Censored 2014 Read Online Free Page A

to which customers will have no choice but to conform.
    For sources and further analysis, see page 127 and the “Health and the Environment” News Cluster.
    15. Food Riots: The New Normal?
    Reduced land productivity, combined with elevated oil costs and population growth, threaten a systemic, global food crisis. Citing findings from a study by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, published by the Royal Society, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed identified the links among intensifying economic inequality, debt, climate change, and fossil fuel dependency to conclude that a global food crisis is now “undeniable.”
    â€œGlobal food prices have been consistently higher than in preceding decades,” reported Ahmed, leading to dramatic price increases in staple foods and triggering food riots across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The crux of this global phenomenon is climate change: severe natural disasters including drought, flood, heat waves, and monsoons have affected major regional food baskets. By mid-century, Ahmed reported, “world crop yields could fall as much as 20–40 percent because of climate change alone.”
    Industrial agricultural methods that disrupt soil have also contributed to impending food shortages. As a result, Ahmed reported, global land productivity has “dropped significantly,” from 2.1 percent during 1950–90 to 1.2 percent during 1990–2007.
    By contrast with Ahmed’s report, corporate media coverage of food insecurity has tended to treat it as a local and episodic problem. For example, an April 2008 story in the Los Angeles Times covered food riots in Haiti, which resulted in three deaths. Similarly, a March 2013 New York Times piece addressed how the loss of farmland and farm labor to urbanization contributed to rising food costs in China. Corporate media have not connected the dots to analyze how intensifying inequality, debt, climate change, and consumption of fossil fuels have contributed to the potential for a global food crisis in the near future.
    For sources and further analysis, see page 127 and the “Health and the Environment” News Cluster.
    16. Journalism Under Attack Around the Globe
    The world is a more dangerous place for journalists. Journalists are increasingly at risk of being killed or imprisoned for doing their jobs, a situation that imperils press freedom. From 2011 to 2012, the number of journalists behind bars because of their work increased from 53 to 232, and the 70 journalists killed in the line of duty during 2012 represents a 43 percent increase, compared with 2011, according to a study by the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ). Over the past two decades, a journalist is killed once every eight days.
    The CPJ also published a Risk List, identifying the ten countries worldwide where press freedom suffered the most in 2012. Notably, half of the nations on the Risk List—Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Ecuador—“practice some form of democracy and exert significant influence on a regional or international stage.”
    â€œWhen journalists are silenced, whether through violence or laws, we all stand to lose because perpetrators are able to obscure misdeeds, silence dissent, and disempower citizens,” said CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney.
    The CPJ has been a leader in advocating for full implementation of a five-year-old UN resolution calling for protection of journalists in conflict zones, in order to guarantee a free and safe press. Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the freedom to “impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” making freedom of press a transnational right.
    The New York Times ran a story on the CPJ report on February 15, 2013, noting the alarming rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned during 2012. However, the Times’ report did not address the possible UN resolution or freedom of