It's really an absurd travesty when starvation gets blamed on "global warming do-gooders," and we haven't seen the last of that. The problem is miscast, though. There isn't a food shortage, at least not yet. There is a food price crisis, which is a very different beast.
Are its roots in the huge resource gap between the relatively rich and the very poor? If that's true, it has broad implications.
Here's one way of looking at it, from the Omaha World-Herald:
The list of likely damages from global warming is long and includes those from rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes, species loss, a wider reach of malaria, reductions in water supplies, and increased urban pollution. Perhaps the biggest likely risk, however, is to world agriculture.
Higher temperatures speed plants through their development and leave less time for grain filling. Evaporation and loss of water through plant leaves rises more rapidly with temperatures than the increase in rainfall expected from global warming, causing a loss of moisture. Incidence of severe drought, like that in the American Dust Bowl in the 1930s or Australia in recent years, would likely increase.
There's another way this can be played, though, from The New York Sun:
The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.
With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.
"I don't think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial," a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.
...
"It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol," Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. "It's not going to be a very good diet but that's roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year."
In fact, there is plenty of agricultural productivity to feed everyone, and in principle a considerable amount left over for biofuels.
What's going on? It isn't that there isn't enough food. It's that the ability to fill up a gas tank with gasoline is, in the "wisdom" of the marketplace, the highest value use of the food crop.
Admittedly, what we're seeing now is a consequence of some distorted subsidies, but consider this. If the price of liquid fuel goes up further because of reduced supply and inflexible demand, then even if the subsidy goes away, it might well become more lucrative to produce biofuel for rich people than to provide food for poor people.
Indeed, something like this is already going on. Most of the land in production in the U.S. goes to produce animal feed, which produces a small fraction as many calories in a luxury crop (meat) as the same land would in producing directly for human consumption. While cereal crops worldwide set new records, some people have been going hungry even before this year's price rises.
How is this possible? Is the demand for one luxury meat meal really bigger than the demand for ten subsistence grain meals? This is true only if the wealthy person's desires are valued more than the poor person's desires. A starving Haitian's desire for a scrap of bread exceeds your desire for your favorite meal by a considerable amount, but his ability to pay is constrained by your desire for steak.
When our economic system evolved, the number of very wealthy people was small. For most of the population, there was a market for their labor, which they could exchange for goods. The demands of the wealthy for luxuries didn't compete directly with the demands of the general population for basics. The world was essentially infinite; people bought labor and not resources.
The worker, free to sell his or her services to the highest bidder (at least in principle), was at least relatively liberated compared to his feudal ancestor.
Two things have changed. The number of relatively wealthy people has burgeoned, and the competition for raw materials has become important. The arrangement that fueled the successes of the industrial economy breaks down.
There is less opportunity to exchange labor for goods even in the wealthy countries, as the labor gets outsourced to foreigners and machines. With globalization, your currency gets weighed against my currency, and your labor competes against the labor of even more desperate people. At the same time, rich and poor now compete for the same raw materials.
In these circumstances, meat for one is "worth more than" gruel for ten, and a rational farmer will target the former rather than the latter.
The problem gets worse, the larger the ratio of the wealth of the wealthiest to the wealth of the poorest. In a recent NPR article about gasoline hitting $4/gal in the Bay Area, one fellow said, "It won't affect me in the least. I am sure it is difficult for some people, but it has no impact on me whatsoever." I have heard similar comments from a Texan who sells very large luxury vehicles.
I'm not sure how to address this. I used to believe that a carbon tax was our best bet, but I've come to doubt that it will work. In an age of a huge wealthy demographic, such measures become extremely regressive long before they bite the major consumers. Note that gasoline prices had to triple in the U.S. before the consumption curve showed even a tiny dent.
A rise in price of essential commodities concentrates wealth and, in turn, exacerbates excess.
Thinking about the fact that world cereal production set records last year, I'm convinced that the problem is in the incentive system, though, not in the production of biofuels or (leaving aside other issues) even in the demand for meat. When very rich and very poor people compete for the same resources, you have a problem that can't be fixed with pricing.
We have excess food production capacity, and some of it could go into meat or into biofuels. The problem is that this makes it harder for poor people to get grain. I genuinely hate to say this, but I see no way around it. Unless wealth becomes much more evenly distributed, we need a way of separating out the necessities from the luxuries that isn't purely market driven.
