Increased international awareness and unity is the first step in combatting world hunger, singer and songwriter John Denver told a crowd of about 400 in the Science Center yesterday.

"We take advantage of every conceivable opportunity to separate ourselves from one another--we've forgotten that we're all human beings," Denver, a member of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger, said.

Denver, who drew two standing ovations during his remarks, is giving a nationwide series of interviews and speeches to highlight the hunger problem.

"This separatism is exactly that which we need to overcome if we're going to survive in this world," he said. "We're making extinct 2000 species of animals and plants per year. What if one of those species is mankind?" he added.

Between 15 and 20 million people starve to death annually, though the world has twice as much food as it needs to support its current population of 4.5 billion, Denver said. "It's an educational problem, one of distributing food among nations--not a scarcity problem," he added.

He said hunger "is a strong enough issue--one which touches enough people inside themselves" to promote unity, adding that only recently have Americans become aware of the transnational importance of critical issues like energy.

"You don't know how lucky we are in our affluence--it's the way we've been brought up to live," Denver said while criticizing America for its high level of oil consumption. "It's no longer appropriate--we're actually talking about going to war to get gasoline, not to get what we need, but what we want," he added.

Denver called for public pressure to increase developmental aid--possibly through decreasing military expenditures. "Foreign aid has either been weapons assistance or defense assistance, or is exploitative. We've got to stop that," he said.

"If we'd given Iran not weapons but books, hoes, spades and food, we would not have the problem we're dealing with now," he added.

"We must assist the developing world to get on its feet. We do have the wherewithal to eliminate hunger in the next 15 years," he said.

Denver also criticized world dependence on nuclear energy, adding that demonstrations like the one at Seabrook can set a precedent for public action on pressing problems like energy or hunger.

When a listener asked Denver how he could justify working on the commission as an appointee of President Carter, who she said had supported military expenditures instead of developmental aid, he said, "I refuse to get involved in the election or the campaign. I'm just serving my president right now--he's the one who can get things done."

But he added, "I deplore the fact that he's going in the direction of military spending. We've got to turn it around, and if I speak to him, I'll certainly tell him how I feel."