If you feed 60% of the world’s grain to livestock, this increases demand, which increases cost. In many countries the breadwinner (typically male) eats first; women and children later. If your breadwinner doesn’t eat, nobody eats (leaving aside the fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger, but that’s another…

Why not? Is this because you can’t refute the argument?

If mass starvation and conflicts over food, water and arable land are not a serious problem, then no, it’s not a serious problem.

Feeding grain to livestock is an aspect of poor food distribution. It’s a process that, in terms of protein, is less than 10% efficient. This increases demand, which increases prices. It’s not the only factor involved - far from it - but it’s certainly one of them.

Trolling. Many women, especially poor women, are not in control of their own fertility. Women get raped. Many, many poor women have no access to contraception at all.

As I say, 60% of the world’s grain is fed to livestock. Yes, for many people distribution is an issue, but there have already been food riots related to the cost of grain, so to dismiss it as merely a distribution problem is doing no more than make excuses for your own profligacy.

It’s an issue, but modern designs tend to address that question. More to the point is that there are relatively few places with adequate tidal races, at least in terms of the scale needed.

You really have no clue what it’s like to be poor, have you?

After a while you find yourself repeating yourself in the same way you have to to climate change deniers. This information is well known, and I, for one, am sick of repeating myself.

Leaving aside the fact that there are people in the US going hungry, grain is a global commodity, and there are billions of people going hungry around the world among other factors because 60% of the world’s grain and 90% of the world’s soya is fed to livestock.

Oh, dear. Another technofixer who hasn’t thought it through.

Tidal power has been around for a while. The problem is that there are so many other demands for energy. So no, it’s not really a solution on the kind of scale we need it to be.

(totes worth it in my opinion - I could never be a vegetarian).

This is a point that people keep forgetting when they rave about the “Green revolution”. It was based on factors that we simply can’t sustain. It’s not just the overpumping of water, it’s the fact that nitrogen fertilisers are energy intensive, it’s the fact that there are finite quantities of phosphate rock fertiliser

Number 16: “trust molecule”.

Interesting. Whenever there’s an article on here on “antidepressants” I raise the point about the chemical imbalance theory having been discredited. I’m then met with a torrent of abuse, calling me “unscientific” at best.

Is there somewhere I said or implied that there is?

I tend not to insult someone’s intelligence unless they’re being particularly stupid. You’re not being stupid. We disagree. That’s something else entirely.

We have some common ground here. That said, the notion that something belongs to the first person to apply a drill bit has got us into no end of trouble, whether through ignoring the people already living there, pollution, fighting over it, and so on. This is why we need some sort of rule of law, and the US government…

I agree that asteroid mining will be a matter for only the fabulously wealthy in an effort to become even more obscenely wealthy, at least for some time to come. We have to ask the question, by what right do they claim common property? A sense of entitlement on the basis of being rich (considering how many of these…