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Hunger


Make no mistake about it this:

Idled farm workers are searching for food in the nation's most prolific agricultural region, where a double blow of drought and a court-ordered cutback of water supplies has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

This bedraggled town is struggling with an unemployment rate that city officials say is 40 percent and rising. This month, 600 farm families depleted the cupboards of the local food bank, which turned away families — more than 100 of them — for the first time.

And this are inextricably linked:

If you don't think there is a global food crisis you are wrong. One of every five people on this planet are either starving or malnourished. If my experience in Cambodia was any indication of what this means, let me reiterate what I saw there: massive inflation, massive poverty, urban and rural and a severely distressed countryside.

Add hunger, severely altered weather patterns globally and a global financial crisis and you have a real, real big mess.


Sean Paul Kelley December 13, 2008 - 7:26am
Sean Paul Kelley's diary | printer friendly version | digg
( categories: Global Financial Crisis | Global Food & Agriculture )

I'd say over population is a problem

because the human population grew exponentially, due to oil, we went beyond environmental sustainability; hence, the environment has to be destroyed wherever food can be grown in order to let the current population survive.

moreover, because of the exponential population increase due to oil, 1/5 the population isn't really a very big number. some folks have suggested that if 3/4 our population disappeared, we'd be back on a path towards sustainability.

some people shiver at the amount of medical waste that will be produced in an effort to add a few more years to our lives.

mrmx December 13, 2008 - 10:26am
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Interesting, we almost never

hear about "over population" anymore. Back in the 60's I read a fascinating article by a guy (too long ago to remember who) who said the ideal, sustainable population of the U.S was 50 million. From the present POV, that looks pretty accurate. We're not even close; even then. What does that say about the rest of the world and us now? There is a serious gap here IMO.

Celsius 233 December 13, 2008 - 10:38am
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bah

We can be as many as we like. We just have to behave and use our technology, knowledge and resources properly. If we do that this planet can easily fit 10x as many people as today, without straining the environment.

What we can't do is live anything remotely like we live today, because that is not sustainable at all. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make people or society behave sustainably, and quite easy for people/society to end up dead, dead, dead due to enviromental collapse/resource depletion.

incy December 13, 2008 - 11:06pm
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