When food becomes an issue

The UN is concerned about global food supplies, prices, and the effect of climate disruptions. It's not a trivial question, whether you worry about the impact in human suffering, or about the resulting political instabilities. Right now the main factor behind rising prices seems to be higher demand (in particular from China), so this should lead to rising supplies [*] and hence a new equilibrium. However, climate change will also affect supplies; should the global agricultural system fail to adapt to the changing climate conditions, we'll be looking into a very messy situation.

[*] A caveat here: it depends on specific fiscal and trade policies - few countries have deregulated or economically efficient agricultural sectors, so milleages might and will vary.

Going on a bit longer about apocalyptic stuff...

Fun factoid from recent Cornell research (taken from the EurekAlert newsitem):

About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution, concludes a Cornell researcher. Such environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases (...)

There is no question that ecology is becoming -has become, will become- a core political and economic concern. The only question is how it will be integrated into markets and political systems... and how it will change them. It's not only our ecosystems what will be modified by climate change, and our engineering practices what will have to shift to prevent further damage; our political and societal systems themselves will be deeply modified by these events and our reactions.