The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

Without enough food, there is only hunger, chaos, and violence. Malevolent rulers and dictators throughout history have known this and exploited it for their own ends. Russian president Vladimir Putin not only understands the political power of food, he also weaponizes it. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he deliberately disrupted the country’s wheat supply, triggering a global food crisis. Until the invasion, Ukraine was one of the top wheat exporters in the world. By blockading Ukrainian ports, blowing up rail lines, stealing grain, and killing farmers, Putin effectively took about 20 million tons of wheat off the market. Global wheat production is about 850 million tons, so that was hardly enough to cause a worldwide famine. But it was enough to cause the price of wheat to jump more than 60 percent. In the US, where the average American spends less than 10 percent of their income on food, rising food prices put the squeeze on many working families and became a hot political issue in the 2022 midterm elections. But for people in the developing world, many of whom spend 40 percent or more of their income on food, a big jump in the price of wheat was the difference between eating and going hungry. In 2022, high food prices sparked riots in Sri Lanka and pushed an additional twenty-three million people toward starvation in sub-Saharan Africa. “By attacking Ukraine, the breadbasket of the world, Putin is attacking the world’s poor, spiking global hunger when peo...