Food vs fuel wars just beginning

By Gioietta Kuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-06 16:21

More people means more mouths to feed. It is obvious that when the growth of population outstrips the capacity of the world to produce food, famine is the inevitable result.

We have to give every incentive to reduce the world's population right now. The world's population presently stands at 6.5 billion. It is projected to grow to 8.2 billion by 2030 and 9 billion in 2050.

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How are we going to feed these additional people when there is already hunger in the world?

This is the most urgent problem humanity has yet faced. Unless we solve this problem, all the other problems such as global warming, water shortages, oil running out will become irrelevant.

There are two important questions at issue here. The first is a moral question: Should we deprive many less developed countries of food just so that we in the industrial countries in the West can have our pleasure rides? Second, a much more important question is: Can the world afford the destabilization - economic, political and social - that is sure to follow from a starving populace?


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