Everyone behaves as a distributive pronoun
Answer:
The words scarcity, famine, and abstain are all negative words. Also, scarcity and famine mean a big shortage of food, and abstain means restraining yourself from enjoying something, so maybe this has something to do with that?
Even though I have not read the passage, I think that McGonigal chose those words because they were describing something bad, or talking about something to do with food or a shortage of something.
hope this helps
The veranda is a porch almost so the ground I take it