Two to three billion people would starve to death without synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. So far, natural gas is the best way we have of making them as cheaply as possible. Alternative sources of hydrogen don’t even come close.
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If only there was an otherwise free and plentiful alternative source of nitrogen-rich fertilizer…
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I didn’t disagree with that. I’m just saying that we’ll see how much those same nitrogen fertilizers help when the land they’re being used on isn’t arable any more. Like, we are actually at the beginning of starting to see, thanks to those same fossil fuel companies you are crediting.
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We’re not saying that the source of this CO2 is in any way nice. We just acknowledge that we’re currently utterly dependent upon it for some very basic needs.
And yes, one side effect of switching over to a sustainable source of artificial fertiliser will be that there’s no longer a handy source of purified CO2 that we can use in fizzy drinks and other food processing uses. Expensive fizz is still relatively cheap when we’re getting a habitable planet in exchange.
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I’m doing my part by only drinking bottle-conditioned beer.
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And I’m not saying we’re not currently dependent on them, just that it’s not really “keeping people alive” if you’re also killing them through other means.
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Supermarkets running out of soft drinks due to carbon dioxide shortage, possible crisis on the horizon
…Doctors notice drop in diabetes diagnoses.
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I mean, if they branded some as Evil Coke i would buy it at least once
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But at least the agricultural companies are furiously adopting other sources of nitrogen-rich fertilizer in order to mitigate the ongoing degradation…I can’t even keep it going. No, they aren’t doing any such thing.
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Breathing probably has more of an impact than burping.
Yeah, vaunting the value of these fertilizers is def one of those, “in the broken system we have, this works okay,” situations.
People are still starving, though we waste tons and tons of food. We’re degrading our arable land. And if we charged the true cost of beef (as one example) a lot of people would eat a lot less meat and a lot more beans. Which would also be good for food production.
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Less good for the human CO2 emissions, though… 
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… another way of saying “an industry that’s holding a quarter of the world’s population hostage” 
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Maybe we should pay incentives for chewing your food.
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We can’t even make soda; but carbon capture is possible?
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The last one was simply ghastly; there was no tonic water to be found. For days at a stretch. Days. 
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The problem there is methane, which is a much worse greenhouse gas…
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I didn’t see it mentioned in the link article, but for recent shortages of food-grade CO2 in NZ was primarily due to the only large-scale producer of appropriate CO2 in NZ being closed.
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