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What are we going to do when there's no gas and no fertilizer?
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Shindo66 lemmy.world Shindo66@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-02-28
Quote

There's too many people in this world to say "I'm just going to..."

93   Original
the_q piefed.social the_q@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-08-04
#2 · Quote Reply

Complain online.

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LordFireCrotch lemmy.today LordFireCrotch@lemmy.today
Joined: 2026-01-03
#3 · Quote Reply

When are we going to run out of gas and fertilizer?

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Infinite lemmy.zip Infinite@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2023-06-23
#4 · Quote Reply

Everyone's statistical likelihood of starvation will go up a bit.

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dustycups aussie.zone prex@aussie.zone
Joined: 2023-06-27
#5 · Quote Reply

Complain online.

And the stickers, don't forget the stickers

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Ebby lemmy.ssba.com Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
Joined: 2023-07-02
#6 · (edited) Quote Reply

Good news! Soylent Green can solve all three with a bit of processing.

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IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet reddthat.com IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com
Joined: 2026-01-25
#7 · Quote Reply

Hurt each other and steal.

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HootinNHollerin lemmy.dbzer0.com HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-12-08
#8 · Quote Reply

Light shit on fire

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TheCriticalMember aussie.zone TheCriticalMember@aussie.zone
Joined: 2025-02-04
#9 · Quote Reply

I recommend checking out Nate Hagens Youtube channel "The Great Simplification." He's been working on this for years and his videos are brilliant. Here's a few good ones I randomly picked as starting points:

How might daily life feel in the next decades? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlkAeQ5xdeQ

Protect the irreversible - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMfzVhTWMDM

How to play 5D chess - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPctKcmnTvQ

And his most recent one, 4 things we can't afford to get wrong - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONtWQjRa0GY

I know recommending videos sucks, who the hell has half an hour to watch a video suggested by an internet stranger? But this guy is the goods in my opinion, he's worth a listen and I hope at least one person checks him out.

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fullsquare awful.systems fullsquare@awful.systems
Joined: 2025-03-31
#10 · Quote Reply

who is "we"? as of now, there's still oil being extracted and fertilizer being produced, just a bit less of it. if you live in a western country you don't have to worry too much about it, except higher prices of food and everything that gets transported. if you're a subsistence farmer in a place like bangladesh then you're to some degree fucked

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lime! feddit.nu lime@feddit.nu
Joined: 2024-08-21
#11 · Quote Reply

make it from biogas? we can already synthesise basically every oil-based product from non-fossil means, it's just more expensive.

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SubArcticTundra lemmy.ml SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2023-06-03
#12 · (edited) Quote Reply

This. We need to prepare for a world where we will be spending the bulk of our income on basic commodities that are currently still cheap.

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A_norny_mousse piefed.zip A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip
Joined: 2026-02-04
#13 · (edited) Quote Reply

Before it goes down to absolutely nothing, it will have declined for so long that you already know the answer.

Which, unless you use gas and fertilizer directly, will be "shit's getting more expensive" - some of which prohibitively so, and alternative products/solutions will be deployed.

BTW, crops do grow without fertilizer. Which comes from many places btw. May I introduce Western Sahara, a humanitarian and alround ethical desaster not many people talk about.

And gas? You mean for heating or cooling or simply energy? Same answer, basically.

And who is "we"? The fediverse? Some country? The whole world?

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Ludicrous0251 piefed.zip Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip
Joined: 2025-09-11
#14 · Quote Reply

Watch the oceans and waterways heal a little before finding a new way to ruin them.

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mycodesucks lemmy.world mycodesucks@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-03-08
#15 · Quote Reply

Suffer.

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Starya67 lemmy.world starlinguk@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-17
#16 · Quote Reply

There are many ways to fertilise soil and many ways to create energy.

