Hunger not from overpopulation

Georgie Anne Geyer has been on my “must read” Washington Times list for nearly 15 years because here insights and experience almost always prove correct. Her “Food Shortage Anguish” (4-24-08) completely misses the key factor however regarding global hunger.
Ms. Geyer’s analysis of the current rise in hunger is accurate but she fails to mention that even without any of the new factors there would still be approximately 27,000 children a day dying from easily preventable malnutrition and hunger related infections. And, even if we solved all the current problems like diverting food back to people instead of SUVs, eliminated draught in Australia, and reduced food demand in China or food hording in India, the number of malnourished would still remain astronomically high.

And the basic problem wouldn’t be as Ms. Geyer concludes, overpopulation. The world and this nation has more than enough food, financial resources and new technologies to feed us and all the hungry of the world – IF – there is the political will to do so. And, doing so would actually save us far greater money in the long run as better nourished people (especially children) are able to learn, work, and contribute more to the quality of life for all on this increasingly troubled planet.

If we did eliminate hunger from the world the next president of the US would have to deal with fewer pandemics, fewer failed states, less economic uncertainty, less crime and even fewer murderous, ignorant, radical Islamists.

But none of this is new. A U.S. Presidential Commission on World Hunger during the Carter years produced all the information need to end hunger by the year 2000, and it was virtually ignored.

It’s time all nations of the world acknowledge what was agreed to after the horrors of World War II when an American President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt worked to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and rallied the world to unanimously approve it, knowing that enforcement of such basic rights, such as the right to food, would prevent such global horrors of war, genocide, disease and starvation in the future.

We can wean ourselves from oil, greatly reduce the obesity related illnesses that now plague our nation’s health system and even better protect our air and water if we shift to sustainable food production and energy production means that we have known for decades. We can pay now…or we will pay far more later. All we have to do is walk our talk regarding our reverence for human rights, human life and this amazing planet that God has given us.