In a world that is ever increasingly subjected to the consequences of climate change, weather patterns have not just become a bigger part of public and private discourse, it is having real effects on our lives. One of the many manifestations of climate change is severe drought. This is evident across the globe from Southern California to the Middle East…. Read more »
One thing has become clear throughout our studies in this course, the status quo is not sustainable. If we as a global society continue on the path we are on, it will only lead to greater hardship in the future. Populations are rising and consumption is increasing throughout the world. At the same time necessary resources are being depleted and… Read more »
While doing the contemplative practice for Lesson 8, I really got thinking more about water and the demand for it around the world. I never thought much about what it would be like to not have water because I grew up with a seemingly endless amount of it. It has been unnerving to me to think about how many people… Read more »
Although we learn about the issues of food, energy, and the climate in different lessons, it’s clear they are all connected. The purpose of our study is to understand the political ecology of the global food systems and try to answer the seemingly simple question, how can we feed everyone? This is a problem that humans have struggled with since… Read more »
The earth is a living system with incredible power to self-correct. Through our collective extraction and consumption of oil, we are accelerating the demise of our culture, at the cost to our survival. The warming of the planet caused by greenhouse gasses are enough that we are beginning to witness the effects now. The earth is responding to the altered… Read more »
Western institutes employ thousands of people, allocating financial and agricultural resources in attempts to contain the problem of hunger in developing nations, but these efforts aren’t enough. An obvious solution to hunger is… send hungry people food! But the cost of transportation, in dollars as well as environmental pollutants, creates more problems than it solves (Robbins). Instead of providing consistent aid… Read more »
The industrial revolution brought with it numerous benefits for the modern age. Perhaps most significant is the technology that has made it possible to feed 7 billion people worldwide. The improvements in industrialized farming equipment made farming more efficient, producing higher yields while expending less energy for the farmers. However, less energy spent by people, cattle and horses to operate… Read more »
As a global issue with complex causality, hunger is a challenge that shapes our collective experience. From hunger we see a ripple of social, political, economic, and environmental implications for the world and our place in it. Systemic global hunger is indicative of broken systems, human and ecological – inequality, political instability, the social cost of international trade, climate change,… Read more »
Water is the new oil…meaning that moving forward conflicts over resources will concern water. The finite amount of water, growing world population and continued climate change will force us to make some tough decisions in the near future. One of these tough decisions involves poppy farmers in Afghanistan. It is easy and not necessarily wrong to conclude that growing poppy… Read more »
Tristram Stuart’s TedTalk The Global Food Waste Scandal reveals the global scale of food wasted and addresses the different ways to tackle food waste in the midst of growing world hunger. Stuart presents the unfortunate reality we live in and the responsibility we play in further perpetuating world hunger with the statistics indicating that with the surplus of food in… Read more »