Food Shortages

How important is food? We take it for granted, but many a government has been brought down by people rioting for want of bread. Now, some scientists fear that the combined forces of population growth and global warming will decrease the already insufficient food supply and wreak havoc on poor nations.
Population growth stresses the water supply. In order to provide more water, deeper wells must be produced. This uses energy, and since fossil fuels are the cheapest and most readily aviable, sources of energy, these are most likely the ones which will be uses. This will spur clilmate change. Climate change will lead to droughts and floods, and these will lead to the loss of topsoil because of wiind and water. Also, the heat will kill many crops which are grown. Population growth is linked to loss of topsoil and rising temperatures along with being a food problem in itself, making it the leading cause of food shortages. But loss of topsoil is also caused by clearcutting and other man-made disruptions of the environment, and the countries which use the highest levels of fossil fuels also tend to be the countries with the lowest population growth rates.
If poor countries suffer from food shortages, chaos will soon follow. And poor nations, especially the wildly unstable ones, are more likely to spread diseases (like AIDS), and the sale of drugs and weapons tends to increase. Also, unstable nations are more likely to accept extremist govenments and leaders, leading to extreme conflicts.
There are several basic, if not simple solutions to this problem. Planting trees would reduce the loss of topsoil and the amount of CO2 in the air (and growing fruit or nut trees would help directly, at least to some extent). Creating cheap, sustainable energy will help slow climate change. Increased water management, including conservation and recycling, would ease the strain on the water supply. And healthcare, at least on a basic level, combined with a reasonable sex education and family planning program, would ease the burden on large and poor populations.