the year 2050, compared to the 6 billion people recorded in March 2012 by the United Nations Population Division Department.
As the water deficit progresses throughout the years, the new re- port published by SIWI claims re- solving the issue means cutting the current 20 percent intake of ani-
mal-based produce by 5 percent. “Personally, I don’t have any- thing against people that eat meat, it is just a personal choice,” nutri- tion senior Cynthia Twain said. “But once it affects the environ- ment; that is when I start worry- ing about people’s selfishness just because they like meat; we all live in the same planet afterall.” According to the institute’s re- port, as a consequence of excessive water consumption, there will not be enough water to feed and sus- tain animals, making meat-eating a luxury.
The idea that we are reaching a population crisis, that is as a species humans are overpopulating the planet, is becoming an increasingly held opinion. This would appear not to take into account that global population limits are dictated in large part by our social behaviour. Our world population has grown more since 1950 than it has in the previous four million years.
We must begin to understand the carrying capacity of our planet, but we also need to start making decisions about how we function as a society. The population limit for a society that is focused on an economy of infinite growth and one that is concerned with an intelligent systems approach to providing a high standard of living for our entire human family coupled with biosphere sustainability is two completely different things.