The Coming Famine

Books of The Times
Seeing a Time (Soon) When We’ll All Be Dieting

24 August, 2010(By Mark Bittman)
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Fifty years ago, a billion people were undernourished or starving; the
number is about the same today. That’s actually progress, since a
billion represented a third of the human race then, and “only” a sixth
now.

Today we have another worry: roughly the same number of people eat
too much. But, says Julian Cribb, a veteran science journalist from
Australia, “The era of cheap, abundant food is over.”

Like many other experts, he argues that we have passed the peak of
oil production, and it’s all downhill from now on. He then presents
evidence that we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land,
and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed
it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices,
and poorer ones starve.

Much of “The Coming Famine” builds an

argument that we’ve jumped off a cliff and

that global chaos — a tidal wave of people

fleeing their own countries for wherever

they can find food — is all but guaranteed.

The rest of the book concentrates on

catching an outcropping of rock with a

finger and scrambling back up. The writing

is neither personality-filled nor especially

fluid, but the sheer number of terrifying

facts makes the book gripping.

Arguments that overpopulation will lead to

famine or worse are nothing new, of course; in the early 19th century
the Rev. Thomas Malthus contended that the human march toward
progress would be derailed by a cycle of overpopulation that led to
shortages and misery. And of the many who’ve followed in the
Malthusian tradition, none have been correct: overpopulation has
caused problems, but, as noted above, the percentage of people
starving has actually declined.

Mr. Cribb is reporting on the fate of a planet whose resources have, in
the last 200 years, been carelessly, even ruthlessly exploited for the
benefit of the minority. Now that the majority is beginning to demand
— or at least crave — the same kind of existence, it’s clear that,
population boom or not, there simply isn’t enough of the Euro-
American way of life to go around.

And while there is a sky-is-falling tone to his relatively brief (just over
200 pages) thesis — if it doesn’t make you restock your survivalist
shelter with another hundred pounds of rice and beans — the book
does offer sensible ways to help alleviate the “global feeding frenzy.”

Climate change, of course, is an important piece of Mr. Cribb’s
puzzle, as are overexploitation of the sea and natural resources,
overuse of chemical fertilizer, reliance on fossil fuels, protectionism,
subsidies, biofuels, waste and other factors...More

The Coming World Famine
Julian Cribb: Interview
Updated by the source on 16 September, 2010
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