The industrial agriculture that supports our current population is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
At some point humanity is going to have to face life without fossil fuels, whether that be by a far too late attempt at curbing climate change, or due to climate change/water shortage related reductions in population that reduce production, or just due to dwindling EROI as we have to drill in more difficult places to keep the oil pumping.
A study in the research journal Nature Geosciences concluded that fertilizer made from synthetic nitrogen and ammonia was responsible for feeding more than 50 percent of the global population in 2008 (Kinder Morgan, 2020).
Here’s that study: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/wps/cato/0028024/f_0028024_22818.pdf
Seems pretty clear that if the use of a finite resource is the only way we can sustain the population - we’re overpopulated. Not to mention that said finite resource is also actively killing us and making agriculture more difficult due to extreme weather.
You have a reasonable argument, but then the solution should be to stop all fossil fuel consumption except for the production of life-sustaining products, like food.
According to this link, food production accounts for only 26% of total carbon output. There we go, problem solved. We can cut total carbon output by 74% and still produce the same amount of food.
I didn’t say there was a solution. Stopping fossil fuels, along with plummeting quality of life, means less global dimming, which would accelerate our impending BOE, and the loss of albedo from that would further accelerate warming. We’re way past any possibility of a solution.
