In 2009, Lester Brown and Scientific American asked “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” This summer’s extreme global weather raised fears of a “Coming Food Crisis,” as CAP’s John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell warned in Foreign Policy: “Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.”
Now the Financial Times reports the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s “food price index, a basket tracking the wholesale cost of wheat, corn, rice, oilseeds, dairy products, sugar and meats, has jumped to a record high, surpassing in December the peak of the 2007-08 food crisis” (see figure).
As ClimateWire and SciAm explains,”world food prices hit a record high in December thanks to crop failures from a series of extreme weather events around the world“:
The United Nations’ top food agency announced yesterday that world food prices hit a record high last month, igniting concerns among agricultural experts who are thinking back to the food riots that gripped developing countries just three years ago.
“It’s a worrisome situation with prices this high,” said Dan Gustafson, the director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Washington, D.C., office. “The year ahead is what I think is the real concern at this point. … It’s not by any means inevitable that prices will come down,” he said….
FAO attributes the upswing in prices to factors including the crop failures caused by a string of extreme weather events and high crop demands from an ever-increased global population. Many experts have linked the series of floods and fires with climate change.
“We can never tell if any particular weather event is impacted by climate change, but I can say there is every expectation we will see more of these weather events in the future and that these events certainly have an impact,” said Jerry Nelson, a senior research fellow coordinating climate change work at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Wheat, for example, bludgeoned by Russia’s wildfires, the heat waves in Australia and flooding in Pakistan, saw massive price surges last fall.
“The record rise in food prices is a grave reminder that until we act on the underlying causes of hunger and climate change, we will find ourselves perpetually on the knife’s edge of disaster,” said Gawain Kripke, policy director for Oxfam America, in a statement.
Particularly worrisome is that oil — a key in put to agricultural production and transport — is already at $90 a barrel and we’re just coming out of the deepest global recession since the Great Depression.
At the same time, the country’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, warns:
Given the association of extreme weather and climate events with rising global temperature, the expectation of new record high temperatures in 2012 also suggests that the frequency and magnitude of extreme events could reach a high level in 2012. Extreme events include not only high temperatures, but also indirect effects of a warming atmosphere including the impact of higher temperature on extreme rainfall and droughts. The greater water vapor content of a warmer atmosphere allows larger rainfall anomalies and provides the fuel for stronger storms driven by latent heat.
And so the combination of peak oil and extreme weather are likely to create growing food insecurity this decade, particularly since the nation and the world have decided to take no action to address either problem.
We’re already seeing rising hunger in the least developed countries. Lester Brown warns, “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.”
The time to act was long, long ago, but failure to act now is beyond immoral.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I have long felt that the reality of climate change will demand a range of accommodations. Maybe the most important is to transition American culture to value local independence. This is something in the nature of the transition town effort.
My wife and I did a bit of inventory this week and decided that we could easily go for several months without visiting a grocery store, and probably for an entire year without going to the produce department. It is time that we started to take responsibility for ensuring our own future.
If a Democratic Congress with a Democratic president can not deliver the changes we need, and I keep hearing that third parties are not part of any solution, then it seems to me that there is not immediate solution that will come from the political process. Here is my take on this as a Green. If the Democrats have nothing to fear but Republicans, there is less incentive to make the changes necessary. Right now, we need someone on the political state to be telling the truth that we are failing to act now and planning to compromise further.
I see no alternative than to rebuild our local economy in a manner that is self-reliant.
It’s hard not to feel like I’m being paranoid, but while everyone’s doing their emergency shopping for the forecast snow this weekend, I’ll be re-stocking my non-perishable food supply.
On the plus side, it’s helped my food budget immensely during times when money was tight, so it seems like a worthwhile investment anyway.
Please retweet for Lester Brown’s book discussion:
@EarthPolicy World on the Edge: The food bubble & how to deflate it before it bursts http://bit.ly/euot1y http//bit.ly/erUnkU
This is an important story. Very important.
The wake up bell for the US population on global warming is likely to be food shortage and higher prices for food.
