forever hungry

One tenth of the US population goes to bed hungry. For the richest and most powerful country in the world, these are shocking numbers. Yet the issue fails to resonate with voters. Attempts to make poverty a campaign issue in the upcoming election failed miserably. According to pollsters, poverty does not even rank in the top 10 of voter concerns. Experience has shown that trying to rally support for any cause that is not in the top three is a losing proposition. Poverty failed as an issue even in areas where it was blatantly obvious as in states suffering in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

World wide the figures are much worse of course. Anywhere between a quarter and a third of the population may be hungry or malnourished according to the World Health Organization. Attempts to reduce world hunger by one half have failed over and over again. The issue was raised once again at the World Economic Forum in Davos, but we doubt it will make any difference. It never has before. Hunger is down somewhat from its all time high, but the reductions are minimal to say the least. In essence world hunger is an issue that is here to stay.

Somewhat ironically the world has enough food to feed its current population an oversized meal three times a day. Estimates are that we produce enough food to give everyone on the planet in excess of 2,700 calories per day. That is more than the recommended daily intake for adults, which is set at 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 calories for men. In essence, the world produces enough food to make everyone moderately overweight.

Various explanations are given as to why hunger persists. Usually these are linked to distribution. It has been argued that getting the food to the poor is nearly impossible because of bad infrastructure, conflicts, wars, natural disasters, political matters, and so on. At first glance these arguments look very plausible and they make sense to a lot of people. Most of know or think we know how dangerous it is to travel in Africa, Latin America, or SouthEast Asia. Blood thirsty dictators, drug dealers, rogue governments, terrorists, guerrilla fighters, and the like are everywhere waiting to kill us. Every night America gets its daily dose of terror-scare on the evening news.

All these arguments make a great deal of sense until one wonders how the weapons get to all these evil doers. Nearly all weapons are manufactured in the industrialized world and need to be shipped to the same conflict areas. Yet weapons dealers do not suffer from the same problems that make food distribution so difficult. Granted, maybe weapons don't spoil as easily, but to offset that they often cannot be shipped in the open like food can. It seems weapons always find a way.

The distribution argument also fails miserably at home. Surely there is no impediment to reach the 10% of Americans that go to bed hungry every night. America has excellent infrastructure and there are no wars, regional conflict, or other problems in distribution here. America's poor are easily accessible. Yet their numbers are growing year over year.

It is not distribution or other logistics that is keeping food away from the hungry. It is willful intervention by other humans. Sometimes humans purposefully want to inflict damage to others. They want to engineer what is called "genocide." Other times they want to grab whatever they can grab for themselves and leave others out. Often they just want to "get ahead." Now that major predators are out, humans are in competition with other humans for resources. And food is a key resource. It is also a source of wealth. Just ask the agricultural corporations that dominate American food production.

Increased food production quickly leads to more humans, as was evident in the last century when the green revolution occurred. More humans beget even more humans. It happens surprisingly quickly too. And it keeps going until resources run out. The scenario has been played many times over, in boom and bust cycles of increasing magnitude. We are about to witness it happening on a planetary scale. It will be a first, but unfortunately it could also be the last -for everyone that is.

survival a la Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today, entitled "How Humanity Will Survive." Although I read the paper regularly, I rarely -if ever- read the editorials. The reason is very simple. WSJ editorials are totally predictable and not very interesting. Whatever the most conservative thinking of the day is, the WSJ is there to be its cheerleader. The more extreme, the better. And with the recent Murdoch takeover it can only get worse. Although frankly it is hard to see how it could possibly get any worse than it already is.

But today's editorial caught my attention because of the title and the inset, "Start with space tourism." And the point of the opinion piece is simple. There is a good likelihood that some catastrophic event will kill us all unless we escape to another planet. And because this is the WSJ, don't count on the inept government to help us here. Even a government of friends of the WSJ. Private enterprise will lead the way to salvation. See what I mean about predictable? You have the fairy tale ending, the Hollywood ending, and the WSJ ending.

The idea that we have to escape is not new. Many people believe we will have to, including Stephen Hawking and a lot of his fellow physicists. And the reason is quite simple. These guys know their math and they that our growth is unsustainable. They know we are headed for disaster even if things look good now. They know statistics and understand fluctuations. And so they can imagine global warming on a freezing day, unlike most of us. But then again, they are smart.

The editorial states that on average a mammalian species lasts two million years. That means we better hurry up. They also list the Fermi paradox or the failure of evidence of intelligent life. Maybe the intelligent life self-destructs? Although all species run out as they destroy their niches, intelligent ones probably run out faster as they are better and more efficient at exploiting. That may not be Fermi's but is a paradox for sure. The smarter you are the shorter your existence will be.

And then there is the list of things that can go wrong. High on the list are space disasters. The intellectual drivers of this group are physicists and astrophysicists. They are the bomb designers of the Manhattan project and their progeny. It was they who postulated the meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs. An event that has now entered into the minds of kindergarten America.

Meteor impacts, planetary collisions, black holes emitting radiation, nuclear holocausts, etc. A worthy end to a worthy species so to speak. Whatever your conviction, you have to admit it sounds better than depleting resources and polluting yourself to death. And furthermore, a potential catastrophic impact requires action, and a positive (read war) attitude, instead of conservation (read retreat).

There is little doubt that action is better for business and the economy. And that is the theme song of the WSJ. So what if it expedites our demise by a few thousand years? The writer of this piece is unlikely to be witnessing extinction in any case.

I have little doubt that catastrophic events do happen from time to time. And there is plenty of evidence for meteor impacts and other disasters of cosmic scale. But I doubt that it will take an event of that magnitude to erase humanity from the planet. Furthermore, the way we are going, it seems rather unlikely that we will last long enough to witness any such an event. These events are very rare. And two millions years is a very short time indeed. If we even make it that long. Keep your fingers crossed.