Most Popular This Week
- Not to Worry, Rape Victims Who Want An Abortion: We Won't Charge You With Felony Tampering With Evidence, Just Your Doctor
- The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy
- Obama Administration Compromise Would Implement No-Cost Birth Control
- The Right of the People, Even At the Airport
- To End Extreme Poverty, Let’s Try Ending Extreme Wealth
- The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy
- Don’t Put a Fork in It: On the Perils of Genetically Engineered Salmon
- Five Possibilities for the Next Great Progressive Push
- An Economic Alternative to Exploitative Free Market Capitalism
- As Hurricane Victims Freeze, Billionaire Mayor Gives Away $1 Billion to Wealthy Med School
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Future of Food Riots
The food riots began in Algeria more than a week ago, and they are going to spread. During the last global food shortage, in 2008, there was serious rioting in Mexico, Indonesia, and Egypt. We may expect to see that again this time, only bigger and more widespread.
Most people in these countries live in a cash economy, and a large proportion live in cities. They buy their food, they don't grow it. That makes them very vulnerable, because they have to eat almost as much as people in rich countries do, but their incomes are much lower.
The poor, urban multitudes in these countries (including China and India) spend up to half of their entire income on food, compared to only about ten percent in the rich countries. When food prices soar, these people quickly find that they simply lack the money to go on feeding themselves and their children properly - and food prices now are at an all-time high.
"We are entering a danger territory," said Abdolreza Abbassian, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation, on 5 January. The price of a basket of cereals, oils, dairy, meat and sugar that reflects global consumption patterns has risen steadily for six months, and has just broken through the previous record, set during the last food panic in June, 2008.
"There is still room for prices to go up much higher," Abbassian added, "if for example the dry conditions in Argentina become a drought, and if we start having problems with winter kill in the northern hemisphere for the wheat crops." After the loss of at least a third of the Russian and Ukrainina grain crop in last summer's heat wave and the devastating floods in Australia and Pakistan, there's no margin for error left .
It was Russia and India banning grain exports in order to keep domestic prices down that set the food prices on the international market soaring. Most countries cannot insulate themselves from this global price rise, because they depend on imports for a lot of domestic consumption. But that means that a lot of their population cannot buy enough food for their families, so they go hungry. Then they get angry, and the riots start.
Is this food emergency a result of global warming? Maybe, but all these droughts, heat waves and floods could also just be a run of really bad luck. What is nearly certain is that the warming will continue, and that in the future there will be many more weather disasters due to climate change. Food production is going to take a big hit.
Global food prices are already spiking whenever there are a few local crop failures, because the supply barely meets demand even now. As the big emerging economies grow, Chinese and Indian and Indonesian citizens eat more meat, which places a great strain on grain supplies. Moreover, world population is now passing through seven billion, on its way to nine billion by 2050. We will need a lot more food than we used to.
Some short-term fixes are possible. If the US government ended the subsidies for growing maize (corn) for "bio-fuels", it would return about a quarter of US crop land to food production. If people ate a little less meat, if more African land was brought into production, if more food was eaten and less was thrown away, then maybe we could buy ourselves another fifteen or twenty years before demand really outstripped supply.
On the other hand, about a third of all the irrigated land in the world depends on pumping groundwater up from aquifers that are rapidly depleting. When the flow of irrigation water stops, the yield of that highly productive land will drop hugely. Desertification is spreading in many regions, and a large amount of good agricultural land is simply being paved over each year. We have a serious problem here.
Climate change is going to make the situation immeasurably worse. The modest warming that we have experience so far may not be the main cause of the floods, droughts and violent storms that have hurt this year's crops, but the rise in temperature will continue because we cannot find the political will to stop the greenhouse-gas emissions.
The rule of thumb is that we lose about 10 percent of world food production for every rise of one degree C in average global temperature. So the shortages will grow and the price of food will rise inexorably over the years. The riots will return again and again.
In some places the rioting will turn into revolution. In others, the rioters will become refugees and push up against the borders of countries that don't want to let them in. Or maybe we can get the warming under control before it does too much damage. Hold your breath, squeeze your eyes tight shut, and wish for a miracle.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
89 Comments so far
Show AllThank you Gwynne for the detailed research. One thing you left out, however: the always present bubbling speculation in commodities by international Capital. 'Shortages' and starvation are opportunities for those who wield the Glock 19 with extended clip of Capital accumulation.
