WEBVTT - Selects: How Famines Work 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:05.440 Good morning everybody. It's Saturday here in the world. I'm Chuck. 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:07.160 I'm your co host of Stuff you Should Know, and 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.719 it is my charge, my duty to pick out this 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.840 week's Saturday Select selection. I'm going with hal Famines work 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:20.520 from February thirteenth, twenty seventeen. Pretty interesting stuff and also 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:27.520 a little bit sad. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:35.000 a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:38.320 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:44.680 Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry the jerister that should 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:48.880 we say? What just happened? It's weird, of course, said focus? 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:52.360 Yeah, like, oh what is this? Nine hundred and probably 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.160 twenty something thirty something episodes? 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:55.080 Let's get up there. 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.880 And for the first time ever, right before we went go, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.560 Jerry said, focus, what does that mean? 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.440 Usually she goes, huh what I don't get it? 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:05.039 Is this me so bothering? 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:07.640 You guys? Right? Exactly? 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.520 Smell me so bothering? 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:12.040 That's so Jerry? 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:12.840 Focus? 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:13.600 All right? 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:15.120 I feel pressure now, Yeah I do. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:17.800 I'm a little off now Jerry, thanks? 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.720 So yeah, that worked, all right. 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:25.920 Let's concentrate, all right, So we're talking Chuck about you 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:26.759 is your eye. 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:28.679 Okay, yeah, I got something large in it. 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:33.119 We're talking about famine today, yes, which goes with our 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:38.280 super sad, horrific geopolitical catastrophe sweets. 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.800 Yeah, this probably will not be chock full of humor. No, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.480 I try to think of a way to insert some jokes. 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:46.720 There's not unless we go on a tangent. 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.000 Do you remember though eighties stand up comedians like they 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:53.920 would make just the worst jokes that just would not fly, 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.720 Like they get chased off stage by what are you 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:58.960 people with? Like, like just the jokes they would make 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:03.000 AIDS jokes and famine jokes. Oh yeah yeah, as far 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.000 as just like the material they would make jokes about 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.760 and the like they weren't even remotely funny, you know. Yeah, 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.520 it was not nuanced or smarts or anything. 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:18.040 Yeah. I think Sam Kennison made like starving Ethiopian kid jokes, right, 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.240 I give him a sandwich camera man. Wasn't that him? 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:22.600 Was that him? 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.880 I think? So, like just people can't do that today. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:30.200 It's a different world. Yeah, So yeah, there probably won't 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.320 be any jokes in this one. Yeah. What there will 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.919 be is tons of information and hopefully everybody who will 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:40.160 understand famines after this can come together and prevent them 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.880 for the rest of eternity unless climate change gets it, 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:46.440 says we'll see at the end. Yes, I just spoiled 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:47.079 it though, didn't I. 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.919 Yeah, that's I'm glad you said that that was relevant. 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:51.480 Yeah. 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:51.959 Yeah. 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.040 So everybody has a pretty good idea of what famine is. 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.480 It's when you run out of food and a bunch 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.280 of people start dying. That's actually pretty close to the 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:05.720 great real definition. But there's this guy who's a scholar 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:10.839 of famine. His name is Cormac Gograda, and he has 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.119 written several books on famines and studied famines, and he's 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.120 a pretty sharp tack. So people kind of look to 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.079 him to say, what's the actual definition of a famine 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:24.920 and he says, in his best Irish accent, it's a 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.760 lot like malnutrition, Yeah, but it's a lot worse. There's 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.200 a lot more crisis, there's a lot more death. 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.160 Yeah. Specifically, he says, it's a shortage of food or 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:38.720 purchasing power that leads directly to excess mortality from starvation 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:46.120 or hunger induced diseases. And that's an important addition because 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:51.440 it's not just hunger starvation related but all the disease 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.200 it comes along with that that can kill people very 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:57.600 much more easily because you are so undernourished. 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.200 Right, And we'll find out too. It forms a bit 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.320 of a vicious cycle. Like as people start to get 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.680 hungry and start to starve and start to suffer from disease, 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.400 they have an even harder time, say, working in field 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.360 to produce crops, and so the whole thing just keeps 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.159 getting worse and worse and worse. Once it passes breaking point, 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.600 it really starts to spiral out of control. 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:27.440 Yeah, it's a It's a three pronged terror of poverty, hunger, 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.880 and disease, right, all contributing to one another. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.680 Right. So Cormaco Grada's definition of a famine is a 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.840 daily death rate of above one per ten thousand people. 