Until the advent of electrified refrigeration, nations fought wars over salt.

Sounds strange, right? But until our modern century, there was no other way to preserve meat, so salt, and the mines which produced it, was one of the world’s most valuable resources.

Fast forward 100 years. There is a new monopoly, and it’s called oil. The world economy’s dependence on it is but one side of the global warming story that dominated many sessions at the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival. Other sides of the story include rising sea levels, melting glaciers, uncertainty about which new technology is the best and the harsh realities of trying to feed the 9 billion people that will inhabit planet earth by 2050.

And don’t forget about water, a sector of the global climate disruption story that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, according to presenters at “Watching Water: Evaluating Risks in a Thirsty World.”

While there isn’t going to be any more water, there will be greater demand for it. Consider an additional 500 million people in China starting off each day with a shower than did before, thanks to that country’s rising standard of living. Stress on the water supply is something that threatens the global economy, but too many businesses aren’t paying attention, said Margaret Cannella, an analyst with JP Morgan. Publicly traded companies rarely include information on water demand and supply in their Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) paperwork, yet the risks associated with water are dire. Remember the nuclear power plant in the South that had to shut down for two weeks during last year’s epic drought because there was not enough water available to run the cooling tower?

Shortage of fertile land

While the global population is expected to boom, per capita wealth is expected to jump 140 percent, according to David Tillman, a University of Minnesota ecology professor who gave a presentation entitled “Food, Fuel and Forests.”

This has dire ramifications for world food supply. Wealthy people eat more meat, which takes more resources to produce than grains, which are the staple of developing world diets. Beef is a particularly nasty culprit. According to Tillman, each pound of edible beef on your plate takes 14 pounds of food — fed to the doomed steer — to produce. The ratio is slightly less damaging for pork (7:1), better for chicken (3.5:1) and close to ideal for fish (1.5:1).

Currently, about 5 million hectares worldwide are devoted to agriculture (the total United States land mass is about 1 million hectares). To meet the rising demand for world food, as many as 1.7 million hectares must be converted to agriculture, Tillman said. This is a tough proposition, with only 2.7 million fertile hectares left, especially since deforesting these lands to convert them for agricultural use is one of the more potent ways to release carbon into the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating global climate disruption.

There are two solutions to this problem that could reduce the demand from 1.7 million hectares to 150,000, Tillman said. First, use technologies like fertilizer and pesticides, first developed in the “green revolution” of the 1960s, to increase crop yields, particularly in Africa, where the fields tend not to be as productive as in North America. Second, a wholesale shift is needed in the rich world’s diet, away from beef and toward more fish and grains.

‘Silver buckshot’

Tillman said the tight supply of fertile land is perhaps the largest inhibiting factor to global prosperity. This point was echoed by another discussion called “Fueling the Future: Choices for a New Transportation Landscape,” which featured a panel of speakers including representatives from the oil industry, the auto industry, the science community and the venture capital community. Panelists discussed the virtues of cellulosic ethanol fed into internal combustion engines versus electric-powered cars as the middle-term solution to getting cars off oil (the ultimate solution, still far off in the future, panelists said, is the hydrogen fuel cell).

Both methods have consequences. The plug-in model requires electricity, which typically means burning coal, although the picture is prettier if you know you are getting the electricity from renewable sources. An advantage to the plug-in system is that the United States already has a superior electric grid, said David Sandalow, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who works with the Clinton Global Initiative.

But venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who invests in new energy solutions, said biofuels are the way to go. One problem with plug-ins is that battery technology isn’t good enough to completely supplant the engine, and if it was, it would be well above the “Chindia price,” or the price developing nations would be willing to pay for the technology.

Khosla cautioned that there’s a good way to do biofuel and a bad way. Growing “winter crops” on fields that otherwise are sitting barren and capturing waste materials such as corn stover are good ways. Although it is a positive “stepping stone,” corn-based ethanol, with its consequences on food supply, is a bad way, Khosla said.

Michael Wirth, who works on energy diversity and “downstream operations” for oil giant Chevron, reminded the crowd that getting off oil is “not pragmatic anytime in the near future.” While he emphasized Chevron’s work in the biofuels sector (the company recently entered into a biofuels joint venture with Weyerhaeuser, a forest products company), Wirth said adopting biofuels technology on a grand scale will require a rethinking of the economy.

While oil companies like Chevron have developed large-scale distribution systems, extracting oil from the ground and shipping it halfway around the world to be refined, that type of distribution model isn’t practical for biofuels, which will require more locally based distribution systems.

“You are not going to haul switch grass around the world on a truck trailer,” Wirth said. “Don’t underestimate the scale challenges.”

There is no “silver bullet” to the energy problem, panelists said.

“What we need is a silver buckshot,” said T.J. Glauthier, who moderated the new transportation discussion.

Carbon concentration

Even with the dire subject matter, the Ideas Fest discussions, with their fine catered meals and beautiful settings, can take on an Athens golden age type feel. But during a presentation by James Balog, a photojournalist who has spent the last few years documenting melting glaciers, the discussion came crashing back down to earth. We better find that silver buckshot fast.

A team led by Balog has placed cameras in snowbound locations around the world. The cameras fire at least once a day, and what they have witnessed, when put together in time-lapse style moving picture show, is shocking. You are literally watching the earth melt.

The glaciers photographed by Balog are melting faster than they ever have before. Last summer, Alaska’s Columbia Glacier shed 400 billion gallons of water equivalent and gave up one-third a mile of its length. Each day, chunks fell off the 30-story-tall “calving face,” sending ripples into the ocean.

“What the cameras don’t pick up is the sound,” said Balog, whose Extreme Ice Survey initiative is based in Boulder. “It sounds like dozens of 747s taking off.”

The measurement of carbon in the atmosphere, expressed in parts per million, tells the story. Balog presented a graph that showed 400,000 years of cyclical carbon concentrations. Never in the 400,000 years documented did carbon concentration exceed 280 parts per million. But starting in the 20th century, carbon concentration spiked, and is now at 385 parts per million. Climate change deniers love to talk about natural cycles of warming and cooling, but they don’t mention that carbon concentration is now about one-third higher than nature had ever allowed before.

“It is somewhere between unethical and criminal that this has been distorted,” Balog said.

The way Balog sees it, humanity has about 10 years to get its act together and solve the carbon crisis. If not, the glaciers will keep melting and the sea levels will rise. Should sea levels worldwide rise 1 meter, a plausible scenario by the start of the 22nd century, 1 billion people would be displaced, mostly in poor countries. War, famine and mass migration are all possible consequences of global climate disruption.

Despite the dire stakes, most Ideas Fest speakers on climate and sustainibility expressed a belief that humanity would solve the climate crisis. As one speaker said, “The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.”

“A cri sis is a terrible thing to waste,” said Kholsa, the venture capitalist. Without a crisis, there would be no incentive for innovation, he said.

Sandalow, of the Clinton Global Initiative, remarked on his amazement over the GPS navigation devices that are common in new cars, where a digital map and a “soothing female voice” guide the driver to their destination.

 While his teenage children take technology like the GPS navigator for granted, Sandalow, in his early 50s, said he never would have imagined such a device possible when he was growing up.

“What will my kids say the same thing about when they are my age?” Sandalow wonders.

curtis@aspendailynews.com