Speculation hurts people in the short run, but in the long run it helps. Whenever shortages begin to loom even slightly on the horizon, then prices tend to pick up. If this did not happen, then 'cheap food' would tend to lead to 'eat, drink and be merry.' We also would not see farmers going all out to grow a little more. Without speculation, coming catastrophes would be worse. Overpopulation guarantees that things will not work out well.
You have to be kidding. This is not even controversial. There is absolutely no evidence that speculation in food ever "helps" anyone other than the speculators.
There is absolutely no connection between speculation and what farmers do and no connection between people having easy access to food and then being lazy - "eat, drink and be merry."
TA, I thought you made some good points yesterday, but I think you are totally wrong today. How do you propose to set the price of food without speculation? Do you think the price of food should always be 'reasonable' no matter if there is surplus or shortage? I was aghast by your remark that there is "absolutely no connection between speculation and what farmers do..." As a farmer I know darn well that if prices are low I will not splurge on the most expensive seed, apply more than the minimum of fertilizer or worry too much about a few weeds sucking nutrients away from the crop. The price I expect to get for my crop makes a big difference in the way I farm, and I know most of my neighbors are no different.
The present day speculation in grain has little relationship to the past, not since Goldman Sachs has begun manipulating grain speculation.
I believe it is a Vanity Fair, possibly a Rolling Stone reprint, that shows how grain speculation in the USA has been totally corrupted by cruel Wall Street profiteers.
It is very difficult to believe you are a grain farmer and are not aware of the injury done to red hard rye shorts.
Back when the financial sector was regulated and speculators actually had to take possession of the commodity being purchased there may have been a milligram of truth in Greg's statements.
In the current unregulated financial sector commodity speculation benefits only the speculator and hurts the rest of us.
Yes, I think the price of food - and water, and air, and public education, and public health and safety regulation, and energy, and transportation, and communications, and access to information, and protection from fire and police departments - should all be "reasonable no matter if there is surplus or shortage."
Yes.
I did not say that many farmers do not think - or hope - that they can keep ahead of the speculation game and respond to it intelligently. Many do. It is a fool's game. The lag time between high prices driven up by speculation and a crop coming into bearing is 5-10 years for us. How can we possibly respond to that? We can't. You can not possibly deny that this is an issue - the controversy over marketing orders, etc.
You grow corn, which is heavily subsidized so you have a floor - you are immune to speculation that drives prices down. The roll of the die has been in your favor for a number of years at the high end, so you have done well there.
I see you are thinking too much of YOUR situation just as I did yesterday. The vast majority of farmers do not have a 5-10 year time frame on growing a crop. Most definitely US commodity grain farmers are right now planning on doing their very best to grow their biggest crop ever with prices as attractive as they currently are. The subsidized price floor on most commodity crops is so far below current prices that it realistically has no value. Perhaps it will someday, but that seems unlikely unless there is massive population reduction or a world-wide true depression. I would also say that in your first sentence your statement that energy should be reasonably priced whether there is surplus or shortage, is simply silly. Where are we supposed to endlessly get all this cheap energy?
Even if you have a fast turnaround, still you have to invest in equipment and acreage. Yes, acreage has increased dramatically for grain farmers. What happens when prices collapse? You can put less acres in corn, but all of your expanded fixed costs will still be there, no? You are correct that the floor may not come into play and that prices may never come down. If that is the case, then the public issue interest has not been addressed. The "market" may be operating spectacularly well for the players, but feeding the public is then completely alienated from that. Your idea that if the demand is there, that farmers will ramp up is dangerous. Food is not a discretionary purchase.
By the way, this may be of interest to you. We routinely put in corn and vegetables to even things out a little. With global warming, the fruit trees are all coming out of dormancy too early which means they are then more vulnerable to routine fists in April. There have been 12 straight years of crop loss as a result. Last Spring everything was 3 weeks ahead of schedule, and we had huge losses. As soon as we realized the damage, we started to plant vegetable like crazy.
Your notion that if we have public supports for various things that there will then be shortages - "where are we supposed to endlessly get all this cheap energy?" you ask - is not supportable, nor is the idea that "supply and demand" has a regulatory effect that is in the public interest.
In most of the corn belt, everything except some conservation program land is farmed. Around here, no one HAS to increase investment in equipment or land. "Feeding the public" is NOT completely alienated from our speculative futures system. It is intimately connected. Without higher prices when shortages seem likely, then shortages would be all but guaranteed and worse. Around the corn belt, farmers can only "ramp up" a little, but it does and will help. Other parts of the world will see more acres come into production. That is good in nearly all cases. The 'type' of food purchased IS discretionary. Homemade tortillas and refried beans are nutritious and taste good, and lots cheaper than hamburger, and way cheaper than t-bone. Yeah, I kinda like the early springs we've been having, but I realize there are problems associated. Look, let's say we have government support of energy and say, for instance, that gasoline is $1/gal and electricity 1 cent per kw. Do you think gas and electric use would stay the same, or would many use twice as much as they do now?
