Capitalism is the problem - socialism is the solution

Continuing my doom and gloom , the end is nigh , contributions .

Famines affecting a billion people will threaten global food security during the 21st century, according to a leading US scientist. Nina Fedoroff, the US State Department chief scientist, is convinced that food shortages will be the biggest challenge facing the world as temperatures and population levels rise. Food security in the coming years, she said, is “a huge problem” that has been met with little more than complacency. “We are asleep at the switch,” she said.

Dr Fedoroff said famines that strike a billion people are quite possible in a world where climate change has damaged food production and the human population has risen to nine billion. Even wealthy countries like Britain and the United States will struggle to feed many of their citizens, with the poorest in society likely to suffer the most.

Temperatures, which are rising as a result of climate change, are expected to cause savage reductions in productivity in vast areas of the world’s most fertile lands. During the 2003 European heatwave crop yields fell by 20 to 25 per cent in France and this is a pattern likely to be repeated on a much wider scale in the future.