About 5,000 years ago the human race started to gather in cities. Food was produced outside the cities and taken into the cities. City inhabitants ate the food; afterwards, the waste flowed out in the sewers. All those nutrients ended up in the oceans instead of being used as fertilizer for new crops. Those nutrients slowly built up over the years, causing large zones called hypoxic layers which worked to change the acidity of the oceans. In turn, the ocean slowly lost the ability to absorb excess carbon dioxide. The cities got bigger and we needed a way to transport more food; and so, we now burn fossil fuel, raising the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere even higher. This is not sustainable.
Everyday fossil fuel costs us more, making us all poorer. We drive thousands of miles every year just to get to work, wasting time and money. Food is transported across the globe to sustain our cities. Many cities are just days away from starvation in times of emergencies; the cities and the inhabitants would die if isolated. No city can survive without an intercontinental infrastructure. There is no question some day this will fail.
Suppose we build skyscrapers to house our people in a more energy efficient environment. Each building could hold around 50,000 people along with factories, stores, and banks. Instead of a sterile city surrounding the skyscraper we could have farmland that could produce food for the people. Energy could come from the wind and methane production from the sewage. Sewage residue could then be used for fertilizer. Each skyscraper community could be self sustaining during emergencies; the community could survive during times when it is cut off from the rest of the world. Can we sustain this lifestyle?
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