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:41.640 Is that ten thousand? 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:42.880 Yeah? 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.400 All right, I had a period and not a comma. 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:50.320 That's a that's European and I didn't, is it. It's 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:51.240 gotta be. 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:55.839 Because that didn't. That's like point zero zero zero one 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.880 percent of the population per day, is that right? 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.000 Yeah? I think that is ten thousand. Okay, because just 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.680 off the top of my head, like that normal American 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:07.960 death rate is like eight hundred and twenty three per 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.279 one hundred thousand people, So that is significantly more. 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.240 All right, So that daily death rate, that's the first characteristic. 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.760 Yeah. Number two is the proportion of wasted children is 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:24.880 above twenty percent, And wasted means their muscle mass is 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:26.560 withering away due to starvation. 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.480 Yeah. Technically it means they weigh two standard deviations or 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:34.200 more below average. And just that term itself is like 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:36.560 the most heartbreaking thing you can make. 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.400 Wasted children. Yeah, in any sense, it's not a good 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:41.680 thing good, especially when it has to do with famine. 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:47.400 And then finally, the prevalence of what's called quashercore, which 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:52.480 is it's basically an extreme malnutrition due to protein deficiency. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:57.480 Yeah, and those pictures everybody who grew up in the eighties, Yeah, 0:05:57.480 --> 0:05:59.960 and saw the pictures of the starving children in Africa. 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.040 There were just little skin and bone kids, but they 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.960 had these huge, bloated pot bellies. Yeah, that's a classic 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:09.280 hallmark of quash core. 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.880 Yeah. Very sad. Yeah, and then he went on to 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.440 qualify further with severe famine that means a daily death 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.320 rate above five out of ten thousand, proportion of wasted 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.880 children above forty percent, and then that same quasher core prevalence. 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.080 Right, So if quasher core's around, you got a famine 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.679 on your hands. That's not a normal thing that happens 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.640 in a normal food secure population. 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:38.680 Yeah, and that's the main distinguishing factor between famine and 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:43.400 just what you would consider malnutrition. And this is all 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.960 tied into what we call food security, right. And we 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.599 talked about food security before, I think maybe in desertification 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:53.680 or something like that. Yeah, I know we have at 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:55.719 some point, but we talked a lot about the food 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.400 the green revolution to which factors in. But food security 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.159 is that means you have food available, you can get 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.960 to that food, or that food can get to you readily, 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.640 and you can use that food to meet your health needs. 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:12.800 You can leverage it to make your population healthy. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.760 Yeah, Like if it's if your entire countries food supply 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:20.120 is twinkies, you do not have food security. There's an 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.840 abundance of it, people can get to it very easily. 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.920 It's probably affordable for everybody, but it's not nutritious. Or 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.880 if your country has nothing but like the finest fruits 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.320 and vegetables and proteins, but only the very wealthy have 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.400 access to it because it's too expensive. Well, you don't 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.320 have food security. So according to the UN, if you 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.239 have food security in a nation, all people at all 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:49.160 times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.280 and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and get 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:57.239 this food preferences for an active and healthy life. 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.880 Yeah, which I mean, we'll talk about Ethiopia some later, 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.720 but at one point the goal was, which they you know, 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.280 never met, was that not only would they have food 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.800 one day readily available, but be able to choose what 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:11.560 they wanted to eat, right, Like this something you don't 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:13.840 think about. You really take that for granted here in 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.640 the United States and elsewhere. It's not just having food, 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:19.800 but like, oh I might like to eat this or that, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.920 right you know. All right, So a lot of things 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.080 can affect this food security, and we're going to talk 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.160 about all these as throughout the show as they relate 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:34.000 to famine. But obviously you think of natural disasters first, 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:35.800 and probably drought first. 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:37.280 Yeah, that's a big one. 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:38.720 It is a big one, undeniably. 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:41.280 If you don't have water and rain, you can't grow 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:42.439 crops usually no. 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.080 Crop blight, which we'll talk a little bit about the 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.920 potato famine in Ireland later on. 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.760 But any kind of disease pest, even like an over 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:57.520 abundance of weeds, could conceivably ruin a crop flooding. 