Human disasters.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

It's been hard watching the news lately, what with the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China both claiming tens of thousands of victims.

Like Hurricane Katrina, these natural disasters were compounded by governmental malfeasance: the criminal failure of the Myanmar junta to let foreign aid arrive in any timely fashion; the shoddy buildings (including schools) that the Chinese rulers had slapped together in their mad dash to modernity.

The scenes of calamity were heartbreaking, and I'm sure you reached out to help in any way you could, just as staff members here posted information on where to send relief funds. I imagine some of them dipped into their unswollen salaries to do so, as I did. (I went with the U.N. World Food Program, but many relief agencies were doing valiant work.)

There is another international disaster right now, though, that is not at all natural--and that's the food crisis. Prices for some of the most basic staples have been doubling almost overnight around the world. For the three billion people who subsist on $2 a day or less, this is a crushing blow. No wonder there were riots in a dozen countries. The only wonder is that there were not more.

To make sense of this crisis, we turn this month to Frances Moore Lappé the author, most famously, of Diet for a Small Planet . She stresses the crucial point that the food crisis is not about a shortage of food. It's about a shortage of democracy. It's about policies formulated in Washington to help multinational corporations. And it's about failing to empower people at the grassroots the world over.

When crises hit, we often focus on the urgent, immediate problem of relief, which is understandable. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fundamental solutions, and that's where Frances Moore Lappé comes in.

I almost can't listen to George Bush anymore, and I almost...