I guess the simplest thing on the food front is to tie food aid directly to prices of the foods that food aid supports, and to fund it through taxes of the competing commodities.
What to do about discouraging carbon use is less clear to me. The recent events regarding food versus biofuels has me thinking that, unfortunately, putting a price on carbon is not going to work out very well without some other, more complex and more difficult measures to discourage excessive consumption by the relatively wealthy individuals and societies.
Chuck Norris on Copenhagen
Martha Stewart blisters meat industry in Thanksgiving show
A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table
Comments
View as Flat
Michael Tobis Posted 6:23 am
28 Apr 2008
mt
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Jonas Posted 7:29 am
28 Apr 2008
1. according to the UN, biofuels contribute only 10% to the price rise in food; it is the least important of all the factors (oil, speculation, increased demand from the East, etc...); biofuel profits are not spectacular; they don't drive this crisis in any particular way. Biofuels play a marginal role.
2. why did anyone ever even get the initial idea that there would be the slightest reason to think there would be a physical shortage of food? This is the most ludicrous idea ever. The world has been producing food for 12 billion people for several years now, and there is huge capacity left.
So both starting points for the article are flawed, but nonetheless resulted in an interesting text.
-There are no food shortages.
-There is capacity to feed billions more.
-There is capacity to produce 1500 Exajoules of bioenergy by 2050 without impacts on meeting food needs and in a strict no-deforestation scenario (that is: about 4 times as much energy as all the energy currently consumed on the planet from all sources: oil, gas, coal, nuclear).
-IEA: biofuels are 'critical' to global energy security.
In short, there is no problem other than that of the resilience of net food importing countries. They must be helped to design coping strategies with which to deal with volatile prices.
One of the smarter ways to do so is to stimulate investments in agriculture, so as to tackle the problem at the root. (But this sounds like a loonie idea, given that the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the "international community" have systematically destroyed agriculture in developing countries, by not spending a dime on it during the past 25 years.)
It is a criminal situation, to know that a country like the DRC can produce food for 3 billion people, while it currently is a food importing country in which 70% of the population is chronically undernourished. It is really obscene, this situation.
Reason must rule.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:40 am
28 Apr 2008
So what about rationing? If each person on Earth was guaranteed the right to 2000 calories per day (or whatever the reasonable amount is, sorry if I underestimated), then each country would be alloted a certain amount of grains, according to their tastes. Here's another idea: each country would receive all the international aid needed to build an agricultural system that could sustainably grow the required amount of grain or other food.
Rationing is not such a terrible idea, and has been proposed for carbon as well. Of course, local sustainable production is still the best solution.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:46 am
28 Apr 2008
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Sam Wells Posted 8:14 am
28 Apr 2008
I forget the name of the small African nation but the US and UN aid along the NGOs sent massive amounts of free food to the nation, which was living in virtual starvation. They became hooked on the handouts. But the handouts were not the kinds of food they liked or good digest easily.
So one nation (gosh was it Mali, I forget) said NO MORE FOOD DELIVERIES and got a bunch of cash for subsidizing seed, fertilizer, fuel, water pumps, catchment basin ponds, and tractors and with some great advice started growing the food themselves. Guess what? It worked!
The US was pissed, like these poor scalliwags are supposed to be on the dole for our price-supported rice, corn, and wheat, as well as other sundry products. Now even Cuba, which was a beneficiary of many a shipload of US ag products lately, started developing its own production instead of small, socialized plots. That's how I'd fix Haiti by the way, a massive food crop system that didn't remove vegetation from the mountains.
It soon became apparent that US food aid was THE ROOT CAUSE of some food shortages.
Yes, food price has been a problem, such as getting bismati rice in the Orient or masa-grade corn in South America ("NAFTA corn" apparently sucks for tortilla masa). I think the word is still out on the food economics of rent, seed, fertilizers, tractor fuel, water pumping, and so forth, although the fight over GMO foods has mysteriously died off.
Let's take a peach, one of my favorite fruits (and yes I BBQ them sometimes). Like a barrel of oil, that peach has absolutely no value. It's free if you find a wild tree! But what you pay for is the plant, the land, the labor, the water, the taxes, and so many things now that a peach can be nearly a buck a pop. Cost-margin analysis is cool stuff.
