Monk

Who says Malthusian logic is dead?

Brown says the world's rapidly expanding population has created elevated demand for grain, milk, cheese and eggs, but changes in climate and irrigation have made it increasingly difficult to increase production accordingly. Increased demand has also stripped the world of much of its excess crop surpluses. For example, Brown says, in 1965, when the Indian monsoon failed, the United States sent a fifth of its total wheat crop to India to avoid famine.

"We couldn't do that today because we don't have that sort of slack in the system," he says. "The problem is not that we're producing less grain — we're producing more grain — but we're not increasing production fast enough to keep up with the growth in demand."

Life is so cozy for so many in the advanced nations, I type on my computer and do so as a relatively poor person in an advanced nation, that I don't suppose there is much political will to take such a developing problem seriously. After all, we all appreciate the serious problems of climate change, save perhaps for Republicans and the corporate elite, but we are also overwhelmed by the sense that we cannot really do anything about it. We enjoy the good life today, even as we see the quasi-apocalyptic crisis looming over the horizon, and we just long to enjoy this good life as long as we can.

(Source: LJ/NPR)

foolsguinea posted about the use of genetically altered foods in America that helps to show just how dominated Americans are by our corporations. I might have been dismissive about such engineered foods, but I did not know that other countries have been able to ban such foods, so that Americans are effectively being used like guinea pigs. It is all the more galling that our corporations cater to those countries' demands while they force their Frankenfood on us. And there have been no studies on the healthiness of these innovations, as we get sicker over what we eat.

Or at least this is what Robyn O'Brien says. I never heard of her, and I couldn't google up any interesting discussion supporting or debunking her, though I'm pretty lazy when it comes to such research efforts. It just still surprises and depresses me to think that America has to be among the worst counties to live in the developed world, and probably the very worst - unless you are among the top few percent of the mega-rich. Even Canada has to be better than this!