On 22 November, 2007, Richard Heinberg, author and former advisor to the National Petroleum Council, gave a speech at the Soil Association’s annual Lady Eve Balfour lecture. He warned that warned that the lives of billions of people were threatened by a food crisis caused by our dependence on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.
Higher oil prices, the loss of farmland to biofuel crops, climate change and the loss of natural resources would combine with population growth to create an unprecedented food shortage, he claimed. The only way to avoid a world food crisis was a planned and rapid reduction of fossil fuel use – oil, coal and gas – and a switch to more organic methods in the growing and delivery of food. It would mean a return to living off the land not seen for 150 years.
A press report on the speech by the Telegraph may be found here.
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