China, Pursuing Strategic Interests, Builds Presence in Antarctica

“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”

.. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.

.. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years.

 

A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development

To mitigate climate change, spare nature and address global poverty requires nothing less, they argue, than “intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world.”

As Mr. Shellenberger put it, the world would have a better shot at saving nature “by decoupling from nature rather than coupling with it.”

.. Big Agriculture, using synthetic fertilizers and modern production techniques, could feed many more people using much less land and water.

The Economics of California’s Drought

California is the world’s fifth-largest supplier of food, a big reason why the state would, if an independent country, be the 7th largest economy in the world.

.. Irrigation claims up to 41 percent of the state’s water supply, while cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco demand comparatively little. Crops such as almonds, grown exclusively in California in the United States, consume 600 gallons of water per pound of nuts, more than 25 times the water needed per pound of tomato. These water-intensive crops tend to have high profit margins, providing farmers with an incentive to plant them.