Julian Cribb is a persistent man. The veteran Australian science writer specialises in “threats to humanity”: he is what you might call an extinctionologist. Since 2010 he has published books titled The Coming Famine, Poisoned Planet and How to Survive the 21st Century (not a hopeful read) and now this. Next, perhaps, a practical volume on the stocking of the Cribb cellar. I’ll bet there’s more in his Armageddon-prep stores than a catering tin of Nescafé and some bulk-buy loo roll.
Inevitably, this latest doom-tome is a reiteration of themes Cribb – and many others in the field – have told us about before: today’s unsustainable food systems and the impossible job of feeding the estimated 10 billion people inhabiting the planet by 2050 encapsulates the multiheaded crisis humanity faces today. If you haven’t heard all this then Food Or War is a good primer, vivid and punchy. What is the most destructive implement on the planet? The human jawbone, writes Cribb. “Every year, in the course of wolfing through 8.5tn meals, it dislodges more than 75bn tonnes of topsoil, swallows 7bn tonnes of fresh water, generates 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions and distributes 5m tonnes of concentrated biocides.” But you suspect that people who have managed to avoid any knowledge of the curse of human overconsumption do not buy books like this one. Even Cribb must suspect – after all the output – that writing about the problem may be a delusion of solving it.
We need the reminder that hungry humans do unthinkable things
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