-sammie
Onward through the fog
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loppear Posted 11:49 am
28 Apr 2008
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:30 pm
28 Apr 2008
starvation gets blamed on "global warming do-gooders,"
I think I can safely say that whoever said that was an idiot. Biofuel policy has been (and still is) a very bipartisan affair. Corn ethanol has never been considered to be much of an answer to global warming. Many enviro types as well as conservatives have also been critical of it from the get go. It is typically touted as the answer to energy security and a way to save "family" farms.
We have excess food production capacity, and some of it could go into meat or into biofuels.
The problem with that statement is that you have put meat in the same category as biofuel, when meat is just another food, like are eggs, cheese, and milk. Some foods simply take more resources to process than others. Billions of poor depend on their livestock for part of their nutrition. Goats, pigs, and chickens can turn just about anything on the ground into a high protein source of food. Think of them as food processors. This isn't just a first world luxury. The FAO report called "Livestock's Long Shadow" makes that pretty clear.
What to do about discouraging carbon use is less clear to me. The recent events regarding food versus biofuels has me thinking that, unfortunately, putting a price on carbon is not going to work out very well without some other, more complex and more difficult measures to discourage excessive consumption by the relatively wealthy individuals and societies.
This is analogous to what people were thinking about population issues back in the seventies--how to discourage excessive births? But out of the blue birth rates began dropping. I think people may begin to respond. New contraceptive technology helped us change lifestyles then and new technology can help us do it again.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:33 pm
28 Apr 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Delay And Deny Posted 1:57 pm
28 Apr 2008
Or, a more cynical person (Did I hear my name called?) might say that "Global Warming" is the ultimate friend of the commodity trader.
Instead of having to make up crises like peak oil or the "energy crisis" to raise prices, the commodities brokers have been handed the Keys to the Kingdom by Greens in the form of Global Warming.
Not only can their raise prices because of "Global Warming" but they will get bonus points for do-goodism from all the Crunchies worldwide!
Thanks, guys, for making my paycheck go even less further.
Texeme.Construct(Participant)
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greenfire8 Posted 4:51 am
29 Apr 2008
Most of the land in production in the U.S. goes to produce animal feed, which produces a small fraction as many calories in a luxury crop (meat) as the same land would in producing directly for human consumption.
With our massive subsidies in place, meat is no more a "luxury crop" than Hardee's is a 4-star dining experience. Not if....when the pork-barrel spending of our tax dollars is reformed, hopefully one of the major upshots will be meat actually becoming more of a luxury crop. Only then will people be more realistic w/ portion sizes and how often they eat it. The cropland that would become available would leave quite an expanse for ethanol from corn, sugar, switchgrass, etc.. I'm not talking about the magic bullet some folks seem to be obsessed with, but I definitely see a valuable component of the sustainable alternative energy stream that will give us the energy independence and clean, healthful environment future generations deserve.
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greenfire8 Posted 5:09 am
29 Apr 2008
I think I can safely say that whoever said that was an idiot.
Most recently, JMG, one of Grist's guest contributors said, "it's not the oil companies that are going to do us in, it's the well-meaning enviros who think that speaking out against fresh biofuels means that you're a shill for big oil."
There's plenty of spin on either side of the aisle, with "the two factions of the one business elite party" (Noam Chomsky). My critical thinking alarm immediately goes off when I hear people talking about "biofuels" and following up w/ data on only corn ethanol!
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icu814me Posted 8:47 am
29 Apr 2008
Some assumptions above that concern me:
Wealth is not a pizza. If you get two slices, it does not mean there are fewer for me. Wealth is created by introducing value to the market, and has for practical purpose and boundary that no one can define.
This idea that we're all hungry savages increasingly fighting over a smaller heap of goods is iron age (at best) philosophy. There are essentially two philosophies of wealth. Roaming hordes of nomads believed that the only way to gain wealth was to take it from someone else. This belief still exists in the middle east, in the Q'ran, and in freshman dorms, Democratic campaign headquarters, and Marxists who live in their parents garage.
The other view is that wealth is created by humans, who are also the consumers. If you believe this (which I do) it should come as no surprise that over the course of history, [relatively] free trade has allowed innovation and competitive advantage to stretch the availability of food to more people while also using fewer resources.
