Haber Process

Fritz Haber created a brilliant plan known as the Haber-Bosch Process. This includes “proving that ammonia could indeed be cooked up in the laboratory, using hydrogen and ordinary nitrogen gas,” as stated in Head Count by Elizabeth Kolbert. Nitrogen is vital to life, but plants can only use fixed nitrogen and the lack of fixed nitrogen is often the limiting factor in an ecosystem. The ability to fix nitrogen ourselves seemed to be a perfect solution. Nitrogen is the most common element in the earth’s atmosphere—nearly four times more plentiful than oxygen and more than eighty times more plentiful than argon, therefore this process has succeeded to provide 90% of the world’s food. Haber had, as quoted in the article “figured out how to turn air into bread.” The article states that in 85 years the population will grow to an unsupportable amount of 11 billion, and total fertility rates range from .79 in developed countries to 7 in struggling countries. I think that if people are so concerned about the uncontrollable growth worldwide, we should minimize the usefulness of the Haber Process to create food for countries like Mali and Somalia, who have the highest fertility rates, and maybe reaching Weisman’s goal of bringing down the world’s population to two billion within two or three generations. Keeping the HBP in struggling countries, to decrease environmental concerns might result in the global T.F.R. of about one, which will obviously help the boom of population. I believe the creation of the Haber Process can provide lots of positive outcomes if used cautiously.