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.920 Extraordinarily cold weather, extraordinary hot weather, we'll just say weather 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.800 patterns in general, Yes, severe weather. And then a big 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.319 one which a lot of people, a lot of people 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:11.600 I think mainly think of natural disasters or natural factors, 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:17.240 and political conflict is one of the big, big, big contributors. 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:18.480 So here we'll see. 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.120 This is what we're coming to though, eventually, is there 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.560 is a big debate on what causes famine. And for many, 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:30.599 many years everyone said, well, don't be dumb, droughts cause famine, right, 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:35.120 But studies, much more recent studies have found that actually, 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.200 if you kind of peek behind the curtain a little bit, yeah, 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.280 there was a drought and it started the famine. But 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.400 what actually caused the famine, yeah, or caused it to 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:49.360 be horrible is usually government, either government that has bungled 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.720 something or just isn't moved to actually care to do 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:55.959 anything to alleviate the famine. As we'll see. 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:00.720 Yeah, what I gathered from reading this was most famine 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:05.439 throughout all of history has been caused by natural factors, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.720 but modern famine, like from the nineteenth century on, has 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:15.480 largely been that plus government factors. Yeah, does that sound 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:15.959 about right? 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.680 Yeah. I think the very presence of famine in the 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:28.920 globalized era is just because of governments screwing things up. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.920 Yes, because there is enough food defeat everyone at this point. 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.199 Right, and enough of a trade supply lines and government 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.520 aid agencies and goos who are working to get that 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.600 food to those people in crises that a lot of 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:44.280 times there's people standing in their way. 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.920 Yes. Another big It can be sort of a domino 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:49.839 effect too. So when you have food security in one 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:55.440 place start to crumble or wane, then you have another 0:10:55.480 --> 0:11:00.960 country nearby maybe that may start stockpiling for themselves fewer 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.960 exports and protecting their own population, and then that drives 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:09.120 up prices for people that were depending on importing that food, 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:11.920 and it just starts this big vicious cycle. 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.800 Right exactly. Back in two thousand and eight, there were 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.800 food riots in Bangladesh and Haiti and Egypt. Do you 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:19.360 remember that. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:20.160 Because of rice? Right? 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.960 It was because of rice, but the global food price 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.400 had Like when they look at food prices, they look 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:31.200 at baskets of foods around the world. Put them together 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.000 and say this is how much food costs these days. 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.240 It rose between two thousand and two and two thousand 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.199 and eight, food prices rose one hundred and forty percent globally, 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:42.840 and a lot of people got priced out of the market. 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.320 And when they looked at what happened, apparently seventy five 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.560 percent of that price increase was due to using food 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:54.840 for biofuels, like using crops that normally would have gone 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:59.240 to food were being used to create energy like biofuels, right, 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.920 And so that drove grain prices up through the roof 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:07.360 because speculators got involved and food was being diverted from 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:11.240 the food supply into the energy supply, and then crop 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.440 land was being increasingly diverted to produce this stuff for 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.560 the energy supply as well, and it had a huge 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:22.440 effect that just drove food prices up around the world. 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.760 One of the big problems that can contribute to famines 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.400 is we'll see in a lot of famines there are 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:34.000 people still producing food for export because they can't afford it, 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.000 that are starving, but their country's starving to death, but 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.960 they can't afford it because they don't have the money 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.319 so ts, but the rest of us do have the money, 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:44.600 so keep growing that food. 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:49.880 Yeah, it's pretty devastating effect. Yeah, and it's obviously most 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.080 devastating for and you always hear about this the two groups, 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:56.680 the elderly and the young. I don't know about the 0:12:56.720 --> 0:12:59.080 total number of children, but the stat that I have 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.120 from the UN, the most recent stat I have, is 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:09.880 that twenty one thousand children die of hunger every day day. Yep, 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:12.200 geeze every four seconds. 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:14.400 Oh that's awful. 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:19.840 Yeah, it's sobering to say the least. So you know 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.319 what happens is, especially if you're younger, you're old, that 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.480 disease sets in and little kids and old people can't 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.520 fight it like you know the parents can. And then 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.120 you know the parents are in bad shape too. Well, 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:33.360 it's not like anyone's doing great. 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:36.559 When you're malnourished, your immune system starts to decline. And 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:41.319 when your immune system starts to decline, that's disease comes in. