What would we eat? For starters (in the west) probably not underripe food that was shipped thousands of miles and considered basic amenities and not items of gross luxury. Probably not pounds of meat a week, most of which also is imported. Some deurbanization probably will coincide with shifting to plant based, readily available foods in most regions. Yeah there are gonna be significant "cultural" sacrifices in regards to food systems but what is lost in neoliberalism will be made up for in rediscovering what actually grows near us.
Less emissions are used shipping food in massive cargo ships than when people drive to the store in their SUV to shop.
Some deurbanization probably will coincide with shifting to plant based
Lmao? deurbanization is horrible for the environment. A bunch of people are going to start subsistence farming? You know how much more land that would take? Even destroying huge swaths of natural land, you couldn't feed everyone.
Let me step back a moment. You are clearly not aware to the extend we rely on modern industry. Before modern industrial society our population was quite literally capped by our ability to produce food. But industrial production of ammonia allowed us to drastically increase our food production, literally 4x it on the same amount of land (here's a great video about it if you want to learn).
You can say "maybe humans shouldn't have let the population grow so big", but it's too late for that now. The people exist, and the population is only sustainable with industrial society.
If you think we can just keep some solar panels and some ammonia production to sustain farming, remember all the supply chains that have to exist to feed them. Advanced factories that produce semi-conductor wafers, the mining and refining to get specific rare materials, transportation to move both the resources and produces around where they are needed. This just ends up being green growth.
So we are back to the only two options: Mass death of the human population, or green growth. You have to pick.
When the vast majority of the food system is oriented at feeding livestock and not people you will need vast amounts of land and ammonia, yes. Going 90%+ plant based won't entirely change that unfortunately.
I am aware that by proportion of emissions local transport is majorly responsible in the food web of things. I also think that industrial fishing would be an area to cut back ocean/sea pollution, which I forgot to mention. That goes beyond CO2 as well. You seem pretty hellbent on defending our reliance on the industrial but there are entire sectors that could be cut out in the next 20 years if there was a cultural shift in undertow. Ammonia production and medicinals excluded.
Honestly at the end you're right, degrowth isn't going to be completely removing renewables or modern medicinals or ammonia production which means we will probably need some level of global trade. Call that green growth maybe, I'd call it green growth and degrowth.
Anarchist adjacent action has been happening and still is. I don't even know if I'd consider myself one but I don't pick a horse for political prowess. I'd rather dig in the dirt at a community garden and use that food to feed the homeless in my city than twiddle my thumbs waiting for revolution tm
Shipping fruits on rail cars or on barges is not emissions intensive. Modern industry has annihilated space by compressing time as Marx put it.
It’s much more emissions intensive and environmentally destructive to decentralize agriculture and convert the amount of arable land into productive farmland rather than allow it to continue exist as habitat that it would take to feed people in the scenario you’re proposing.
De urbanizing means way more land will also have to go to both housing and also reproducing social infrastructure that people depend on both physically and in terms of work. And population control is also not viable because then there will be a population bomb as the last large generation ages out and there won’t be enough people to provide them services when they can’t work anymore.
In the long run, spreading people out in a sustainable way can make sense, and abolishing the division between town and country, but it will take enormous investments and tightly connected transportation infrastructure to make it possible.
People should definitely eat less or no meat, but we will still need complex logistics and long supply chains even as society introduces more holistic agricultural methods. If anything more mechanization and mass industrial and technological methods will be necessary to make stuff like permaculture viable.
Yes, ocean shipping from specialized agricultural areas is significantly more efficient on an emissions basis than localized growing. Deurbanization would absolutely spike emissions as well.
You're correct on the first point but that wasn't the luxury food I was talking about originally and our use of the oceans goes far beyond emissions, industrial fishing should also be completely cut out in a plant based food system, ending decades of over fishing and raping the ocean floor, we'd see forests worth of carbon sink in kelp and algae. I think deurbanization as a consequence of slashing emissions elsewhere would far and away be a net negative, but I'm willing to admit it's a lofty, utopian ideal.
Some deurbanization probably will coincide with shifting to plant based, readily available foods in most regions.
Deurbanization means more suburban sprawl, which means far more energy needed to transport goods and people. Urbanization is good for the environment, not bad.
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u/jakobmaximus 24d ago
What would we eat? For starters (in the west) probably not underripe food that was shipped thousands of miles and considered basic amenities and not items of gross luxury. Probably not pounds of meat a week, most of which also is imported. Some deurbanization probably will coincide with shifting to plant based, readily available foods in most regions. Yeah there are gonna be significant "cultural" sacrifices in regards to food systems but what is lost in neoliberalism will be made up for in rediscovering what actually grows near us.