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Re: The coming hunger [It's here]
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Greg Buck
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Apr 15, 2008 12:09 PDT
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More justification for the steady state economy, ecological economics, simple living, permaculture, ecocities and stopping the project to extend I-69.
Greg
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To: HOOSIER-@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG
Subject: The coming hunger
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The coming hunger
Riots over rising grain prices are ripping through the developing
world and the United Nations warns there's worse to come. Was Malthus
right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves?
The Toronto Star
By Lynda Hurst, April 12, 2008
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/413769
The warning bells are ringing, furiously.
This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the
president's palace shouting "We are hungry!" Five people were killed
in the chaos.
In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days
of violence over food shortages. Last month, a two-week protest at
government-subsidized bakeries ended with the deaths of 10 Egyptians
in clashes with police.
Rice is the staple food of 4 billion people. But the prices for it,
along with corn, wheat and other basics, has surged by 40 per cent to
80 per cent in the last three years and caused panicked uprisings in
some of the poorest countries on Earth, from Cameroon to Bolivia. The
situation has deteriorated so swiftly that some experts predict the
effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than
climate change.
According to the World Bank, 33 countries are now vulnerable to social
unrest and political instability because of food insecurity – and
that
has implications for all the rest. Major rice producers like China,
Cambodia and Vietnam are already battening down, curbing exports to
ensure supplies for their own populations. The Philippines, whose
population has grown from 60 million to almost 90 million in 17 years,
is warning rice hoarders they'll be charged with economic sabotage.
Why is it happening? Was Malthus right when he said the world would
eventually be too populated to feed itself?
The United Nations already provides food for 73 million people in 78
countries worldwide. But the planet is getting hungrier. At least 4
million more people are being added to the list, most of them living
in high-density, Third World cities. The new face of hunger – and
thirst – is overwhelmingly urban.
It takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of food, but water
scarcity is affecting supplies. And, as Lester Brown, president of
Earth Policy Institute in Washington, has cautioned: "A future of
water shortages will be a future of food shortages."
The current crisis was ignited by a number of elements coming together
in deadly tandem. Analysts say the most important one – the jump in
global fuel prices – has triggered a chain reaction in the entire
food-production system, from seed planting right through to the
delivery process.
The world has been down this road before, of course. In 1973-74, OPEC
(Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quadrupled the world
price of oil, resulting in spiralling food prices and distribution
snarls. The disaster led to a World Food Summit in 1976, but nothing
was done to prevent it happening again.
Today's crisis is even worse because biofuels, a factor unanticipated
in the mid-'70s, has been added to the mix, says David Bell, emeritus
professor of environmental studies at York University.
"A false environmental sensibility has led to a push on biofuel
production and corn is the product of choice," he says. "There's been
a significant diversion of crops away from food use." The corn needed
to produce ethanol fuel has to be grown somewhere and when land
available for food farming is converted, food prices are pushed up:
"That's what's tripped off the food riots this time." And the
environmental benefits of corn fuel, he scathingly adds, are
"completely illusory."
Throw in the new and exploding demand for meat in economically booming
China and India and even more land is being converted – for cattle,
and the feeding thereof.
Climate change is also making its toxic contribution. Major droughts
have hit wheat-producing nations such as Australia and Ukraine,
leading to a 30-year low in the world's wheat inventories.
This week, John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian and emergency relief
co-ordinator, warned that the number of global "extreme weather"
disasters has doubled in the past two decades to 400 a year. What's
building in consequence of all these factors, he said, is a "perfect
storm." "The security implications should not be underestimated
...Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the
incidence and depth of food insecurity." In other words, this week's
food riots may be just a foreshadowing of what looms ahead in the
not-so-distant future.
It took all of human history for the world to reach a population of
2.5 billion in 1950. Half a century later, it's risen to more than 6.5
billion. By 2030, it's expected to reach 8.2 billion, and by 2050, a
staggering 9 to 12 billion. Can the world sustain that number of
people?
A UN report says we are already living beyond the planet's means –
just as Thomas Malthus warned could occur. The early 19th-century
British demographer and political economist believed population growth
was exponential and man's "struggle for existence" eventually would
outstrip Earth's capacity to sustain it.
Malthus's thinking influenced Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory,
but it also led to nightmare scenarios. In 1968, American biologist
Paul Ehrlich notoriously predicted that by the 1980s, hundreds of
millions would die because of overpopulation and subsequent lack of
food. It didn't happen. Not only did Ehrlich take a drubbing, but
Malthus's theory did, as well. Critics have continually insisted that
Malthus was too pessimistic. Humans would always find alternatives to
resources that have been exhausted, they say, develop new technologies
to improve crop yield.
But how far, asks David Bell, can substitution go?
After having dismissed Malthus, people are starting to talk about him
again, he says. "His warning of a crash as a possible outcome may not
be that far wrong. Ultimately, more mouths to feed is going to
exacerbate political pressures. There will be more failed societies."
Today, projections are that, by 2030, global agriculture/agribusiness
will have to double its output – and use less water to do it. Fish as
a food source? Every fishery in the world is expected to have
collapsed within 25 to 50 years, says Bell. The UN's food program has
launched an appeal to boost its budget from $2.9 billion to $3.4
billion. But that's just to meet the demands of the hungry today.
What about tomorrow?
"We're a selfish species," says Bell. "But we're going to have to do
things differently."
Greg Buck
Recommended websites:
www.bonneyforgov.com
www.storyofstuff.com
www.myfootprint.org
www.sustainableeconomics.org
www.indianagreenparty.org
www.ecocitybuilders.org
Communities Directory http://directory.ic.org/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Simple_Living_Indianapolis/
http://groups.google.com/group/clearinghouse-for-actions-against-i-69-in-indiana
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