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edinbruh feddit.it edinbruh@feddit.it
Joined: 2023-02-01
#17 · Quote Reply

We can make fuel from air using the Fischer-Tropsch Process. It's basically the "bad guy reaction" that countries use when the world cuts them out of the oil supply. Like Germany during ww2.

But for a more hopeful take. Maybe we will be less reliant on gas. And there's plenty of stuff we can use as fertilizer

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blackberry28 sh.itjust.works blackberry28@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2026-07-29
#18 · Quote Reply

make it from biogas? we can already synthesise basically every oil-based product from non-fossil means, it's just more expensive.

True, but do we have enough biomass to make enough fuel to be independent?

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lime! feddit.nu lime@feddit.nu
Joined: 2024-08-21
#19 · Quote Reply

True, but do we have enough biomass to make enough fuel to be independent?

independent of...?

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DrunkenDuckling lemmus.org DrunkenDuckling@lemmus.org
Joined: 2026-08-12
#20 · Quote Reply

We can make fuel from air using the Fischer-Tropsch Process. It's basically the "bad guy reaction" that countries use when the world cuts them out of the oil supply. Like Germany during ww2. But for a more hopeful take. Maybe we will be less reliant on gas. And there's plenty of stuff we can use as fertilizer

Synthesizing CH-Chains from air is painfully energy-inefficient. Now that we have good electric motors its smarter to use that energy to power them directly.

The poor parts of the world with lacking electrical infrastructure who also couldn't afford ""e-fuels"" to replace gasoline would have a pretty hard transition.

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DrunkenDuckling lemmus.org DrunkenDuckling@lemmus.org
Joined: 2026-08-12
#21 · Quote Reply

make it from biogas? we can already synthesise basically every oil-based product from non-fossil means, it's just more expensive.

Economic viability is extremely significant. It "just" becoming more expensive is often enough to kill it in favor of more viable alternatives.

1
DrunkenDuckling lemmus.org DrunkenDuckling@lemmus.org
Joined: 2026-08-12
#22 · Quote Reply

True, but do we have enough biomass to make enough fuel to be independent?

...?
Why is that a standard if it's not the case for petroleum fuels either?

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NihilsineNefas slrpnk.net NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net
Joined: 2025-06-19
#23 · Quote Reply

independent of...?

Non reliant on fossil fuels, I'm assuming

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stoy lemmy.zip stoy@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2023-10-17
#24 · Quote Reply

Watch the oceans and waterways heal a little before finding a new way to ruin them.

As soon as the war is over we have to stop all international ships that have been stuck there, they will otherwise act as super spreaders for invasive ocean species

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deHaga feddit.uk deHaga@feddit.uk
Joined: 2025-11-30
#25 · Quote Reply

We can make fuel from air using the Fischer-Tropsch Process. It's basically the "bad guy reaction" that countries use when the world cuts them out of the oil supply. Like Germany during ww2. But for a more hopeful take. Maybe we will be less reliant on gas. And there's plenty of stuff we can use as fertilizer

Germany made synthetic fuels from coal during WW2, not air.

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crimson_iris piefed.social crimson_iris@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-31
#26 · Quote Reply

Everyone's statistical likelihood of starvation will go up a bit.
[deleted]
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Fizz lemmy.nz Fizz@lemmy.nz
Joined: 2023-06-12
#27 · Quote Reply

Competition to secure critical resources is one of the major driving factors in conflict. So we will probably a lot more wars breaking out and some borders shifting. Especially with the cost of war being lower than ever.

Governments around the world will need to increase taxes and borrow then spend to keep people employed and afloat. A lot of places were in a bad spot before so idk what they'll do. Im not enjoying living in such interesting times thats for sure.

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lime! feddit.nu lime@feddit.nu
Joined: 2024-08-21
#28 · Quote Reply

Non reliant on fossil fuels, I'm assuming

weird question then; it's all biomass

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lime! feddit.nu lime@feddit.nu
Joined: 2024-08-21
#29 · Quote Reply

Economic viability is extremely significant. It "just" becoming more expensive is often enough to kill it in favor of more viable alternatives.

well then, let's keep going with the fossil fuel taxes.