That will finally get people’s attention about global warming, so neatly hidden by our media who are ever vigilant to protect business interests, especially big oil and big coal.
I could be wrong. Our clever, cable dominated media might find a way to spin food shortage some other way (Obama caused it, George Soros is hoarding wheat in an undisclosed location, etc.).
But even for Fox “News” and Limbaugh, it will get harder and harder to spread disinformation on global warming. Unfortunately, however, its not 1960 or 1970 when we could have taken effective action on CO2.
The only realistic path left open is adaptation. We need serious, effective research into survival in the face of vanishing food and water and that could mean migration.
Its a very hard package to sell the public who, being human, long for business as usual, not change that is so unpleasant to think about.
The New York Times has a story on rising food prices today (1-6-11).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/business/global/06food.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=un%20notes%20rise%20in%20world%20food%20prices&st=cse
“failure to act now is BEYOND immoral.”
I definitely agree but I have been wondering about those Senators and President Obama who also agree that we must take immediate action BUT DO NOTHING…they didn’t even try.
Should we put them in the immoral box? Should they be labeled delayers? They say all the right things but DO NOTHING. Maybe ‘politically pragmatic delayers’: not enough votes to pass a bill and don’t want to get caught by the voters supporting a bill that will not pass. Are the political consequences enough to justify the immoral failure to act?
Just wondering…
Anyway, I think Lester Brown is correct. Today more than 1 billion people go hungry and we are only increasing that total. When water shortages combine with extreme weather events, insect and plant disease infestation, ever increasing fuel costs AND demand from relentless population growth, we can expect to see much, much more suffering that will threaten the stability of many nations.
BTW, National Geographic has a good article this month on population. It might have been a great article if they had not completely dodged answering the question of: How many people can Earth support?
Can WWII-style food rationing be far behind.
My widowed grandmother with 4 kids kept a few chickens and a goat in her backyard during the war.
Welcome to Planet Triage.
Within a few decades we will almost certainly be in a situation thanks to climate change and resource depletion (and their knock-on effects, like water shortages) which will require a constant flow of funds from the developed countries to prevent immense human tragedies from lack of food and water. These costs will be much higher than the food aid given today, which is precisely the problem. As people in, say, the US start feeling the direct impacts and costs of CC, how will we respond? Americans like to think of ourselves as a generous people, and our history is full of examples that support that view.
But what happens when our generosity collides with “unacceptable” costs to our own citizens? How much food are you willing to take off your own plate or that of your child to feed a stranger thousands of miles away?
This is the kind of decision we’ll repeatedly force on ourselves by sticking to a business as usual path. It’s an inescapable consequence of 7, 8, or even 9 billion people in a few decades living on a finite world and trying to act as if it has infinite resources and waste sinks.
Just a refresher on the last time we did one of these -
Measurements of oxygen isotopes from the GISP2 ice core suggest the ending of the Younger Dryas took place over just 40 – 50 years in three discrete steps, each lasting five years. Other proxy data, such as dust concentration, and snow accumulation, suggest an even more rapid transition, requiring about a 7°C warming in just a few years.[5][6][22][23] Total warming was 10° ±4°C.[24]
The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to around 9500 BC (11550 calendar years BP.
Wiki -
Speaking of WWII, war is good for capitalist businessmen, they get paid strait from the US Treasury (see,for example, No Ordinary Time by Goodwin). Our economy and politics are still based substantially on WWII agendas, such as fossil fuel production.
World War Three will be a series of Climate Wars (now that we know petroleum is not “energy” but matter), commissioned by our friends at Blackwater, Halliburton, General Atomic, etc. as millions starve. And that’s in this country, in about one or two decades out. Then there will be little morality available. But let’s not change to non-atomic, clean energy since we have an extra large trans-national tar-sands oil pipeline and atomic fission electric stations to build. It is a “great” country, brought to you by plutocracy and militarism.
A reality based aid for our projected future would be a world wide program of free condoms and birth control pills on demand by anyone. Fewer mouths to feed could only be a good thing.