At one time, almost every person in the US was a farmer, in reality about 96%. As recent as 1900, about 40% of the US was dedicated to farming. Now, approximately 2% of the US farms. The food is also safer, more nutritious, and lasts longer. The work is easier, safer, and takes less time.
There is certainly more then enough food to go around, and with the incentive, we could certainly increase the bounty to meet demand at market.
The next problem I see in the info above is this artificial construct of me at Ruth's Chris and a starving Haitian watching me eat. How dare I eat a steak. It is not readily apparent to me how the Haitian starving is directly attributable to me having a steak. He doesn't "not have it" because I do have it.
I don't have a Porshe, but it's not because the guy living down the road has "mine". The guy down the road is a doctor, or lawyer, or professional poker player. His production value is much higher than mine. There are many reasons for this, some individual and some infrastructural. Within a few years, I could overcome the individual and probably get my own Porshe. I am able to do so because of the infrastructural abilities.
The Haitian has many people much closer to him that are responsible for his infrastructural ability to increase his production value. I can assure you, if he could bring sufficient value to market, he could get his hands on some rice. Or steak. Or Boca Burgers, whatever he likes.
The inability to get rice to this guy has nothing to do with whether I eat cow.
Rice, like oil, is a heavily regulated market. Increased freedom in trade would find the lowest possible market price for rice. That's one end of the problem. Trade, and infrastructural changes would also allow that Haitian to exponentially increase his production value. As a consequence, he would have more disposable income, and the man could get him some rice.
The arguments above sound a lot like my mother at the dinner table when I was in elementary school, when she told me to finish my plate because there were starving children in China. I think they have as much validity. Neither I at the table in years past, or at the restaurant today can "PUSH" food up the consumer supply chain to someone else.
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agres Posted 9:10 am
29 Apr 2008
Australia's rice production was curtailed by drought and production is contingent on weather. California's rice production is contingent on the Delta Smelt. There has been some fungus on the rise in Africa and a crop in Bangladesh was wiped out by a typhoon. And the rice eating population has ben growing. Each of these is a minor issue. However, the sum of these points is that there is very little rice in the bottom of the global rice barrel.
Food prices went up because we could see the bottom of the grain bins. There is food in the markets because it is too expensive for many people to eat. It is being saved for the rich.
Until recently, rice has been plentiful and very cheap. In China, a good deal of rice paddy land has been developed for industrial purposes. The transaction cost of returning this land to rice would be very high. If we want more rice to support a larger rice eating population, the logical source is to improve the productivity of India. However, we have been working on that since the Green Revolution, and on a per acre basis, India's production is only ~60% of China's or 50% of the US. However, China and the US use a good deal more oil in their rice production than India does. As the price of oil rises, the price of Chinese and US rice will rise faster than the cost of Indian rice. That may not be a model that we want.
Recently, the global wheat carryover was minimal due to extended crop failures in Australia as a result of drought. With a month of rain they have declared the drought over and predict bumper crops. I think it is a bit early to be guessing about crops that have not been planted yet. Given http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html, I would not even want to guess On the North American 2008 wheat crop. China is growing wheat with irrigation from deep wells. Given the current trend in the price of oil, what do you think the price of that wheat is going to be?
My points are that we have taken a good deal of land out of agricultural production, and the transaction costs of growing food on that land will be higher than non-farmers understand.
The cost of irrigation water and oil is going up. The cost of agricultural inputs including fertilizer, and pesticides go up as an exponential factor of the price of oil. We have been eating cheap oil as cheap food. Our measures of agricultural capacity date from the days of cheap oil. Farming is a gamble. With expensive oil, the farmer's "anti" goes up. In which case the farmer may withdraw the resources from production. The "capacity" may still be there, but not be in service. As we learned in China and California, agricultural resources not in service tend to be developed for other industrial use, and are unlikely to come back into agricultural service.
As always, weather and climate can fool the best of farmers. With global warming, weather and climate are just harder to predict. If you get the wrong weather, it does not matter what your agricultural capacity is, you are not going to get a crop. With global warming, it is likely that more crops will be lost to weather. This is a loss in agricultural capacity.
There is a difference between theoretical capacity and actual production. There is a difference between resources that can produce food that is price competitive in the current market and resources that can produce a profitable product at a much higher price. The latter are not really part of current capacity.
