Upping the Malthusian catastrophe
A couple of things from the past came to mind as I read the news stories about food riots around the world ..... the movie Soylent Green and the book The Population Bomb. One was science fiction and the other treated as science fiction but both spoke of an increasing population that caused incredible food shortages in the future.
Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a bleak future in which overpopulation, global warming, and the resulting severe damage to the environment have led to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables, and meat are rare, expensive commodities ...... Half of the world's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation (from soy(bean) + lent(il)), including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green - a small green wafer which is advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties, but it is in short supply, which often leads to riots. - Wikipedia
And ...
The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". ...... The book is primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument, that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich assumes that the population is going to rise exponentially, but that the available resources, in particular food, are already at their limits. Whereas Thomas Malthus did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster in the subsequent few years. Unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely. The solutions for limiting its scope that he proposed, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures, were much more radical than those postulated by Malthus. - Wikipedia
Add today's problems of global warming and the use of crops for biofuel to overpopulation and we're up to speed. Here's just the beginning of an article from the Sunday Herald, 4/23/08 ....
*************************
2008: The year of global food crisis
IT IS the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities.
Millions more of the world's most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards.
And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world.
More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world'', according to WFP officials.
At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world's forgotten problem'', says the World Bank as it demands urgent action.
The bank points out that global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, while wheat prices have increased by 200%. The cost of other staples such as rice and soya bean have also hit record highs, while corn is at its most expensive in 12 years.
The increasing cost of grains is also pushing up the price of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. And there is every likelihood prices will continue their relentless rise, according to expert predictions by the UN and developed countries.
High prices have already prompted a string of food protests around the world, with tortilla riots in Mexico, disputes over food rationing in West Bengal and protests over grain prices in Senegal, Mauritania and other parts of Africa. In Yemen, children have marched to highlight their hunger, while in London last week hundreds of pig farmers protested outside Downing Street.
If prices keep rising, more and more people around the globe will be unable to afford the food they need to stay alive, and without help they will become desperate. More food riots will flare up, governments will totter and millions could die ......
***************************
Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a bleak future in which overpopulation, global warming, and the resulting severe damage to the environment have led to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables, and meat are rare, expensive commodities ...... Half of the world's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation (from soy(bean) + lent(il)), including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green - a small green wafer which is advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties, but it is in short supply, which often leads to riots. - Wikipedia
And ...
The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". ...... The book is primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument, that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich assumes that the population is going to rise exponentially, but that the available resources, in particular food, are already at their limits. Whereas Thomas Malthus did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster in the subsequent few years. Unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely. The solutions for limiting its scope that he proposed, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures, were much more radical than those postulated by Malthus. - Wikipedia
Add today's problems of global warming and the use of crops for biofuel to overpopulation and we're up to speed. Here's just the beginning of an article from the Sunday Herald, 4/23/08 ....
*************************
2008: The year of global food crisis
IT IS the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities.
Millions more of the world's most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards.
And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world.
More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world'', according to WFP officials.
At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world's forgotten problem'', says the World Bank as it demands urgent action.
The bank points out that global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, while wheat prices have increased by 200%. The cost of other staples such as rice and soya bean have also hit record highs, while corn is at its most expensive in 12 years.
The increasing cost of grains is also pushing up the price of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. And there is every likelihood prices will continue their relentless rise, according to expert predictions by the UN and developed countries.
High prices have already prompted a string of food protests around the world, with tortilla riots in Mexico, disputes over food rationing in West Bengal and protests over grain prices in Senegal, Mauritania and other parts of Africa. In Yemen, children have marched to highlight their hunger, while in London last week hundreds of pig farmers protested outside Downing Street.
If prices keep rising, more and more people around the globe will be unable to afford the food they need to stay alive, and without help they will become desperate. More food riots will flare up, governments will totter and millions could die ......
***************************
posted by crystal | 10:39 PM
8 Comments:
It's very sad -- especially in places that were just barely getting by. Haiti is having a lot of problems.
The bio-fuel thing has been a mistake. And as Paul Krugman says, all three candidates are on the wrong side of the issue.
A very sad article on how the US and IMF destroyed Haiti's farmers:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042108R.shtml
And these perfect storms are going to come along more and more often because for all the fashionable "green" talk, what the world has done since Al Gore finally really brought the problem to public notice is nothing.
The major corporations rule. They weren't elected by anybody. They have a huge influence on the people we do elect and overall are interested in one thing: having governments optimize conditions for short-term increases in their bottom line.
The environmental problem concerns me most because it's of tremendous consequence to coming generations, but from what I hear of polling, it's still an afterthought in the public mind as compared to jobs and the price of gas.
Liam,
Thanks for the link. I remember years ago on The West Wing, they had one of the characters say that bio-fuel was a mistake, that it actually made things worse instead of better, and that it was politcal suicide not to support it.
Hi Paul,
If you'd only watched the X-Files, you'd have known that corporations have always been the true rulers :)
Yeah, I think the changes that need to be made to save the environment are so sacrificial that no one wants to really take a good look at them, much less impliment them.
I am not convinced that all problems can be blamed on corporate greed. Corporations grow because people, that is you and, buy their products. If people do not buy biofuel, and vote against those who support them, the corporations that are pushing them will vanish rather quickly. So in the end I think the finger really points back at us. I believe more and more what a friend of 30 years ago said: "The people pretty much get the government that they deserve"
And while Gore may have brought the environmental changes to world attention, he did it the same way that the corporations do, by half truths and a few false allegations. I believe in the long run the lack of truth will do more damage than good.
The environmental problem is severe because no one wants to admit that nature is dynamic! The world is constantly changing, both in a cyclic manner (ice ages every 20,000 years or so) and in response to short term influences, like over grazing land producing the Sahara desert.
Wonderful ideas sometimes fail, deep wells to bring water to the African drylands seemed like a wonderful idea. Except that now the land around them is so over grazed that the cattle starve to death on the trip to and from them. And the age old agreements between tribes as to how many cattle each can have has vanished.
Rather than recognizing that the earth goes through cycles, we are going to blame ourselves and try to change natures course rather than try to adapt to the changing conditions. I am afraid that the human race is in for a real surprise in the not so far future
Mike L
Hi Mike,
Part of me feels a sort of calm inevitability about what's happening - that as you say, the environment has always changed over time and species have come and gone.
It's really hard, though, not to want to freeze conditions, keep what we've got, like the Amazon rainforest and bees, etc, especially when we get to see the suffering change brings. It's one thing to have perspective and detachment about things passing away, but it's another to realize that grand changes really happen indiviual by individual - individuals who suffer and whose like will never come again.
If that makes any sense :)
Yes, it makes sense to me, change is always hard and always hurts, even when it is for the best. Is this not part of evolution? Without such changes there would be only one celled animals in the sea, or we would still be dragging our knuckles across the ground as we searched for our food. Without change there could be no growth. Perhaps we are the seeds that must die in order for the tree to grow.
I do think that this has become an age of the individual and seems to be characterized by doing things individually, and pointing to something else, politics, religion, corporations, etc. as being to blame for everything, never looking at their own part.
I think that if we look at ourselves honestly, and look for truth, we may be far more powerful than we think.
Hugs,
Mike L
Post a Comment
<< Home