Why should we have to change what we eat? Surely taking that choice away takes away part of what we are, reduces our autonomy.
Why switch to seaweed when we can already produce what we already know we want?
Here in Sweden we eat fermented fish. Other countries eat ferment cabbage, beans, goat stomachs, or other fermented things which in my culture we would be weird to eat. I think fermented seaweed is also a thing somewhere.
There are things that could force a culture change, such as famine, war, social status signals, media, and religion to mention a few examples. Humans are social creatures, and culture is a social phenomenon, so the cause for a cultural change would likely be social in nature. I guess a societal collapse could also trigger a change in culture, or a cultural change could prevent a societal collapse. I guess it depend on how one want to perceive it, and what meaning people put into the word "societal collapse".
One-third of the world's exports of chilis, tomatoes, and cucumbers goes through the country. The Netherlands also exports one-fifteenth of the world's apples.
Aside from that, a significant portion of Dutch agricultural exports consists of fresh-cut plants, flowers, and flower bulbs, with the Netherlands exporting two-thirds of the world's total.
That's basically what you're alluding to with the seaweed and food thing.
Cultural and ideological hangups will go right out the window in a hurry when there's a real crisis and a culturally incompatible solution. People aren't gonna let things truly go to shit over something as trivial as what they eat or where their water comes from.
The primary danger in the first world as I see it is from the moneyed and empowered people F-ing it over for large enough other groups to cause probems. Doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine how climate change might F-over downstate Illinois (because farms) but Chicago won't let them do anything about it because they hold all the cards and they make their money a different way. They'd probably figure it out eventually but with how unequal our society is I'm not gonna bet money on eventually happening before the shooting starts.
I actually can't envision what you mean by "Chicago won't let them do anything about it". Isn't Chicago the more liberal area that wants to fight climate change?
>Isn't Chicago the more liberal area that wants to fight climate change?
Right up until you have to take some other controversial step in order to do it.
I'm sure you can imagine how things would go if downstate farmers wanted to all apply some sort of fertilizer that would make their farming economically viable but the beta and the v1 versions of the chemical also killed some sort of visible wildlife.
It sounds like you're referring to herbicides and pesticides that kill bees and other pollinators. People have an obvious problem with pesticides that kill bees. It's not an acceptable level of collateral damage for dirt cheap corn and soybeans.
How about a desalination plant now? Even nuclear?
The water system has a storage capacity of 550 billion US gallons (2.1×109 m3) and provides over 1.2 billion US gallons (4,500,000 m3) per day of drinking water to more than eight million city residents, and another one million users in four upstate counties bordering on the system. Three separate sub-systems, each consisting of aqueducts and reservoirs, bring water from Upstate New York to New York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...
My idea is that a real need makes people reconsider their opinions which they held dear as long as they did not have a skin in the game.
It is an interesting question if a new world war is more likely than a major cultural change in our diet.
If traditional food sources go away and technology provides an alternative food source, that is what people will eat. Culture will follow technology, if that's what people have to do to survive.
EDIT:That mostly applies to the population in the developed world with access to capital, technology and industrial resources that we can use to adapt our food supply. Not everywhere in the world has those resources to fall back on though.
Societal collapse in for example India or Brazil would make things awkward real fast for a large chunk of the world
The military does not even play a role here. All the poorer countries need to do is a) not prevent their own young people from leaving, b) not prevent activity of smuggler gangs, c) complicate deportations by refusing to issue passports to their citizens who destroyed their papers underway. None of those actions need guns, much less superior guns.
[0] ... India and Brazil aren't really in the "top population growth" league. Look up population pyramids of Niger, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Yemen. Those graphs promise future mass migration streams. (https://www.populationpyramid.net)
[1] ... https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Your parent was suggesting that the developed world could not deal with a collapse of India or Brazil or several populous African countries.
What would happen if 20% of India decided that their society has collapsed and they should migrate at any cost to some developed country?
Perhaps seaweed could be used to produce something equivalent to tortillas or bread?
That's not fixing, that's a band aid, and an ugly one at that.
"Let's just eat worms, algae, problem fixed".
It's easy. It will happen. The only question is if it will take ten years or twenty.
Ten years ago? I'll still say it now and in 50 years.
In Toronto there is a decades-long established vegan restaurant called Buddha's Vegetarian Restaurant. They make a lot of mock meat products that are as realistic as the Impossible Burger, by layering and preparing things in such a way that they end up resembling meat fiber. You can easily fool yourself into thinking you are eating pulled pork there, for example.
So realistic vegetarian/vegan meat products have actually been around quite a while. Just not in the mainstream.
Where I'm at, I do the mediterranean diet, like most people (with a little more meat and BS snacks thrown in following the cultural example of the US, but still, nothing like the S.A.D.).
I'll also mention that most staple plants, legumes, etc. on that diet is cheaper in the US than here, where wages are double and more in the US. So price is not an excuse for Americans not to eat similarly.
People who want to eat "less processed food" can start eating less processed food. Highly processed, lab grown "meat" is hardly the way to eat "less processed food".
But I do agree with you on this "ah well, we'll just..." sunshiny outlook we keep hearing.
This year they've really been pushing edible "tree shrimp" cicadas. This is the first time I've heard that they were edible, and suddenly I'm hearing about it several times a week.
Similar, fresh water is primarily a cost issue. Right now the only economical method to provide water at the lowest cost is to take naturally occurring fresh water. There are alternatives. It does not take a lot of solar, wind or nuclear power plants to supply a large city population with fresh water extracted from the ocean. The construction and operational costs would however be need to be taken from something else, reducing welfare and industrial output.