Ljubljana - Pondering on this year's Ecological Debt Day, Delo warns in Friday's piece headlined It's Clear There Will be Hunger that it is only a matter of time when the West will have to face billions rather than just millions of hungry refugees, which it says will be a much bigger problem than the current drought or the war in Ukraine.

We've long lived thinking that modern society is a society of services rather than manufacturing with agriculture being considered as a pre-modern activity that someone else should be doing, because we have so much money that we can easily pay for food. Or we can make agriculture industrial with all the pesticides and monocultures.

But it's clear from history that practically all large empires collapsed because they were unable to provide enough food for all, with natural disasters and wars being the other major reasons.

Today, countries with a total of three billion people do not produce enough food and don't have enough money to buy it elsewhere, risks are also increasing in rich countries among the poor while Slovenia too is among the countries with insufficient food production.

Highlighting climate change and challenges such as drought, heat waves and greenhouse gas emissions, Delo says that once the West has to face billions of hungry climate refugees, this will be a bigger problem than the current drought or the war in Ukraine, and it is only a matter of time when this happens.

It thus urges "descending from the cloud of superiority", recognising that we need the rest of the world and especially natural resources, and starting talking and working together.

"If we really want to lead by example, all emissions and all water and material consumed in making or producing things for us will have to be taken into account and paid for fairly... The money we spend on weapons would be very useful here," concludes the commentary.