Television teems with astute, loving analysts of world hunger and stepped-up globular unacceptability ? almost a kind of planetary “road rage” ? at the desperate need for food and water – especially among children ? plus (associated) rising violence everywhere. Yesterday the New York Times had a starving U.S. child glomming from the garbage heap ? on its front page.
This morning I heard the UN Food Program”s Josette Sheehan encountering “more people than the land can support,” as she is in the process of planting 5 billion trees, necessary to shield rice fields ? as well as setting shoots for ferns and evergreens in the myriad holes where “land mines were exploded – a perfect spot for a tree!”
This outstanding UN executive related that “seed stock in Africa is exhausted” and that farmers in many parts of the world are encountering “bad soil” as well – so that “no bank” will invest in them.
After all, most of the earth”s surface is salt water ? and most of the rest is desert! What will it take for enough worldwide awareness that we all suffer and we all face eruption (and collapse) of our home ? unless food and population achieve balance.
That of course means (what is barely mentioned, if at all) that population growth both in the rich and poor countries must be slowed.
What is threatened? Just global civilization.
Norman Fleishman
Lakeport