Aaron Lewis
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Michael Tobis Posted 2:16 pm
29 Apr 2008
This used to be approximately true and it isn't any more.
Wealth is more like a pizza the more it's resource constrained rather than labor or intellect constrained. Which is more or less what is happening now. That is the big change. Peak oil, climate change, these are just pieces of the puzzle.
In the old days we were so far from resource constraints that ignoring them was a useful model. This is no longer true.
Oil you burn is oil somebody else doesn't.
mt
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Michael Tobis Posted 2:23 pm
29 Apr 2008
The concentration of wealth makes most of the grain get diverted for luxury uses.
I am not saying that there will not be trouble maintaining these yields. I suspect there will be eventually, possibly even soon. I am only saying that the current trouble is obviously being misunderstood on all sides. I would like people to face up to the real problem before the ones they are imagining really come home to roost, because otherwise the one we actually already have will only make matters worse.
mt
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Pangolin Posted 3:19 pm
29 Apr 2008
As far as what Michael was talking about there are many acres of N. Ca. cropland that used to be corn or sunflower that are being converted to walnut orchards. Walnuts use a lot less water and the allotments sold south finance the conversion. Input prices are cheaper and profits are better but too damn bad if people need the grains or seeds that used to grow on those lands.
At the farmers market the local grower sold out every bag of organic brown rice by 10 am. Those are 20 lb bags at $25; think about that for a minute. That's five times the commodity price at least for white Calrose rice and still cheaper than potatoes. We really don't understand what food scarcity means in most of america as we still give out canned goods to poor people.
If people in the rest of the world want food security they had better not bet on California agriculture to feed them. Until a year ago we were busy paving our best agricultural lands at a breakneck pace and we still have a lot of empty orchards with cul-de-sacs dropped into the middle but no houses.
Get a hoe, read about permaculture and biochar and feed yourselves. Waiting for the great american farmer to feed you is just another cargo cult and it will yield about the same results. Look at the sky with an empty belly; we're paving farmland here.
Put the Carbon Back
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greenfire8 Posted 3:20 pm
29 Apr 2008
First, you're not trading w/ the Porsche owner down the street. Second, there are no subsidies or tariffs b/w you two. Third, he hasnt used subsidized, artificially cheap product to dominate the market.
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Fire of Words Posted 8:50 pm
29 Apr 2008
That will be after the environmental meltdowns that send millions of desperate poor into the developed North.
After the revolutions caused by the current paradigms.
After the fall of governments; the tragedies of failed social order.
After folks learn from catastrophe.
After economists learn how to account in their (entirely non-scientific) models for market failures -- and/or the complete lack of markets, the price mechanism.
Then, of course, the entire silliness will begin again. We are simply too young as a species; heedless in our ways.
Yet perhaps lessons will have been learned, such that even the most benighted politicians -- all your bloody gods frot 'em all in their hearts -- recall lessons learned.
Let's hope those remembrances are positive. But, given the quality of leadership over the last, say, 5000 years, one should doubt it.
Love your children and grandchildren; your great-grandchildren, if you are fortunate to know them.
Think of them -- and their progeny -- as you eat meat, drive or fly in airplanes.
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icu814me Posted 3:19 am
30 Apr 2008
But we increase energy efficiency all the time. And we're nowhere near "peak oil". That whole discussion only revolves around light, sweet crude that is easily extractable. (Low sulfer content)
There are vast amounts of light sweet crude that can't be extracted at todays cost/price points. When the price of gas reaches the point that difficult extraction pays off, new supplies of oil will hit the market.
Sour crude is available in mind boggling amounts. It can be converted to usable petro-products, just not cost effectively (compared to light sweet crude). When the cost of light sweet crude reaches the cost of converting sour crude, we will have a whole new source of fuel hit the market.
And... while all this is going on, we're developing lighter, safer materials to make lighter autos. We're building more efficient engines. We'll develop ways of capturing braking energy, we'll have an increase in natural gas vehicles on the road, we'll reduce our driving, we'll ship more by train or boat, we'll telecommute, we'll build nuclear plants...
You can only claim a limited resource pie if you zoom in to one narrow focus, take snapshot, and treat it like an aquarium. Paul Erlich made a bet based on this theory and he lost big time.
