Weather, food prices, fossil fuels and instability are all linked. There are droughts in Russia, Ukraine, China and elsewhere, and floods in Australia, Pakistan and other countries that have made prospects look dim for this year’s harvest for a number of agricultural commodities. This has led to stockpiling by unprincipled despotic leaders and companies. Oil prices have gone up and prices for commodities like wheat and grain have spiked. In Sindh province, almost one quarter of children under five are malnourished while 6% are severely underfed. People in these life-threatening conditions are not in reflective mode but in survival mode. They merely live this hour to survive to the next. If people have enough to eat and enough money to purchase other necessities, they may have the luxury of occasionally thinking about life, being contemplative and they may try to make sense of human existence.
