Article Title: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? Author/Source: Lester R.

Brown A: List the major ideas, concepts or key points- point by point - The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation - Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are pushing poor countries into chaos - Such failed states can export disease, terrorism, illicit drugs, weapons and refugees. - Water shortages, soil losses and rising temperatures from global warming are placing serve limits on food production. - Without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, the author argues, a series of government collapses, could threaten the world order. - The spreading scarcity of food is emerging as the central cause of state failure. Food shortages arise out of a tangled web of causes, effects and feedbacks whose interactions often intensify the effects of any one factor acting alone. - According to the author, todays food shortages are not the result of one-time, weather-driven crop failures but rather of four critical long-term trends: rapid population growth, loss of topsoil, spreading water shortages and rising temperatures. - The shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures of global warming are making it increasingly hard to expand the worlds grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand.

- What is to be done? - Plant trees to reduce flooding, conserve soil, sequester carbon and half net deforestation. - Replace fossil fuels with renewables for electricity and heat. - Offer universal basic health care, reproductive health care and family planning. - Recycle wastewater to raise its productivity, as this sewage treatment plant does for Orange County, California. B: Summarize the AUTHORs main point or idea- at LEAST 1-2 paragraphs The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation. The shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures of global warming are making it increasingly hard to expand the worlds grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. What is to be done? Plant trees to reduce flooding, conserve soil, sequester carbon and half net deforestation. Replace fossil fuels with renewables for electricity and heat. Offer universal basic health care, reproductive health care and family planning. Recycle wastewater to raise its productivity, as this sewage treatment plant does for Orange County, California. C: Write a reaction paragraph to the article stating your own thoughts on the topic, using specific citations from the article to support your views After reading this article, I learned that there are three main factors that According to the author, todays food shortages are not the result of one-time, weather-driven crop failures but rather of four critical long-term trends: rapid population growth, loss of topsoil, spreading water

shortages and rising temperatures. I think that we can solve the problem just like the author showed us in the article. We can solve it by planting trees to reduce flooding, conserve soil, and sequester carbon and half net deforestation. Replace fossil fuels with renewables for electricity and heat. Offer universal basic health care, reproductive health care and family planning. Recycle wastewater to raise its productivity, as this sewage treatment plant does for Orange County, California. So What? Food shortages Civilization Decrease human population What If? Everyone worked together plan B? -> Enough food, freshwater What Does This Remind Me Of? Water Lack of freshwater Says Who? Lester R. Brown