It would stay the same, or go down if energy were publicly managed and set free from the grip of the falsely named "free market."
If you mean co-ops when you say "publicly managed," I could imagine that working.
"Publicly managed" in agriculture means the network of land grant colleges, the state and national departments of agriculture, the extension services, the research programs, the soil and water conservation boards, the price supports, the weather service, the conservation programs, the set asides and soil recuperation projects, the educational programs, the marketing orders, the federal food assistance programs, the farm credit program and the cooperating institutions, the exemptions on sales tax on food items, the public health and safety inspection regimens - all of the things that allow you to farm and make money at it.
Your business is 99% reliant on "socialist" public programs, yet you talk "free market" libertarianism.
Can you "imagine" any of that "working?"
I don't need any of the things you mention in order to farm. I do, however, think that many of these things are useful, helpful, and good ideas.
Greg, all of those things are what allow you to farm. This is the right wing mindset - ignore the work of those who went before, ignore the publicly funded and planned infrastructure without which you could never have your freedom or success, and call for the destruction of the very things that nurtured and supported you.
TWO A: Few understand that nature's season tempo changes are complex ballets. If the leaves open after the caterpillar eggs do, the creatures may not be able to feed. And they die in mass numbers. So many living beings live a dance where each facet must come into synch. This, after all, has been the set-up for countless millennia.
Here in North Florida temperatures have been doing a virtual trapeze act, spinning from the high 70's to the low 20's, since about mid-December. Weird, indeed.
Thank you, TWO A. Greg's casual disregard for massive starvation is apparent in his ignorance and nonchalant responses. He's also a knee-JERK advocate of GM technology.
The grain farmers are way down the road compared to specialty crops - corporate domination of their sector, whipsawed by the markets (all up, up, up - for now), lots of "free market" cowboys setting the terms for the discussion about ag. Not sure where he is, but if there are a lot of 500 acre farms there it is a marginal or transition zone. There may still be a strong community there, and strong co-ops.
This may be annoying to you and others, but the discussion he and I are having is an important discussion going on now in the farm community. He is "good" on a lot of the issues that would seem obscure or esoteric to outsiders. He just listens to Farm Bureau a little too much LOL, and "rugged individualism" comes with the territory since that is the personality type attracted to farming.
Farming is a weird mix of rugged individualism and cooperative and communal operations - out-and-out socialism in many ways. The right wing idiots at Farm Bureau are telling farmers that there success - if they have any - is all due to their individual efforts and the "free market," when actually it rests on the public infrastructure and public support.
Although, to my knowledge, no academic economics program in the world contains a class in metaphysics, all economists are quick to make metaphysical judgments. So it is with Greg R. Inherited is Adam Smith's Presbyterian assumption of a Christian God ordered universe within which all is in balance. So being, implicit is the righteous punishment of the God John Knox inherited from John Calvin. Humanity corrupted by original sin, only those arbitrarily chosen by God shall be saved, manifested in natural selection
Thus, "Whenever shortages begin to loom even slightly on the horizon, then prices tend to pick up. If this did not happen, then 'cheap food' would tend to lead to 'eat, drink and be merry.'" Conveniently unconsidered is Adam Smith's observation in The Wealth of Nations, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." No, Greg R.'s speculators are God's righteous agents, not Smith's manipulative conspirators.
Fascinating about such reasoning is its inconsistency with Paul Samuelson's judgment, “Malthus failed to realize how technical innovation could intervene—not to repeal the law of diminishing returns, but to more than offset it.” [Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 737.] It is the presumed ability of "technical innovation [to] intervene . . . to more than offset [the law of diminishing returns]" which makes possible the concept of economic growth. Thus, economists insist on subsidizing "technical innovation" to foster economic growth, while refusing to subsidize "cheap food" to foster human life.
