Food scarcity--another reason for Middle East rioting?

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/real-reason-middle-east-rioting-1348149855

A study released by the team under the direction of professor Yaneer Bar-Yam in September 2011 (PDF) charted fluctuations in global food price since the financial crisis of 2007-8 and showed that, with each successive peak, citizens in food-importing countries reliably destabilize the political leadership. “When food prices go up,” Bar-Yam told me this spring, “when food becomes unavailable, people don’t have anything to lose. That’s when social order is itself affected.” The most recent such peak came in late 2010-early 2011 and yielded what is commonly called the Arab Spring.

Bar-Yam also told me that the team’s model predicted another massive food price spike this fall/winter, even bigger than the last. This foreseeable crest was only exacerbated and expedited by this summer’s drought- and heatwave-bred corn disaster. And, indeed, the World Bank recently announced that food prices have reached record highs worldwide. As predicted, we have begun to see the concomitant rise in political instability in various forms, including riots and strikes.

[Scootaloo]

1. No, no; it's all about us. Silly.

Don't you know America is all that people around the world think about?

[antigone382]

2. It wasn't another reason, it was the major reason.

A lot of our current woes are due to ecological factors. It stuns me how few people remember the fairly direct connection between oil prices skyrocketing and the economy crashing...energy scarcity, climate change, loss of fresh water supplies, and the food shortages that result from those last two, will continue to wreak havoc on global economic and social stability for a long, long time to come.

I hope we adapt before it is too late, but I am coming back from a memorial for Larry Gibson. We watched the documentary Low Coal, which drove home the utter insufficiency of the actions we are taking to protect the resources on which our survival depends--and the people who live where those resources exist--from irreparable and far-reaching destruction.

[Mimosa]

3. 40+ years ago all this was predicted

Odd how people who live in arid climates where they can't grow enough food, where there is no industry to support them have steadily increased their populations. IIRC, 25 years ago in the Middle East the average woman gave birth to about 6 children. The births per woman appear to have declined since then:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/eg.html

In Egypt at least 70% of the population is under 35 years of age. For decades when I see street scenes or protest demonstrations I've noticed the crowds are usually all young men, who appear very physically fit.

Iran's reproductive numbers have declined as well.

http://iransnews.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/irans-population-tells-the-truth/

[eridani]

4. Good point n/t