Here’s a reprint of the email I sent earlier today:
Dear Editor and Professors,
I last wrote you in August of 2009 to inquire about the impacts of ozone on vegetation. Only Dr. Sharkey was kind enough to reply.
Since then, I wonder if any of you realize that we are in the midst of a mass extinction of perennial vegetation, as well as devastating reductions in annual crops, from ozone – and simply decline to inform the general public?
Sent to:
executive-editor@nytimes.com, wittig@atmos.uiuc.edu, lisa.ainsworth@ars.usda.gov, kpercy@nrcan.gc.ca, wmanning@microbio.umass.edu, tsharkey@msu.edu, jreilly@mit.edu, p.m.cox@ex.ac.uk
Or, have you actually not noticed the rapidly accelerating death of trees, perennial shrubs and plants (including ocean phytoplankton), and extremely diminished production of agricultural products from rice to wheat, due to exposure to ozone?
Don’t you, as experts and persons of influence, feel some responsibility to inform the citizenry and policy makers that if we don’t cease burning massive amounts of fuel on an emergency basis…to conserve and ration, and switch as rapidly as possible to clean sources of energy…we will most certainly starve – because the inexorably rising levels of tropospheric ozone are interfering with the essential ability of vegetation (the base of the food chain) to photosynthesize?
I would very much appreciate any response. For your information, I have been collecting links to research and documenting the decline here.
Please understand that if you choose to not even acknowledge this specific correspondence, I will do my utmost to the extent possible to make sure that it is widely recognized that you have the knowledge and have chosen to refudiate (oh no oops, that’s Sarah Palin!) repudiate any responsibility for disseminating information which is essential for the survival of the human race, among countless other species.
I welcome any comments or suggestions.
Sincerely,
Gail Zawacki
Oldwick, NJ
Ok when are we going to have collapse?????
Time to bring back this Climate Denial Crock of the Week:
“The CO2 is Plant Food Crock”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g093lhtpEFo
RE # 4
William P, once again you are ahead of the curve: “The only realistic path left open is adaptation”
Please send your comments to Fred Krupp and the big green think tankers. They followed Al Gore’s admonition that nobody should give a moment of thought or action to adaptation. So, we didn’t.
Where does that leave us?
Watching and waiting. That’s where.
We are stupid lemmings on both the left and the right. We take orders and obey.
And, we have only ourselves to blame for the suffering we have delivered to our children.
Is there any righteous indignation in any of us? Can we not attack the Murdochians as murderers of our grand childrens’ future? How? Tell me!
Where is our outrage beyond these comments on CP?
John McCormick
Paulm, @13:
“Ok when are we going to have collapse?????”
When? It’s happening already, in stages.
My reading indicates that the Earth has a natural carrying capacity of about 500 million people.
When the deniers wake-up and smell the coffee , it will be sky high because coffee has just become a whole lot harder grow.
To John McCormick,
I’m asking the same question. There are a lot of people working to help stop these crises and they should be applauded for their efforts, but its simply not enough. Drastic action is clearly required.
So, what drastic action should we take and why haven’t we done it yet?
Ian @19 asks: “So, what drastic action should we take…”
Here is my take:
I have no lost love for the Military but have recently been advocating the “We All Win War” or “WAWW”. For starters we give the rich their tax break but with a string attached. They must invest an equal amount in the Green Awakening Economy to qualify. That money is not given to Congress or the President or Wall Street. The money is given to a NEW Green Branch of the military with War Time Powers. Labor costs for mitigation become slashed because the largest Civil costs on a project is labor. Within the Military, (CCC?) framework our labor costs would approach that of China. We get to train the youth in meaningful jobs, give them a grub stake, get them healthy, clean their system of street drugs, get the non-violent out of prisons, perhaps even a few of the violent ones. No Post Traumatic Syndrome for the retiring. (I have to assume that charged with doing good and saving the future of humanity would leave a good taste in their brains.) The Rich, as well as the Nation, on the other hand will have TANGIBLE ASSETS at a Fraction of the cost of corporate fingers in the pie. The Nation will not be adding as much to the deficit as we will be building renewable energy and 21st Centenary infrastructure to start the healing process. In time and Gentle persuasion, (rumor has it that Water Boarding is cool) the rich will be able to be assimilated. We might even buy enough time to let them die Naturally! Forgot to mention. Denial, misleading, unsubstantiated statements are now treasonable offenses.
