Human-caused starvation in Gaza is just the prelude

to human-caused starvation all over the world.

I’m as much a fan of geo-engineering and weather modification as I am of vaccines and anti-virals. That is to say; they’re money making, useless and harmful. That does not mean that there isn’t anything wrong with the health of the planet or with our bodies. There clearly is.

It’s not just rising sea level and coastal erosion. It’s not just deaths from heat, droughts and floods. And of course it’s not ‘novel entities’. It’s FOOD.

8.2 billion humans are entirely dependent on a stable window of climate to grow the food that our bodies and microbiomes are adapted to. Not only must the climate be stable but optimal pollinators and amounts of water must also arrive at the appropriate time. Low carbon systems, like our own, that involve plants and marine animals are even more sensitive to changes in carbon levels due to the burning of organic matter and the deforesting of carbon sequestering trees for pasture or crops for farmed animals. Meaning that small changes in atmospheric carbon, though we’re on target to double it soon, will have major impacts on our agricultural system.

And even more pressingly access to WATER controls who lives and who dies. The body can go weeks without eating, but only a few days without water; with severe problems in functioning after just 24 hours. Spoiling water supplies is very easy and when climate change makes droughts and flooding of sewage systems more likely- controlling who dies is going to be simple.

The ‘gift’ of fossil fuels which provided energy and fertilisers for the industrial and agricultural revolutions, allowed a large human population to base their economies on growth and to escape the Malthusian trap of food resources. The growth of renewables is doing nothing to slow the growth of burning fossil fuels. Carbon off-sets are a joke. The folklore and myth around the careful animal consumption by the indigenous being more harmonious, sacred and sustainable is being used to greenwash so-called pasture-fed, non-industrial, regenerative or holistic type of farming. We were all indigenous once and the reason consuming animal products was sustainable then was because there were so few of us and we were able to eat so little of them. Now that we can eat so much refined food and animal fat and protein it’s both unsustainable in terms of climate change and our health is also suffering accordingly.

There’s no point taking a sick planet or body to a garage that’s just going to fill it with more of the same, doesn’t understand the problem and is going to make it worse. Without burning fossil fuels or using them for agriculture there would be less humans but we wouldn’t be on the precipice of making ourselves, and many other species, extinct through obesity, autism, starvation, mass migration, economic collapse, fires, floods or food wars.

There’s now no point in treating the symptoms of climate change or human health: we must address the root causes and also prepare for what is unavoidable. The cause is ourselves, the way we are acting, eating and thinking. The way we have allowed colonisers of consumption and neocolonialism to infect our bodies and minds.

As to how we prepare? Protest against genocides by the US based, white supremacist, rentier interests in fossil fuels, animal ag, pharma, sex trafficking, AI, media, tech and arms by all means, but also accept and face what’s inevitably coming. Live in the moment. Have gratitude. Cherish our loved ones.

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