One billion. That’s a nice, round number, innit? Has a one
at the front and a bunch of zeroes. Looks quite nice actually as numbers go
though in this case, it most certainly isn’t as that’s a really rough estimate
of how many people around the globe go hungry every day. I made as a good a guess as I can, not using the Fox
News logic behind mocking global warming (as attractive as that
technique is).
I lied, of course, in the above
paragraph-this is an actual number from 2013 that’s about as accurate
as anything anyone anywhere can or will ever find in terms of an educated guess
on world hunger. There will come a day when we will need to google (or whatever
the next google is called) to find out what “world hunger” even means, or was
it eve real or just an urban myth like trickle-down economics and Citizen
United.
But it won’t be today. And it’s not looking good for tomorrow
either. When you think of how much food the world’s farmers produce (and how
much food we in the first world waste and/or throw away) it’s pretty obvious
hunger is not the problem, distribution is.
And unless and until enough of us want to make sure no
one goes to bed hungry, people will always
go to bed hungry, get up hungry and eventually die (of hunger). Their passing
will not make the crawl on bottom of the screen of the Keeping
Up with the Kardashians TV Show on “E.”
I got to thinking about all of this when I came across this news nugget on line (that ten free hours of
AOL has already paid for itself!). When rates of obesity in this country are
exceeded only by the sales of stretch yoga pants and feed bag rentals for those
all you can eat buffets, that there’s something like Major League
Eating, for competitive eaters mind
you, is high up on the list of half-shoulder shrug explanations we offer the first
interstellar travelers who touch down here on The Big Blue Marble.
After we invite them to lunch, of course.
-bill kenny
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