Ironical is Greg R.'s implicit employment of Malthus when considering food. After all, "Overpopulation guarantees that things will not work out well." This, when Samuelson assures us, “Malthus failed to realize how technical innovation could intervene—not to repeal the law of diminishing returns, but to more than offset it.” Dismissing Samuelson and economic growth, Greg R. assumes "Speculation . . . will . . . work out well" by insuring humans die of starvation and malnutrition
Reminiscent is William Graham Sumner's pronouncement, "Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things." [William Graham Sumner, "The Forgotten Man," in What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)] Concurrently, Greg R.'s speculator "is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things," insuring nature "removes the victims without pity." Like an economist, Greg R. welcomes mass starvation to provide for mass speculative profit.
I enjoyed your post very much. It's truly fascinating how a well read person can arrive at such truly silly conclusions. Your last sentence sums up your delusions quite well.
Equally fascinating is how an accusation of "delusions" can be made without provision of argumentative support.
PHILANDREL: Marvelous prose. Of course it went right over Mr. Greg's head. That leaves him with nothing else but the use of a castigation like delusion.
Notice how Mr. Farmer spends a lot of time in these threads. Either the fields cultivate themselves, or he must have some serfs on his payroll.
In Greg's defense (and I disagree with him about just about everything) this is the season that we have a lot of free time. I am working a lot, but in the office on the computer and we are socked in for the winter with nowhere to go, so I can post a lot right now. April-November will be a different story.
Also, I am glad to see people from the farm community posting on these threads. He isn't some gentleman farmer or tycoon - not enough acreage - and he is trying to do the right thing. Small operation, lots of hands-on for him, I am guessing.
Hey, people, I grew up on a farm. At best, my father had "free time" in November-December. The rest of the time he worked is arse off. This when periodically his crop (our livelihood) was nearly ruined.
Well, if you have livestock the work is steady year 'round. November and December are still pretty busy for us. We are down to the winter crew here. Lots of winter chores and repairs. Still working 40 hours a week but that is half as much as during peak season, and you can get away for a few days. I call that "having free time."
We are mostly working in the office now - paperwork and records, correspondence, ordering trees, catching up on the trade journals. I can get 20 minutes at a time here and there to post and read at CD, and that can amount to a couple hours a day.
It is no accident that Gwynne Dyer didn't say anything about the role of capitalism in the food "shortages" or the role of capitalism as the driving force behind global climate disruption. He's a Liberal of the Al Gore persuasion.
There was a revealing and fiery exchange on Democracy Now! between Dyer (singing hosannas) to geo-engineering techno-fixes for global warming and Vandana Shiva who argued that food insecurity was largely due to the decimation of domestic farming all to serve the profit margins of commodity speculators and Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland etc. And crucially, that geo-engineers had no idea of the long or short-term consequences of their world-scale experiments. Geo-engineering as a "green" solution, is akin to biofuels as the "solution". It's just another way for big companies to make money. They don't give a damn about climate change or starving people.
Are there speculators trying to make a fortune off commodities?
Of course!
Does that mean speculation is the primary cause of increased energy and food prices?
Not at all!
The problem is peak oil.
About 20% of US food production was diverted to corn for ethanol to drive our
cars and run the Pentagon, the largest oil consumer on the planet.
Lester Brown from the Earth Policy Institute along with other students of
peak oil and looming resource shortages have been talking about this for years.
see: http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2008/update69
I am currently reading James Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" written back at the end of 2004 before the financial crisis and the 2008 food riots when oil prices
hit $147 per barrel. Back then Kunstler warned about financial crises to come
and food scarcities.
Peak oil is critical to understand and is finally coming to public attention
in the new series sponsored by The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/article/157434/peak-oil-and-changing-climate
which includes experts like Noam Chomsky, James Kunstler, Dmitry Orlov, Richard Heinberg, Greg Palast and others who have been studying this issue for years.
They all have different perspectives but the effects of peak oil on agriculture
even without siphoning off to power our automobiles has been predicted for years.
RE: Does that mean speculation is the primary cause of increased energy and food prices? Not at all!
Food and energy prices are intimately linked because petroleum products are used as the major input in the global corporate agribusiness production of foodstuffs. In traditional (sustainable) farming, however, this is not the case. And, importantly, in many places where food riots have occurred (like Haiti a few years ago) traditional farming (i.e. low usage of petroleum products) was the norm. Haiti's domestic rice farming was decimated by the dumping of subsidized rice from the US according to the profit motivations of commodity speculators.
RE: peak oil
The focus on peak oil is misplaced. Peak oil, or the overuse of oil, the dominant (and destructive) world energy source, is a symptom, or consequence of the need within global capitalism for continuous growth of profits and markets. This leads to the over exploitation of resources on a finite planet. Ultimately, capitalism, not peak oil, is the source of these problems.
