Bruce Sterling: Hey rich American guys: you’re gonna get sick and hungry, like everybody else

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Hey rich American guys: you’re gonna get sick and hungry, like everybody else
* By Bruce Sterling Email Author
* June 20, 2009
* 3:46 am

http://globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts

“Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow.

“Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged. Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production.

“Threats to human health will increase. Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts….”

(((A billion hungry people in the world. They’re broke, but hey, the crops are still growing… so far.)))

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/world/20090619_ap_unworldhungerreaches1billionmark.html

ROME - The global financial meltdown has pushed the ranks of the world’s hungry to a record 1 billion, a grim milestone that poses a threat to peace and security, U.N. food officials said Friday.

Because of war, drought, political instability, high food prices and poverty, hunger now affects one in six people, by the United Nations’ estimate.

The financial meltdown has compounded the crisis in what the head of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization called a “devastating combination for the world’s most vulnerable.”

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the agency said.

“No part of the world is immune,” FAO’s Director-General Jacques Diouf said. “All world regions have been affected by the rise of food insecurity.”

The crisis is a humanitarian one, but…