For The Long Emergency Somewhere out there an alarm bell is ringing

I've been looking over a book recently called "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler. The book has variously been called fearmongering and pessimistic and that probably is true. However being pessimistic doesn't mean that you're wrong. Though I guess it's worse if he happened to be not pessimistic enough. "The Long Emergency" details what will happen to the world when we run out of cheap oil, and everyone who can see the gas price can clearly see that his prediction is coming true. The book focuses on what will need to change in the developed world for us to survive the slow fade as we run out of oil and need to adjust our lifestyles to the new economy. But before the long emergency takes hold another emergency will take place. It will happen when the developing world of 2nd and 3rd world countries start to have food shortages as the cost of oil and transporting food rises and as food production land is converted BioFuels. This Emergency is happening now. The price of basic foods is increasing around the world and in some cases the price of staples like rice and wheat has more than doubled. While this will be annoying for people in the west where food takes up about 10% of income, it will be devastating to the developing world where food is around 80% of a families budget. While we in the west can survive a rise from 10% to 20% of our income for food through cutting back on what we eat and choosing to cut out a few extra purchases here and there. In the developing world this is not the case. If food costs you 8000 pesos out of the 10,000 you earn every month you may be able to survive, but if it costs 16,000 pesos out of 10,000 even with cutting back you will not be able to survive. It's hard to know how this emergency will play out, hopefully we'll be lucky and it will be over with quickly but it's hard to believe that at least some more people won't die as a result before we truely see the end of oil.