Les Jones

Environment > Climate Change Wrongly Blamed for Food Shortages

From the Gruniad:

One in six countries in the world face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists warned yesterday.

[...]

"It's going to get rapidly worse and we will have to move substantial amounts of food very fast," said one non-governmental group working in the worst-hit southern region of Malawi.

In Zimbabwe, where the effects of drought have been exacerbated by a deteriorating political situation, 4 million people may need help this year, the US government's famine early warning system showed.

"In all rural districts of Zimbabwe, crop production was poor and well below normal," said a report last week.

I call bull-fucking-shit.

Zimbabwe is not an environmental disaster. Zimbabwe is a political and economic disaster. Corrupt Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe and his so-called "land reform" kicked productive white farmers off their land and rewarded Mugabe's unproductive thugs with same. Result: Zimbabwe went from being a net food exporter to a net food importer in much less than half a generation, much faster than any environmental change could have happened. See here, here, and here.

The solution for these countries' food shortages is to become constitutional democracies with property rights and free market capitalism. The long-term economic consequences of climate change and other hypothetical environmental armageddons are as nothing compared to the very real short-term consequences of re-distributionist socialism and outright communism. For reference, see Korea (North vs. South) and Germany (East vs. West).