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:47.080 Especially if a group starts to migrate in search of food. Yeah, 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:52.120 because then you could be living in unsanitary conditions and 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.960 everybody has lower immune systems and you're basically in a herd. Now, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.640 like moving to a different place to get food, and 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.120 a disease can just rip through a population. 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.439 Well yeah, and that article points out that refugees are 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:11.079 not often resettled in, you know, the most hospitable areas either, 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.360 so moving doesn't necessarily help the cause in a lot 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.400 of cases. All right, let's take a break and we're 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:21.440 going to come back and talk a little bit about 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:56.000 some of the more noteworthy famines throughout history. All right, 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.880 So I said we're going to talk about historical famines. 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:04.280 I lied, that's coming later. Is that all right? 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:05.000 Yeah, that's fine. 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:07.080 All right, So we're going to talk You sent this 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:09.160 great article. What was the name of. 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.440 It, The History of Humanity is a History of hunger. 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:14.720 It was written by a guy named Mark Joseph Stern 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:15.640 on Slate. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:16.600 This is a good one. 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.240 Yeah. Yeah, he's basically ringing the belly's saying, hey, guys, 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:25.280 there seems to be this movement toward looking at famines 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:30.840 as the result of dictatorships, which we'll get into super interesting, 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.320 but let's not forget something else. And it's a little 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:38.680 something called global climate change. Yeah, because I think from 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.440 Stearn's perspective, and he doesn't put this explicitly but he 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:45.720 basically says, yes, dictatorships can have this effect and have 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:51.160 had this effect. It's proven. But really, honestly, that's fairly 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:56.120 localized from a globalized perspective. Yeah, right, even if it 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.720 just happens in China, that's still technically local as far 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.200 as the globe is concerned. And that means that there's 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:04.760 other people around the globe that can help the people 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.960 in China or Ethiopia or Ireland or wherever a famine happens. Again. Yeah, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.680 so we've got stuff in place, but if the entire 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.560 global food supply starts to become threatened by climate change, 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.520 then we're all toast, I think is ultimately the message 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:20.200 of what he's saying. 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.600 Yeah, and he was kind of saying like he kind 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:24.800 of set it up really well throughout history and then said, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.200 but nowadays, you know, things have never been better. There's 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.720 more food than ever, supply chain is more robust, so 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.080 like we shouldn't have anything to worry about right on 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.400 a global scale. And that's when he said, you know, 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:38.520 you might want to look at some of these studies. 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.240 And one of them, there was a report from the 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:46.000 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and they said that 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:49.240 rising temperatures around the globe are cutting into global food supply. 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.840 I think to the point now where if it continues 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:56.560 at current levels, there could be a two percent cut 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.320 in crop harvests each decade moving forward. Yeah, and it 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.400 might not sound like a lot two percent a decade though, 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.200 but when you couple that with a rising population, that's 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:11.600 a problem. Especially like in the short term, you might think, oh, well, 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.119 you can grow more food more places if if it's warmer, 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.240 if things are melting. True in a lot of cases, Yeah, 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.800 and certainly more CO two will increase yields in the 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:24.280 short term, but in the long term, warming trends will 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:27.360 make crops welt, especially near the tropics. I saw one 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.840 stat that said a three percent I'm sorry, three degree 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:36.280 celsius increase in temperature at the tropics could cut corn 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:40.479 crops by twenty percent. Wow, So it's you know, it's 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:41.080 a real threat. 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.960 Yeah. Well, even without a massive temperature change like that 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.640 or an increase in CO two, one of the trademarks 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:51.320 of climate change is severe weather, which we're seeing more 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.280 and more, it seems, Yeah, too much rain, severe weather 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:56.879 is not enough rain good for crops. Yeah, yeah, or 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.280 either one over like a couple of year period, you're 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:02.840 not going to be able to grow crops, or you're 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:06.520 growing season is going to be shortened, or the whole 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:08.720 crop will just be wiped out right there at the end. 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:09.960 Who knows well. 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:11.640 And then the other thing you need to think about, 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:14.080 which he points out, is well, we can invent our 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.879 way out of this, like technology will take care of 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:21.040 it always. And the study from NASA there's a more 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:24.119 dire wind from NASA than even the UN one that 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.959 basically says we're screwed. And the NASA one says technological 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:32.440 change tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:37.800 the scale of resource extraction, basically meaning it just is 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.879 sort of a net net, like we can't invent our 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:41.360 way out of. 