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graphito sopuli.xyz graphito@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2023-06-08
#30 · Quote Reply

So all the stuff that comes out from the butt? With so many giant assholes in the government we clearly don't need to worry about that 😅

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anon_8675309 lemmy.world anon_8675309@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-09-01
#31 · Quote Reply

Starve

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surewhynotlem lemmy.world surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-13
#32 · Quote Reply

Synthesizing CH-Chains from air is painfully energy-inefficient. Now that we have good electric motors its smarter to use that energy to power them directly. The poor parts of the world with lacking electrical infrastructure who also couldn't afford ""e-fuels"" to replace gasoline would have a pretty hard transition.

What we lack is the rare earth minerals for electricity storage. We're going to have to war a bit for those.

1
Fleur_ aussie.zone Fleur_@aussie.zone
Joined: 2025-04-23
#33 · (edited) Quote Reply

Might have to go vegan and reduce the amount of resources needed to support a person to a sustainable level. Scary stuff

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Beth piefed.social Beth@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-13
#34 · (edited) Quote Reply

Probably gonna be a lot of days where I warm rooms with the space heaters rather than run the boiler looking at the cost of fuel. Tbh the super El Niño might be a blessing in disguise for many folks in colder climates this year. Drive a lot less (my kind admin transferred me to 3 minutes from my house) and cut down on non-essentials. Teaching the kids about waste, eating all our leftovers, etc.

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melfie lemmy.zip melfie@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-03-24
#35 · Quote Reply

Matt Damon found a way to make fertilizer on Mars.

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Pencilnoob lemmy.world Pencilnoob@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-13
#36 · Quote Reply

There's not such a massive difference between where we are now and where we need to be to disconnect from fossil fuels

  • More meals will be vegetarian
  • Food selection will be more seasonal and local
  • More people will work from home or take public transit or bike
  • More people will have kitchen gardens
  • More farmers will use permaculture techniques to reduce input fertilizer needs
  • More humanure will be collected and used as fertilizer
  • More solar panels will produce more power for home heat pumps to keep buildings comfortable
  • More farmers will have electric tractors and farm batteries
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MangoCats feddit.it MangoCats@feddit.it
Joined: 2025-02-05
#37 · Quote Reply

Matt Damon found a way to make fertilizer on Mars.

Was going to say: methane and fertilizer both semi-abundant from natural sources, just need to scale back the industrial over-use of them.

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argarath lemmy.world argarath@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-10-25
#38 · Quote Reply

Probably gonna be a lot of days where I warm rooms with the space heaters rather than run the boiler looking at the cost of fuel. Tbh the super El Niño might be a blessing in disguise for many folks in colder climates this year. Drive a lot less (my kind admin transferred me to 3 minutes from my house) and cut down on non-essentials. Teaching the kids about waste, eating all our leftovers, etc.

Don't be so sure of the heat from the el niño keeping y'all warm during winter. It destabilizes the jet streams around the poles and that makes the super cold air from the poles advance much further south than usual, with huge shifts on temperature when they quickly pass over the land. This last winter in the southern hemisphere had a lot of cold fronts that broke records, with heat waves jumping in between, making it hell for those living there (ask me how I know)

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Simulation6 sopuli.xyz Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2023-06-29
#39 · Quote Reply

The amount of excess food will go way down and the price will go up, which will mostly affect third world countries. A lot of people will starve at the beginning.
Couple this with clean water scarcity that will exasperate diseases and the human population will drop toward sustainable numbers.

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MangoCats feddit.it MangoCats@feddit.it
Joined: 2025-02-05
#40 · Quote Reply

The amount of excess food will go way down and the price will go up, which will mostly affect third world countries. A lot of people will starve at the beginning. Couple this with clean water scarcity that will exasperate diseases and the human population will drop toward sustainable numbers.