I am familiar with the work of Kunstler (who supported the Iraq War btw), Orlov, Heinberg et al. A far more comprehensive and systemic analysis of these problems including peak oil is provided by Chris Williams called "Hothouse Earth: Capitalism, climate change, and the fate of humanity".
http://www.isreview.org/issues/64/feat-hothouse2.shtml
Not so, Tom. Farming is not dependent upon oil.
TA, you didn't read my post very closely. Agribusiness, big scale farming, is very much dependent on oil (for pesticides and fertilizers). For traditional pre "green revolution" farming, you're right, oil is not so important (though, I imagine it's much easier to have a tractor).
Yes, I know. I agree with the rest of your post and did not mean to contradict what you are saying.
No, "Agribusiness" is not dependent on oil, and no, "Agribusiness" is not the problem.
Suburbia is dependent on oil, not farming. The use of tractors and higher yield methods allowed 90% of the people living on farms to move to suburbia. That also made it more fuel intensive to keep them all fed. If we stop using oil suburbia would die, farming would not be impacted.
"While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input to produce a crop has increased faster,[22] so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum products."
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Agricultural_production_and_food_security
Modern suburbia is product of post WWII (and Cold War) auto-centered POLICIES*. It is dependent on oil, but not any less so is industrial (Big Ag) farming.
*The policy of promoting home ownership: debt incumbent (mortgages) workers tend not to strike). Suburbia was not possible without the construction of freeways which was a direct result of Federal policy supported enthusiastically by the auto industry and Defense Dept. (fear of a Commie invasion necessitated a massive transportation infrastructure to transport soldiers and materiel). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
re the energy input ratio of farming today, in my case I don't think the energy cost of my herbicides is particularly high. Most certainly nitrogen fertilizer is a high energy input. But, other than that, in my no-til operation, my energy use is quite low. I get by nicely with 2 small tractors that mostly sit in the shed. Unlike most farmers, I use virtually no propane to dry my corn. I use aeration instead, which is far less energy intensive.
Is your "case" that of a Big Ag farm or a small family-owned farm? If it's the latter, I am not talking about you.
I farm 230 acres. My methods could work quite well on farms several times larger than mine.
Good news for the future!(?)
230 acres? Of corn?
What are your yields per acre?
Expenses per acre?
What have you been getting for the corn?
Where are you selling it?
Of course your methods are expandable - all methods are. If we are going to talk about sustainability, we need to ask if methods are shrinkable. Or would you claim that it is more efficient to farm 200 acres than 2,000? You mention that the tractors sit around, as though that were an efficiency or savings. It obviously is under-utilization, which works against efficiency and sustainability. Or would you claim that 200 tractors, each of them working 10% of the time is more efficient than 20 tractors working 100% of the time? Or would you deny that there is a connection between efficiency and fuel use and pollution?
half corn/half beans 170-200 bu/acre &45-50bu/acre expenses including land are $475/acre corn $350 beans cash prices in the area of $5 and $12. It doesn't work to shrink the acres very much. The average farmer around here is about 500 acres, but the numbers vary hugely. My 2 tractors work 2% of the time. My tractors are old, but reliable. If I baby them, they just might last a long time. New tractors are very expensive. Used tractors are an unknown. The depreciation on my old but highly serviceable equipment is minimal. I make and re-design quite a bit of my equipment from other old stuff. For instance I made a row-crop rotary hoe from an old cultivator and some used hoe wheels. I made my own 75' sprayer. I would add that for a person wanting to add land or move in and start a farming operation, the land cost would undoubtedly lead to higher expenses.
Trying to keep the sub-thread from getting too narrow...
What you are describing is not unlike what we are doing. We make a lot of equipment here. We went away from tractors and build our own custom machines from old GMC truck parts - cut off the body and replace it with a simple sheet metal covering over the engine block, make an open cab, put a PTO and forks on them and air shocks. For hauling fruit out of the orchard they have more power and speed, and ride through very smoothly over the rough ground - less bruising and the fruit is into our cold storage barn very quickly. (Almost too quickly - we have discovered that some apple varieties do better if you leave them out for a few hours or even days before cooling them. works great for cherries, though)
Greg - you are not making enough money to be a "free market" advocate and you are hugely vulnerable. I am assuming that you are not saddled with land payments - if you are then I can not see how you could support a family on what you are doing. Nothing wrong with that, and it is a labor of love for all of us. Half of all farmers have to supplement their incomes with outside work. But I don't think we can make sweeping generalizations about agriculture based on your experiences there.
Geez, now I want to come see your operation LOL.
