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nairiporterDisruption to food production and supplies due to COVID-19 could cause more deaths from starvation than the disease itself, according to an Oxfam report...
A Tenth of the World Could Go Hungry While Crops Rot in Fields
Covid-19 is the last straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers.
This can never end well. In developing countries, especially those with an armed citizenry, hunger will result in even more deaths than in the far less armed developing countries. People here will be hungry, cashless, desperate, but well-armed, and some will resort to shooting other people in order to take from them whatever food and other survival resources they have. Lord of the Flies scenarios might not happen everywhere but they will happen.
I've been hearing a lot of voices using this as an argument against lockdowns, which obviously continue to cause the global economy to shrink and even collapse, which many economists expect to be very long-lasting. The conclusion that the proponents of this arguments tend to make is that we should consider that the lockdowns may indeed be a cure worse than the disease.
However, thinking about the issue this way might be a slippery slope in itself. I could make a fair argument that since the global slowdown due to Covid-19, our global emissions have dropped significantly which is a tremendous help against global warming, pollution and climate change. Looking at future models, many more people will perish due to these factors as they also present a major health/malnutrition challenge. I would argue the biggest change that needs to take place is a paradigm shift in conceptualising a global community vs nationalism, the latter only shifting the problem but never solves it.
The way I see it, the bigger problem is that people aren't earning enough money to eat, or to eat properly. I think this one sentence tells more about what's wrong with everything than anything out there. Where is it written in stone the best economic system possible us humans can come up with requires us to work for food? Does that seem like slavery to anybody else? To have little choice but labour to eat or else starve sounds very much like slavery to me... unless of course you are talking small permaculture collectives. What more can be done with all that energy with regards to building community and culture instead of wasting it on basic survival?
Our economic system does not care if you make money... only that you spend it. Perhaps it needs a major shake-down? Perhaps the imminent Covid-19-induced upheaval that I mentioned above would serve as the catalyst for that?
A Tenth of the World Could Go Hungry While Crops Rot in Fields
Covid-19 is the last straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers.
This can never end well. In developing countries, especially those with an armed citizenry, hunger will result in even more deaths than in the far less armed developing countries. People here will be hungry, cashless, desperate, but well-armed, and some will resort to shooting other people in order to take from them whatever food and other survival resources they have. Lord of the Flies scenarios might not happen everywhere but they will happen.
I've been hearing a lot of voices using this as an argument against lockdowns, which obviously continue to cause the global economy to shrink and even collapse, which many economists expect to be very long-lasting. The conclusion that the proponents of this arguments tend to make is that we should consider that the lockdowns may indeed be a cure worse than the disease.
However, thinking about the issue this way might be a slippery slope in itself. I could make a fair argument that since the global slowdown due to Covid-19, our global emissions have dropped significantly which is a tremendous help against global warming, pollution and climate change. Looking at future models, many more people will perish due to these factors as they also present a major health/malnutrition challenge. I would argue the biggest change that needs to take place is a paradigm shift in conceptualising a global community vs nationalism, the latter only shifting the problem but never solves it.
The way I see it, the bigger problem is that people aren't earning enough money to eat, or to eat properly. I think this one sentence tells more about what's wrong with everything than anything out there. Where is it written in stone the best economic system possible us humans can come up with requires us to work for food? Does that seem like slavery to anybody else? To have little choice but labour to eat or else starve sounds very much like slavery to me... unless of course you are talking small permaculture collectives. What more can be done with all that energy with regards to building community and culture instead of wasting it on basic survival?
Our economic system does not care if you make money... only that you spend it. Perhaps it needs a major shake-down? Perhaps the imminent Covid-19-induced upheaval that I mentioned above would serve as the catalyst for that?