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:44.720 It, right, Like it's net up till the point where 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.119 we run out of resources. Yes, then we're toast. Yes, 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:51.520 so there is a big threat from climate change. But 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.640 what Stern's saying is actually kind of retro to tell 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:59.080 you the truth, because up until the last couple decades, 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:06.120 everybody he looked at famine as strictly a natural disaster, 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:12.040 and it started to become increasingly apparent of what kind 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:16.840 of a man made disaster famine can be, especially when 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.080 people started to look at China's Great Famine back as 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:25.560 part of Mao's cultural revolution. So chuck China. I didn't 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.119 really realize this. I don't think I didn't know a 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.680 lot about it either. There's a something called when Mao 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:33.959 took over. When the Communists took over China in nineteen 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.440 forty nine, one of the things that Mao set his 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:42.320 sights on, Sherman Mauzi Dong, was that he wanted to 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.800 show the West just how great communism was, the same 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.600 dream of Stalin, But he also wanted to be the 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:53.000 top guy in the communist world too, so he was 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.359 very ambitious. And one of the ways to do that 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.560 was one of the same path that Stalin had followed, 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:03.359 which was, well, we've got a lot of agriculture here. 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.760 Let's use our agriculture to fund and finance industrialization. So 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.400 we're gonna shock the system. We're gonna take these old 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.760 agrarian backwards ways, we're gonna put them together in this 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:19.200 great communist way, and we're gonna squeeze as much productivity 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:21.159 out of them as we can. We're gonna funnel that 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.680 money into the workers in the cities. We're gonna make 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.399 China the glorious leader of the world, and we're going 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.159 to catch up to productivity to the productivity of the 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.280 UK or the US within ten years, five years, which 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:35.160 is insane. 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.480 Yeah, it's called the Great Leap Forward, and it was 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:41.679 a five year plan, which you're right it was. I 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:44.439 mean to call it ambitious. What it was was a 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:48.320 disaster in the making because what happened was, especially when 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.119 you live under someone like Malse Tongue, you're going to 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:54.240 have people that are afraid to tell the truth about 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.560 what's going on. So what happened from the very beginning 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.520 is officials, either driven fear or just because they were 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:05.320 so caught up in the movement, started exaggerating reports of 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.320 crop success, like they were literally reporting like three to 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.680 five times what they were really bringing in with their crops. 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.280 And then the authorities came along and basically took those 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:21.680 crops to the urban centers, killed off anyone who had 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:22.719 any opposition to this. 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:25.200 Well, I think they were also killed aff locally too, 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:27.119 Like if you were going to say, no, this guy's 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.240 lying about crop yields, Oh yeah, by the local people 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:31.480 would take care of you. 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.119 Yeah, you just disappear. And so what happened in nineteen 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.000 fifty eight, This is an actual quote. Malca Tongue said, 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:41.639 to distribute resources evenly will only ruin the great leap forward. 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.600 When there's not enough to eat, people starved to death, 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:46.840 it is better to let half the people die so 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.280 that the others can eat their fill. So this is there, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:50.000 you have it, right. 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:53.080 It was very clearly a man made famine, like they 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.640 were aware of it, and you wonder, like, why were 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.000 they coming to grab the grain? Well, grain had turned 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:04.040 from something that people produced locally for basically local consumption, 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.480 into a national commodity that was used to feed these 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:11.720 workers and then to sell on the global market to 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:16.800 finance the glorious revolution. Right, So when grain was turned 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.040 into a commodity and people were given quotas to meet, 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:22.400 if you wanted to get ahead, you could just say, oh, 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:26.120 we had this great, great yield this year, so we've 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:28.400 got all this grain. And there were cases where the 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:34.320 Chinese government would come and requisition more grain than they 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.120 had then they'd even grown that yea, based on these 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.560 false reports. Right, So people started to starve. Clearly, Mao 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.040 had no problem with it because it was the people 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:45.920 out in the It was the farmers, not the workers 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:50.639 who were starving. And in three years. The lowest number 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:53.880 anyone's willing to say of the total number of people 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.600 who died in three years from this famine is fifteen 0:22:57.680 --> 0:22:58.479 million people. 0:22:58.880 --> 0:22:59.840 Yeah, that's the lowest. 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.000 That's what the Chinese government itself officially says. 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:07.040