Then Sally Struthers will ask you to donate "the price of a daily cup of coffee" and 1/1000 people will start giving $2000 per year to feed the hungry...

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newton feddit.online newton@feddit.online
Joined: 2026-04-12
#41 · Quote Reply

Beans, start talking about beans

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GreyEyedGhost piefed.ca GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
Joined: 2025-11-30
#42 · (edited) Quote Reply

What we lack is the rare earth minerals for electricity storage. We're going to have to war a bit for those.

Sodium-ion batteries use either no or much less rare earth metals and are particularly suited to stationary energy storage.

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orioler25 lemmy.world orioler25@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-10-19
#43 · Quote Reply

The amount of excess food will go way down and the price will go up, which will mostly affect third world countries. A lot of people will starve at the beginning. Couple this with clean water scarcity that will exasperate diseases and the human population will drop toward sustainable numbers.

Now, you're trying to say that's what would happen should there be this massive shortage (there is, but typically people online don't explore the failsafes and contingencies that are at our disposal), or are you straight up trying to naturalize an ecofascist futurity here?

0
Beth piefed.social Beth@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-13
#44 · Quote Reply

Don't be so sure of the heat from the el niño keeping y'all warm during winter. It destabilizes the jet streams around the poles and that makes the super cold air from the poles advance much further south than usual, with huge shifts on temperature when they quickly pass over the land. This last winter in the southern hemisphere had a lot of cold fronts that broke records, with heat waves jumpi...

Yeah I’m more or less crossing my fingers. But i know I’ll be coughing up an entire paycheck in reality. Personally I can eat it but I know a lot of people in my area cannot.

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Simulation6 sopuli.xyz Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2023-06-29
#45 · Quote Reply

Now, you're trying to say that's what would happen should there be this massive shortage (there is, but typically people online don't explore the failsafes and contingencies that are at our disposal), or are you straight up trying to naturalize an ecofascist futurity here?

I don't fully understand your question, but I did not consider mitigating actions and stated a possible worst case. Fossil fuel based fertilizer is not the only game in town, but it is the cheapest. EVs are already starting to replace ICE cars in many places. Renewable energy production grows every year, even of it is impacted by a drop in hydro. It does not have to be a bleak future.
I am not sure how the lack of fresh water can be avoided, but there many be some new processes for desalination I don't know about.

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orioler25 lemmy.world orioler25@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-10-19
#46 · (edited) Quote Reply

I don't fully understand your question, but I did not consider mitigating actions and stated a possible worst case. Fossil fuel based fertilizer is not the only game in town, but it is the cheapest. EVs are already starting to replace ICE cars in many places. Renewable energy production grows every year, even of it is impacted by a drop in hydro. It does not have to be a bleak future. I am not ...

I was asking if you understood that this narrative is harmful if accepted uncritically. That you considered technology solutions exclusively is a great indicator that this may be the case. We have technology solutions to this now, that isn't why it isn't fixed. Your comment reproduces a narrative that suffering in the global south is inevitable because of climate change, and not another avoidable, unnecessary act of genocide by this colonial, capitalist system. It is the social and material relations of this system that perpetrates that violence, not technological deficiencies.

When we just accept that there is no avoiding or mitigating events like, "a lot of people" starving in colonized spaces, and then promote technological utopianism as a solution (even if inadvertently by only imagining tech as a solution), we are naturalizing the root cause of this violence, which is colonialism. Doesn't seem like you intended it, but this is also a markedly ecofascist narrative in the way that the inevitability of that death also means that it is a prescribed trajectory for this system to take to "improvement," much in the same way that fascists precribe the removal (genocide) of an arbitrary group of people in the metropole (US or EU) as a solution to inequities there.

Edit: and of course, Lemmy libs get mad if I tell them they don't have to subscribe to fascist ideas if they don't want to.

