The United Kingdom government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, predicted that the year 2030 will witness a “perfect storm of food, energy and water shortages” across the globe. Speaking at the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference in London, Beddington cited a growing global population as the driving factor behind the anticipated shortages. Beddington predicts that demand for food alone will spike by 50%, but that the crisis can be confronted now by adopting better farming methods and genetically modified crops that can survive ongoing damage to the climate.
