[extropy-chat] A Grim Vision ...?

[Robert Bradbury]

On 4/9/07, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> Virtually all of Saudi Arabia's food is imported, swapped for oil.  Anyone
> have an idea of how many that part of the world could support without food
> imports?


It depends upon whether they invested in desalination plants to grow fresh
water crops or invested in solar ponds to grow fish, shrimp, etc. in salt
water.  It isn't as if they *lack* sufficient sunlight to feed themselves.
Indeed it is one of the world's richest countries in this respect.  See [1].

I suspect that the reason there is so much unemployment is that the
government simply has not adopted policies reflective of dealing with the
situation when the oil runs out.  It isn't like they couldn't afford to
build the plants or the ponds -- but I think the culture is set up such that
that work would be done by workers imported from poorer countries.

Robert

1. http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/Papers/SW.html<http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/%7Ebradbury/Papers/SW.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070410/9b324872/attachment.html>