Because climate change is seriously uncool.

By 2050, 25m more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis

Interesting read over at the Guardian website about the impact Climate change is having on children around the world. It is estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, people will on average have only 1,924 calories a day by 2050, compared with 2,316 in 2000. For comparison, as of 2000 each person in industrialised nations had 3,450 calories available to them.

"Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans....

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable – south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, according to the report, prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The children of 2050 will have fewer calories to eat than those in 2000, the report says, and the effect would be to wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition."

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Comment by Ronnie Wright on October 1, 2009 at 7:05pm: Thanks for posting that Tom.

You know what bothers me the most is that as bad as these numbers are they don’t reflect the impact that Peak Oil is going to have on world hunger.

Many of you will remember the oil price spike last July that sent world food prices doubling and rations to many starving people being cut in half as a result.

We now know that the price was then driven back down by the recession causing demand for oil to drop. As the world economy recovers, even thought it may only be a temporary recovery, the price will most likely go back up again.

Many experts believe that we have either already reached Peak Oil or will do so in the next few years. And even if they are wrong and we don’t peak for another ten years we are still looking at a world without oil by around 2040 to 2050.

Almost all agriculture in the world is totally dependent on oil: for tractors, transportation, and even to produce fertilizer.

The number of people that will starve as a result of oil shortages will dwarf the number of those that starve due to Climate Change.

However, when you combine Climate Change and Peak Oil happening at the same time we are looking at the perfect storm.

Ronnie Wright
World Change Café