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Simulation6 sopuli.xyz Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2023-06-29
#47 · Quote Reply

I was asking if you understood that this narrative is harmful if accepted uncritically. That you considered technology solutions exclusively is a great indicator that this may be the case. We have technology solutions to this now, that isn't why it isn't fixed. Your comment reproduces a narrative that suffering in the global south is inevitable because of climate change, and not another avoidab...

Please stop gatekeeping and putting words in my mouth

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orioler25 lemmy.world orioler25@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-10-19
#48 · Quote Reply

Please stop gatekeeping and putting words in my mouth

I'm not doing either of those things (I'm not even sure what I could be gatekeeping here, political philosophy?). Your words carried this meaning whether you wanted them to or not, which is why I carefully explained how that meaning relates to the specific ideas you promoted. If you do not want them to carry this meaning, just take the time to interrogate how you arrived at this understanding and how it relates to your understanding of other things in the future.

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ThisUsernameKillsFascists piefed.social ThisUsernameKillsFascists@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-02-02
#49 · (edited) Quote Reply

I'm not doing either of those things (I'm not even sure what I could be gatekeeping here, political philosophy?). Your words carried this meaning whether you wanted them to or not, which is why I carefully explained how that meaning relates to the specific ideas you promoted. If you do not want them to carry this meaning, just take the time to interrogate how you arrived at this understanding a...

You clearly took their prediction of the likely outcome (given the world we do live in and the obviously shitty priorities of the powers that be) as an endorsement or acceptance of that outcome, when they did not say anything to indicate that they found it at all acceptable. While your overall points about the options that we as humans have are valid, your positioning of this poster’s values in opposition to your own is baseless and unwarranted. Pessimism about humanity’s ability to successfully mitigate or overcome the problems of our own making is not the same as saying we shouldn’t try. For example, even the most ardent advocates of ending fossil fuel usage understand that in the past 50 years we have done far more to exacerbate climate change than to mitigate its effects, let alone reverse the damage already done. Predicting the most likely outcome of a situation is not at all the same as saying that nothing better than that outcome is possible.

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orioler25 lemmy.world orioler25@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-10-19
#50 · (edited) Quote Reply

You clearly took their prediction of the likely outcome (given the world we do live in and the obviously shitty priorities of the powers that be) as an endorsement or acceptance of that outcome, when they did not say anything to indicate that they found it at all acceptable. While your overall points about the options that we as humans have are valid, your positioning of this poster’s values in...

"When we just accept that there is no avoiding or mitigating events like, “a lot of people” starving in colonized spaces, and then promote technological utopianism as a solution (even if inadvertently by only imagining tech as a solution), we are naturalizing the root cause of this violence, which is colonialism. Doesn’t seem like you intended it, but this is also a markedly ecofascist narrative in the way that the inevitability of that death also means that it is a prescribed trajectory for this system to take to “improvement,” much in the same way that fascists precribe the removal (genocide) of an arbitrary group of people in the metropole (US or EU) as a solution to inequities there."

Right, could you point out where I said OP holds these values or endorsed them?

Even more, it is very difficult to read this as something other than purposefully distortive. In what way is criticizing ecofascist narratives a refusal to recognize the material conditions of climate change? You have a name about killing fascists, and yet cannot seperate socially constructed values from material relations, or individuals' desired moral values? You'll note that my first comment asked the commenter to also clarify if they did indeed mean to say that this is what they think would happen in a hypothetical where, despite reality, all gasoline and fertilizer disappeared. I did that to avoid exactly this kind of reading, since liberals so often subscribe to fascist values without realizing it due exactly to their refusal to interrogate their own understanding of things without fear that internalized values reflect their quality of character or, "moral purity."

As always, scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds.

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Rivalarrival lemmy.today Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
Joined: 2023-06-11
#51 · Quote Reply

[deleted]

Corporations are people. Billionaires aren't people.

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