Feeding Everyone No Matter What
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

'' Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe'' is a 2014 book by David Denkenberger and Joshua M. Pearce and published by
Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as '' The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', ...
under their
Academic Press Academic Press (AP) is an academic book publisher founded in 1941. It was acquired by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1969. Reed Elsevier bought Harcourt in 2000, and Academic Press is now an imprint of Elsevier. Academic Press publishes referen ...
. The book analyzed five crop-destroying catastrophes (sudden climate change, super-weeds, super-bacteria, super-pests and super-pathogens) and three sunlight-extinguishing events ( supervolcano eruption, asteroid or comet impact, and nuclear winter).
Danny Messinger. "Bacterial slime may be survivalist solution to catastrophic crop failure." Phys.org, Nov 20, 2014
The book proposes more than 10 solutions for providing the global food supply, according to ''Discovery News''. The study that is the foundation of the book involves interdisciplinarity and gives instructions for the
survivalism Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order (that is, civil disor ...
movement. ''Feeding Everyone No Matter What'' has been covered extensively by the international media.
- Jennifer Viegas. "10 Foods You Could Eat After a Global Catastrophe." Seeker, Nov 20, 2014
Io9 ''io9'' is part of Gizmodo media since 2015, and it began as blog launched in 2008 by Gawker Media. The site initially focused on the subjects of science fiction, fantasy, futurism, science, technology and related areas but over the years has ...
writes that it takes into account potential realistic scenarios, such as crop blights and nuclear winter. Seeker covered some of the foods recommended for a catastrophe. Michigan Tech News interviewed author Joshua Pearce on the solutions presented in the book. ''Feeding Everyone No Matter What'' is also known by organizations working on the prevention of Global Catastrophic Risks.
Future of Life Institute The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization that works to reduce global catastrophic and existential risks facing humanity, particularly existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The Institute's work is mad ...
published an article by author Dave Denkenberger and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk published his lecture on the book. The book was used as a resource in the
Global Challenges Foundation The Global Challenges Foundation is a Swedish non-profit organization that seeks to raise awareness of global catastrophic risk and the global governance necessary to handle these risks. This includes examining models for UN reform, as well as i ...
Annual Report on Global Risks. ''Feeding Everyone No Matter What'' proposes a fall-back plan for the worst catastrophes such as a supervolcano erupting. It outlines the cost-effectiveness of alternative foods for disaster preparedness. ''
Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
'', goes over the book's plan for feeding everyone in the case of the sun being blocked. Alternative foods can be developed to respond to agriculturally damaging catastrophes all over the world. The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute sees this as one piece of the assessing and preparing for global catastrophic risks.


Claims

The authors, David Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce, claim alternate food sources could feed everyone even if the sun is blocked by a catastrophe such as
nuclear winter Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into t ...
, supervolcano eruption, or large asteroid/
comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
impact. The book focuses on what is technically possible and assumes global cooperation. The solutions also address crises including
abrupt climate change An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition at a rate that is determined by the climate system energy-balance, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing, though it may include sud ...
, super weeds, super crop pests (animals, e.g.
insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...
), super
bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...
(e.g. disrupts beneficial bacteria) and super crop
pathogen In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
s.
Ruminant Ruminants (suborder Ruminantia) are hoofed herbivorous grazing or browsing mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions. The ...
s and other grazers can digest dietary fiber, but do not have enough offspring to feed everyone within five years. As a backup plan, it is even possible that humans could eat predigested biomass. In a sun-obscuring crisis, stored food would last the human population less than one year. The book shows how many of these solutions can be ramped up in less than one year. This book also addresses other issues, including
energy supply Energy supply is the delivery of fuels or transformed fuels to point of consumption. It potentially encompasses the extraction, transmission, generation, distribution and storage of fuels. It is also sometimes called energy flow. This supply o ...
,
water supply Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. Thes ...
,
forest products A forest product is any material derived from forestry for direct consumption or commercial use, such as lumber, paper, or fodder for livestock. Wood, by far the dominant product of forests, is used for many purposes, such as wood fuel (e.g. in f ...
,
human nutrition Human nutrition deals with the provision of essential nutrients in food that are necessary to support human life and good health. Poor nutrition is a chronic problem often linked to poverty, food security, or a poor understanding of nutritiona ...
, and preserving endangered species. Furthermore, the book gives instructions for the
prepper Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order (that is, civil disord ...
movement.


Criticisms

The authors themselves admitted a potential
moral hazard In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk. For example, when a corporation is insured, it may take on higher risk ...
with publishing the solutions, as for example Mikhail Gorbachev would explicitly state that a motivating factor for reducing the nuclear arsenal of the
USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
was the concept of nuclear winter; However, despite the popularity of the concept of "nuclear winter", there is a clear and present threat of anthropogenic abrupt climate change and the results of efforts to prevent
global climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
have been ineffective. In their analysis, Denkenberger and Pearce argue that the benefits of a food solution backup plan would reduce overall harm to humanity in the global catastrophes over which control is possible and could reduce the damages associated with catastrophes over which humanity has very little or no control (e.g. supervolcanoes).Denkenberger, D. C., & Pearce, J. M. (2014)
Feeding Everyone: Solving the Food Crisis in Event of Global Catastrophes that Kill Crops or Obscure the Sun
''Futures''.


See also

*
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
*
Food security Food security speaks to the availability of food in a country (or geography) and the ability of individuals within that country (geography) to access, afford, and source adequate foodstuffs. According to the United Nations' Committee on World ...
*
Food systems The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growi ...
*
Global catastrophic risk A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanen ...
*
Survivalism Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order (that is, civil disor ...


References

{{reflist, 30em


External links


Feeding Everyone No Matter What
on Appropedia. 2014 non-fiction books Elsevier books Books about food and drink Disaster books