It is a WAR of Survival!
We conscript funds from the wealthy that can be shown to have been acquired by amoral means. After all Corporations fought and won, (@ the Supreme Court), for the right to to be “People.” The State can take my property if I have been dealing pot. These guys get to trash the planet and make money? Walk Free? Buy Government? Deal Arms? Export jobs? ??? Did I say, “Trash the Planet?”
Out Past is the Enemy of Our Future…
My list of the reasons, listed in order or importance, for global food shortages and high prices as of January 6, 2011:
1. Poor global food distribution (the rich get the food from each plant, the poor get the shaft).
2. Rich speculators treating staples like rice and wheat as just another commodity.
3. Drought and heat waves in Russia and other places.
4. Flooding in Pakistan and other places, now including Australia.
5. Loss of topsoil.
6. Loss of fossil water from aquifers and glaciers.
7. Rising oil prices increasing operating costs of tractors and other farm machinery, and increasing the costs of pesticides.
8. Rising natural gas prices increasing costs of ammonia-based fertilizers.
9. Loss of pollinators like honeybees due to their stressful travel, feeding from unhealthy monoculture crops like almonds, and the cumulative use of all pesticides.
10. Ozone, the cumulative soup of all pollutants, comprising the immune system of all plants (as the HIV virus that causes AIDS does to humans) and making them more susceptible to disease, pests and other causes of damage and death.
This is the list at present, in order of current importance. I only put Gail Zawacki’s primary concern (see her comment #12) at the bottom because despite all her best efforts, the other causes have been known and proven for longer. I think her concern will climb this list, but I’m afraid everything on this list is increasing more rapidly than almost anyone knows.
And most experts know about one or a few of these concerns without synthesizing them like this.
I’d love to know how you’d rework this list, adding additional concerns, rewording, etc.
But this is only something to play attention to if you like to. . .eat.
MADurstewitz @17:
“My reading indicates that the Earth has a natural carrying capacity of 500 million.”
Perhaps, with conventional agriculture (2nd or 3rd World) but with self-reliant, Arcosanti type communities and indoor permaculture we could eventually exceed our present population sustainably.
There is no chance that will happen without the total collapse of Western(ized) civilization though.
Carrying capacity
There is wide variability both in the definition and in the proposed size of the Earth’s carrying capacity, with estimates ranging from less than 1 to 1000 billion (1 trillion).[44] Around two-thirds of the estimates fall in the range of 4 billion to 16 billion (with unspecified standard errors), with a median of about 10 billion.[45]
In a study titled Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the US National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), estimate the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. According to this theory, in order to achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States would have to reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population would have to be reduced by two-thirds.[46]
Some groups (for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature[47][48] and Global Footprint Network[49]) have stated that the carrying capacity for the human population has been exceeded as measured using the Ecological Footprint. In 2006, WWF’s “Living Planet Report” stated that in order for all humans to live with the current consumption patterns of Europeans, we would be spending three times more than what the planet can renew.[50] Humanity as a whole was using, by 2006, 40 percent more than what Earth can regenerate.[51]
But critics question the simplifications and statistical methods used in calculating Ecological Footprints. Therefore Global Footprint Network and its partner organizations have engaged with national governments and international agencies to test the results – reviews have been produced by France, Germany, the European Commission, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.[52] Some point out that a more refined method of assessing Ecological Footprint is to designate sustainable versus non-sustainable categories of consumption.[53][54] However, if yield estimates were adjusted for sustainable levels of production, the yield figures would be lower, and hence the overshoot estimated by the Ecological Footprint method even higher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
It’s a matter of the carbon footprint and current is unsustainable, even if we stop all emission today the temperature will keep rising.
