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To be fair to the kids, Germany is still a capitalist country, and if food prices go up, people (including kids) at the bottom of the social pyramid will go hun
by pasabagi 5y ago
To be fair to the kids, Germany is still a capitalist country, and if food prices go up, people (including kids) at the bottom of the social pyramid will go hungry.
Obviously, that's a political choice. States can have free school meals as a easy target for budget cuts, or as a cornerstone of their responsibility towards child welfare. That'll still be true even if we hit 2 degrees of global warming.
The point is, given the way politics works at the moment, it would absolutely not be surprising if children were dying of starvation in Europe in a future of catastrophic global warming. In the UK, the number of children admitted to hospital with malnutrition in 2020 was almost 2,500. Obviously, the UK is an extreme case, but you can imagine in a state of extreme crisis, food supply shocks, and displacement (wildfires, etc) this could become endemic in europe in general.
- adrianN 5y agoIf children go hungry in Germany, that's a failure in the system. It happens, but rarely. Everybody in Germany has enough food and shelter if the system is working as it is intended.
- soco 5y agoI just returned from Frankfurt. Plenty of people rough sleeping on the streets, so the system is definitely not working properly.
- pasabagi 5y agoThe system costs money, and when state resources are tight because they're trying to handle catastrophic global warming, it's easy to imagine that money going elsewhere. Just look at all the 'belt-tightening' that occurred after the financial crisis.Then imagine what's going to happen to the international economy when the fundamentals are continuously being smashed by extreme weather, mass displacement, crop failure, political instability, and war.