I used to farm bigger and sold out to my business partner a few years ago. So, I'm damn fortunate. I've got some cash and owe nothing. My kids are through college and on their own. My wife and I don't need a lot, so we get by nicely. This spring I'm going to put together a nitrogen side-dress rig out of some old steel laying around with used seed-disk openers set at a slight angle and 28% N applied in the trench. I like building furniture and useful stuff.
How are you defining this? Most farms are family owned. Most row crop farms are bigger. There is a wide range of sizes of farms within each type of commodity. Where is the dividing line that you imply exists?
In this neck of the woods all of the farms are family owned. There are a few hundred consisting of 100-500 acres, and a handful that range from twice as big as that to ten times as big as that. Where is the dividing line? What is the "right size?" At what point does a farmer cease to be a "small family farm" and become the evil "Agri-business?"
If a farmer with 1000 acres is doing a good job (safety, Labor relations, quality, environmental responsibility) and the 100 acre farmer is doing a bad job, what makes the big farmer the bad guy? (This is often the case.)
We are smaller, by the way, and a couple of the bigger players are assholes, but so are many of the smaller guys and at least one of the big guys is very progressive.
The use of oil in farming is what allowed the majority of people to leave the farm. That was the main effect. Fewer people needed to be directly engaged in food production.
Of course, before the rise of suburbia those people were moving to cities. I say "suburbia" because that is where they are now.
In the USA grain futures market the intervention of Goldman Sachs has totally perverted the grain futures market.
And as punishment for your outlandish misinformation you we have to research it on your own.
You misrepresent the exchange on Democracy Now! Dyer wasn't singing hosannas to geoengineering. He was just suggesting that since hardly anybody is inclined to make the changes that need to be made to ward off global climate change, it may be necessary to resort to geoengineering out of a lack of any other options.
Dyer is much more of a techno-optimist than I am. He is much more inclined to believe that there are technical fixes (such as geoengineering or biofuels) that will allow the continuation of the current consumption paradigm. He is, however, dead right in his observation that very few people in the developed world (most importantly in North America) inside or outside of government are inclined to make the changes, both institutional and personal, that are necessary to deal with the threat of global climate change.
RE: He is, however, dead right in his observation that very few people in the developed world (most importantly in North America) inside or outside of government are inclined to make the changes, both institutional and personal, that are necessary to deal with the threat of global climate change.
That "developed world" is the center of global capitalism. Dyer never lays the blame at the feet of the capitalist economic system which needs to exploit the entire planet with special viciousness reserved for the "developing world". Vandana Shiva recognizes that the dominance of global capitalism IS the problem (to a host of issues). Dyer has no solutions to offer because the real solutions require curbing capital accumulation. He's a liberal; he won't go there.
RE: You misrepresent the exchange on Democracy Now!
"Dyer wasn't singing hosannas to geoengineering" vs. "He is much more inclined to believe that there are technical fixes that will allow the continuation of the current consumption paradigm."
With all due respect, the above looks to me like a distinction without a difference.
I was afraid you'd catch that. Posting from work doesn't allow much time for proofreading.
What I was trying to say was that he was presenting geoengineering as a last resort that we'd be better off not pursuing but may have to. If you read his stuff he acknowledges that geoengineering is dangerous and frought with possible unforseeable side effects but he thinks we may have not have any other options. I think he is trying to scare people into giving themselves more options.
I'm even more pessimistic about geoengineering than he is.
TL; thank you, you said it for me. "the little people" have been put out to pasture, so to speak, So they go into the cities or cross borders to become a "problem" for the host city or nation. I don't have any statistics but I would bet my nalgas that many of the disposesed were small farmers whose land was taken by the rich with the help of a shit-assed government. Example? Just think of all those Mexicans crossing the border and not only the Mexican gov. but the US of A gov. colluding to bring this shit to fruition. This is just one example. Tony
Dispossessed Mexican farmers? Can you say NAFTA?
Ding!
Just look at the effects of price destruction the US has had on Haiti over the years...or Mexico for that matter. Flooding Haiti's local markets with cheap, subsidized staple foods destroys local production, making them more susceptible to disruption. This fact has actually been used as a technique by the US in the past, to destabilize regimes we do not like. No doubt it is being used today.
We cannot expect economists to get this right. They are not scientists. They do not believe in physical laws ie. thermodynamics. Energy is the ultimate resource, and it is finite. Food crises are now the nor; a forever-symptom of the decline in energy production and global disruption by the sapient ape.
Happy New Year
fixie