As IF Times

link Hunger Seen Worsening by Oxfam as Climate Change Heats Up World – Bloomberg.

They might have been able to get away with this back in the ’60’s when access to information was scant.  Images on TV of emaciated children holding bowls of milk would send people scurrying to write generous cheques to Oxfam.  Marketing to Americans’ natural compassion was an easy sell.  The current program of selling the idea of pervasive world hunger by tying it to the spurious cause of our day is either thinly veiled crappy marketing or simply pandering to the new generation of gullible people in America.

There’s probably somebody hungry in the world somewhere, but the chance that it’s linked in any way to global warming is as likely as a fat chicken in Ethiopia as one of my good friends is fond of saying.  People who count these kinds of things claim that Americans ( and that means Canadians too ) throw away over 400 pounds of food per person per year, so there’s no shortage here in North America or indeed most Western countries.  Unfortunately, this wasted food can’t just be transferred like a journal entry to those in the world who could legitimately use the food.  Indeed, in this part of the world, the people who are actively in the food distribution business such as McDonalds and KFC are demonized for providing too much cheap food.

According to Oxfam, ““The changing climate is already jeopardizing gains in the fight against hunger, and it looks set to worsen,” In addition, Oxfam said. “A hot world is a hungry world.”   The people who penned this little slogan have obviously never spent any time in the tropical Amazon rainforest where it’s hot 365 days of the year and yet things still grow there like body hair at a lesbian convention.   They must also have never considered that in Saudi Arabia, where the average temperature is over 100 degrees for half of the year and yet few are starving there either.  The heat=hunger argument looks iffy.

So how is it that global warming only affects people in some parts of the world whereas in others, people have so much food that they’re throwing it away? This disparity of reality can be solved by looking closely at exactly which constituencies are served by Oxfam.  Their website claims ‘over 90 countries’, but when you look at the list:  http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/countries-we-work-in  The Philippines, Egypt, South Africa, Russia and the UK  are probably not their main focus spots.  The vast majority of those countries served by aid are in continental Africa.  Interestingly, many of those countries listed are in the midst of on-going tribal and religious wars.  Anyone in the farmer business in any of those countries is not going to be interested in farming or ranching if someone is likely to plant a bullet in them.

The issue of hunger in these countries is one of security and political stability not one of a few hot days ’caused’ by someone driving their SUV.  Adding more tax to a gallon of gasoline will no more alleviate hunger than would taxing Listerine in America solve halitosis worldwide.  It’s all hot air.

link Soda Wars: Michelle Obama tells kids to drink water | WashingtonExaminer.com.

I suppose it’s a noble thing to use your position of influence to persuade others to do good things.  Issues  and conditions that affect many people but which require financial support to ameliorate are worthwhile causes.  Jerry Lewis has been associated with the Muscular Dystrophy cause for decades and of course Pamela Anderson has been linked to PETA.  World hunger, AIDS, etc etc etc all have their champions.  When Nancy Reagan was the First Lady, she took it upon herself to fight drug use via the famous “Just Say No” campaign.

It gets increasingly harder to find worthwhile causes that haven’t been associated with celebrities.  Michelle Obama finds herself in this pickle and so initially decided to wage a war on fat, especially among kids.  The first pass was to introduce, actually mandate the creation of legumes and veggies onto school lunch menus.  Yum!  Oddly, children weren’t particularly fond of arugula and carrot sticks…go figure.

As this campaign is as successful as the humus dip at a Denny’s, a logical idea then was to make success easier to achieve.  How about the idea of drinking…water!  It would be much easier to point to statistics that will eventually show that the program was working, kids are drinking water! We do have some reservations about getting  kids to buy into this though.  Smart Alecs will say “Water? that’s the stuff they flush toilets with!”.  No doubt there will be expensive public service campaigns expounding the virtues of drinking water with accompanying instructions on how to do it properly.  Let’s see, right hand on tap, turn clockwise…do not overfill!  Pamphlets will be distributed in schools and billboards created to ensure maximum exposure.  Facebook pages will be created on which you can “like” water.  As an accompaniment, there will also be supplementary instructions on other confusing things that children may need help with.

Breathing for example: techniques for proper air ingestion.  Let’s not forget walking instructions.  There will be discussions on the necessity of alternating feet.

I hereby wish to contribute my suggestion for how to tackle the devastating issues of child obesity and water consumption simultaneously.

Let’s remove all water faucets from homes.  Let’s direct water only to large cisterns that regionally serve communities.  To get water, children must walk some arbitrary distance, let’s say 2 miles, to carry buckets of water back to the home for consumption.   In many African countries, they are way ahead of us on this.  We combine exercise with utility, sheer genius.  Have you ever seen a fat African kid? Sometimes the old ways are the best.

Next: breathing in and out. And walking tips, is it necessary to alternate feet?