I have a team of approximately 3 billion inventors and problem solvers on my side.
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icu814me Posted 3:25 am
30 Apr 2008
So, I assume then that we agree we are both in favor of no subsidies, no taxation, no tariffs, and no trade restrictions? I'm all for that. The price of rice would drop immediately.
All thats fine, but it didn't really have anything to do with my points by example, which to reiterate are: (1) Wealth is not a pie, or zero sum game. And (2) The reason others do not have rice are related to their wealth, and artificial modification to the market incentive to produce. (3) It has nothing to do with whatever uses I decide are appropriate for the rice I buy- including feeding it to a delicious cow, or simply burning it, or making a mattress out of it.
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icu814me Posted 3:35 am
30 Apr 2008
When's the last time one of your friends died of polio? When's the last time a woman you know (and the baby) died in childbirth?
Do you have soot on your ceiling from the lampoil? Do you work a 16 hour day 7 days a week? Who do you know that takes a bath once a year? Who do you know that isn't the beneficiary of soap, sanitation?
Would you prefer not being able to call millions of people around the world instantly for pennies? Would you prefer the levels of poverty and hunger that 5000 years ago? How about 50 years ago?
If I had a time machine and were going to thrust you back to 1958 anywhere in the world, how much would you like that? No CTI scanners, no MRI, no black or female representation in politics, higher rates of cancer deaths, diseases that we now have cures for, miserable recognition of civil rights, lower life expectancy... this list could go on forever.
No internet.
There is no ideal garden of eden time in the past in which I would rather live. I think if you introduced any generation of your ancestors to the world today and suggested to them that life sucks for us, they would slap your face.
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greenfire8 Posted 3:47 am
30 Apr 2008
"points by example?" I think you mean anecdotal nonsense. It would be a serious error for you to assume we agree on anything.
What is a fan of "sweet crude" doing in here? Makes one wonder....
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David Roberts Posted 4:09 am
30 Apr 2008
Everyone is welcome here. Let's keep it respectful and focused on issues.
grist.org
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icu814me Posted 4:33 am
30 Apr 2008
You use taxes, subsidies, and tariffs to attack my argument, but then back away from advocating their abolishment. Please be clear. Do you in fact believe that these policies contribute to problems in the price of grains and the limited availability of the same?
If you do, say you do. If you don't, be clear there.
I'm putting my cards on the table, not simply looking for cracks in peoples arguments or analogies. If you have a serious disagreement with my point, make a better alternate argument. Pointing out "you missed a spot" is not landscaping.
So all I know now is you don't want to agree on anything. That's unfortunate. My target is metaphysical reality, and I welcome anyone from any other perspective who has some agreement with me on any of those points. Michael and I have at least found some common ground already on his own site.
Would you prefer this simply remains a club of like minded people patting each other on the back?
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:48 am
30 Apr 2008
The problem is to view the entire global ecosystem as a whole, and in the long-run. So if your agricultural practices yield great profits and output, but the soil destruction will lead to collapse later on, then in the long-run, the system as a whole is not efficient. Same with fossil fuels,etc.
Now, I agree (I think) that we can live comfortable lives, in an indefinitely sustainable global economy, and I've written quite a few posts trying to figure out how that would happen. However, that society will not be able to use up resources; they will have to be renewable or recyclable. That is emininently doable, although it will require government regulation.
But growth will not be bigger cars and bigger houses; it will be better computer programs and better semiconductors and more art and sports, etc. And it will require a sustainable global agricultural system, which is doable (and growth within that would involve better food, etc.), but requires replacing the current system.
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greenfire8 Posted 5:28 am
30 Apr 2008
I already illustrated how your "argument" was completely off-base. Why would I want to waste more of my time on it? I'm a little too busy dealing w/ productive issues to help you rationalize you and your Porsche driving neighbors' lifestyles and love of "sweet crude."
Would you prefer this simply remains a club of like minded people patting each other on the back?
Absolutely not! Even more, I dont want to have to wade through pages of what I consider spam. You're expressing your love for the no.1 cause of the problem this thread is trying to deal with...the food price crisis. I could characterize that kind of perspective quite a few ways. Out of respect to David et al, I will refrain.
