The other day, I learnt something that has unsettled me more than anything else...
60 years.
That's how much topsoil the world has left, at current usage. Not allowing for population growth, climate change, anything else.
Sixty years that we can keep our level of industrial agriculture, and still be able to feed people.
Never mind humans have wiped out 50% of vertebrate life in the past 40 years, that fisheries around the world are in crisis.
Topsoil is what gives us food. Yes, hydroponics and aquaponics have promise, but how quickly could we adjust? Could we go on?
It won't be a sudden stop, just we'll notice the decline more. We'll squabble, then fight, over the few bits of arable land left...
Then... what?
And yet, we still insist on building suburbs. We still think people are weird for growing food in their gardens, rather than lawn. We stop the rain from getting into the ground, we flush it out to sea via the drains.
We do everything we can to make ourselves extinct.