It pretty much all tipped back in the Industrial Revolution, and tipped much farther when nitrogen fertilizer began to be made directly from petroleum. At least if we care about original causes more than downstream effects.
You’re right. I made a pretty ridiculous error of laziness writing “directly” when what I ought to have said was more along the lines of indirectly, essentially, etc. As far as I understand it, agriculture at its current scale requires a level of nitrogen input (via ammonia) that can only be supplied by the Haber process, which requires an amount of energy that we have no hope of generating by entirely renewable and sustainable means.
It pretty much all tipped back in the Industrial Revolution, and tipped much farther when nitrogen fertilizer began to be made directly from petroleum. At least if we care about original causes more than downstream effects.
Fertilizer is not made from petroleum.
You’re right. I made a pretty ridiculous error of laziness writing “directly” when what I ought to have said was more along the lines of indirectly, essentially, etc. As far as I understand it, agriculture at its current scale requires a level of nitrogen input (via ammonia) that can only be supplied by the Haber process, which requires an amount of energy that we have no hope of generating by entirely renewable and sustainable means.
If you mean that there too many people on earth, you are wrong. We just use the resources unwisely. 62% of earths biomass is livestock.
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
99.9% of earths biomass is either humans, our livestock, or our pets. We are beyond fucked when the collapse starts.