Full Idea
Nature often takes the means by which we live. A single hurricane, a flight of locusts, or an inundation, or a trifling chemical change in an edible root, starve a million people.
Clarification
an 'inundation' is a flood
Gist of Idea
Hurricanes, locusts, floods and blight can starve a million people to death
Source
John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116)
Book Reference
'The Existence of God', ed/tr. Hick,John [Macmillan 1964], p.116
A Reaction
[second sentence compressed] The 'edible root' is an obvious reference to the Irish potato famine. Some desertification had human causes, but these are telling examples.