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Michael Tobis Posted 9:59 am
30 Apr 2008
"There are vast amounts of light sweet crude that can't be extracted at todays cost/price points. When the price of gas reaches the point that difficult extraction pays off, new supplies of oil will hit the market."
I believed that until recently, actually. On current evidence the peak oil alarmists seem more right than wrong on this one.
Yesterday's NY Times:
http://tinyurl.com/47k3th
mt
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icu814me Posted 10:09 am
30 Apr 2008
We can all just retreat to what we believe in.
Enjoy grist.
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Michael Tobis Posted 10:14 am
30 Apr 2008
In a labor constrained market, anyone can trade their services for goods, and so any healthy adult can make do, with enough of a surplus to take care of others nearby. It appears on present evidence that this is no longer true in a resource constrained environment, where inequities seem to be built into the system.
If you assume that the unconstrained economic optimum is always the social optimum, you will find yourself arguing that a rich person with a tank of gas or a slab of steak and ten starving poor people has more utility than the other way around.
The only alternative I can see is to find some way to constrain the rich person from bidding on the steak or the tank of gas until all the poor people are fed. This means that the free market fails to find the optimum.
Again, it seems to me that this sort of thing is inevitable when labor is in surplus and resources are in undersupply. Which means now, and for practical purposes, from now on.
It's not news to most of us that the market is suboptimal in maximizing utility. Only a few people, alas very influential ones, take that seriously. The events of the past few months, though, indicate a bit more than that. The market is increasingly suboptimal in optimizing for human welfare the more it moves from being labor-limited to being resource-limited, and thus from being income driven to being amassed wealth driven.
This seems like a pretty strong conclusion to me.
mt
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greenfire8 Posted 10:34 am
30 Apr 2008
Accept my apology. I'm not trying to drive anyone away, but I still find much of what you said very insensitive to the many victims of US companies posting record profits. People that have Porsche's on their street imho arent in much of a position to talk about other post-colonial countries who's average citizen lives on less than $2 a day. This is especially true when you live in a country that has taken part in destabilizing atrocities in the others' backyards (already been hashed out on grist elsewhere).
We're building more efficient engines. We'll develop ways of capturing braking energy, we'll have an increase in natural gas vehicles on the road, we'll reduce our driving, we'll ship more by train or boat, we'll telecommute, we'll build nuclear plants...
I dont even know where to begin....not touchin nukulur here. CAFE standards...look for it in recent grist posts. When WILL we do all these wonderful things you say? You make an awful lot of suppositions considering our current role in global emissions.
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greenfire8 Posted 10:50 am
30 Apr 2008
According to standpoint theory, you must first start w/ the least advantaged members of society to identify a baseline.
John Rawls' posed the "original position" and the "veil of ignorance" thought experiment in his "Theory of Justice." I find it extremely helpful in these situations. One could certainly have an academic discussion that our Bill of Rights provides for the inviolability of the individual and equal opportunity (within certain political borders), but if you've ever been to the deep South, or even heard of NAFTA, you know a practical debate is much tougher.
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greenfire8 Posted 10:57 am
30 Apr 2008
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Dave Ewoldt Posted 1:27 am
06 May 2008
Yes, free-market control over food prices is a crime against humanity, and exacerbates all the above problems. However, this neo-liberal fantasy that poverty and starvation is merely a problem in distribution must be laid to rest. The planet is at least 200% beyond its carrying capacity in human population, and no amount of redistribution is going to overcome that basic ecological fact.
While agrofuel production (a bad idea in and of itself) contributes to rising food prices, the real culprit here is commodity speculation, and as Michael correctly points out, the failures of market fundamentalism become glaringly obvious.
Peace _on_ Earth requires peace _with_ Earth.
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greenfire8 Posted 3:13 am
10 May 2008
Could you please cite a few of these "neo-liberals" who think population issues are not part of the equation? Search Grist for the piece on the blackeye that Sierra Club received when they entered the population debate last.....
Wow, 200% beyond carrying capacity...that sounds pretty concrete. Exactly what standard of living (cultural carrying capacity) does that entail for everyone? Those debates are endless and often ludicrous.
dp87, you make no mention of any sort of proactive way to counter the problem you cite!?! If you will think it through, you will find such distribution is a key, pivotal factor in the ability of countries to deal w/ said issues.
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