To Leif, John McCormick and anyone else,
I think there are a lot excellent ideas that we could implement via changes in the law by the action of congress or even the courts. Leif, I think your ideas are excellent and would go a long way to helping our species through this century.
However, I think we would all agree that almost all meaningful ideas that require the action of congress are (tragically) unrealistic. Here is my question to you guys:
What are actions an individual could take that would have the maximum effect on helping our species at this moment? I’m not talking about environmental tips and things like that. But think about significant, realistic steps someone could take to do something about our situation. I want to emphasize realistic and significant. It is realistic to chain oneself to the White House gate but that isn’t very significant in the larger context of things.
So how about it? What are the most realistic, significant, drastic, extreme actions one could take to help the human race confront impending collapse?
Thanks guys. Youre all great people.
Ian
No! No! This is completely incorrect. Russia banned its wheat exports because it lost its hay crop for animal feed, in addition to taking a hit on wheat and barley, so rather than export grain to feed people, it held on to the grain to feed its herd.
There is almost certain to a be major food crisis this year, or even more likely next, but it will not primarily be caused by climate change, or biofuels demand, it will be caused by unquestioned massive planetary allocation of land area, grain, hay, and pasture to livestock production. When you add in the opportunity costs of forestation versus pasture, and the health care costs of animal-based diets versus plant-based diets, you just shake your head in amazement when you see coverage like this. We need to make the shift to much less animal intensive diets, divert the grain saved into reserves, idle more of our cropland (now producing feed) in no-till and green manure rotations that sequester carbon and build natural soil fertility, and put trees and perennial biomass on whatever is left and wet/fertile enough to grow a stand.
We need to start talking about the healthcare crisis in America, the carbon cost of that crisis, and the importance of prevention and plant-based nutrition to long-term cost control. Solve that problem, and you solve the global food crisis and you solve a very big part of the climate crisis. But don’t worry: what’s left over will still require a Herculean intergenerational response!
“The time to act was long, long ago, but failure to act now is beyond immoral.”
Joe, nice set up.
Jonathan Maxson said “…and green manure rotations that sequester carbon and build natural soil fertility, and put trees and perennial biomass on whatever is left and wet/fertile enough to grow a stand.“
Add Biochar to the lis, in general “BECCS”.
Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage
Let’s distinguish between market uncertainty and absolute scarcity.
The prices shoot up when there is uncertainty about food supply, but food is still available. The global market shifted when Russia dropped out of grain exporting for a while, and is reacting again as Australia has had heat waves and floods. Other grain exporters are not so hard hit.
What is far more dire is where there is the certainty of scarcity: no food at any price from any distance. In Pakistan, fields are still under water and ability to distribute aid is limited, it is in absolute scarcity.
Extreme weather has been affecting both price uncertainty and incidences of genuine famine and hunger, but let’s not mix the two up.
The families in line at the food pantries don’t have the option to stock up before a price rise, and neither to the Pakistanis. But the middle class in America is likely to find food on the market, albeit at a higher price, over the next few years. Further out is another matter.
I can only answer or myself. I built a green house, grow more food, but more to your point Ian, this year I am attempting to write a letter to my local paper 5 days a week, presenting thoughts most often gleaned right here on Climate Progress.
For your inspiration and motivation, Thank you all,
Leif
One other thing Ian, You imply that my “We All Win War” is to far out to be even considered, I disagree. If you cannot imagine victory you will not achieve victory. I can imagine victory with my proposals but realize that I am a semi broke retired boat builder from a small beautiful sea port town in the NW. I am all ears for better suggestions.
What do you say GOBP, How do we fix it?
(I know there is no need to fix anything, the rich are doing fine… )
But facts say otherwise. Many intelligent, caring, concerned adults think so as well.
The effects of the food crises will be that much greater on the poor. Countries like India, where 800 million subsist on less that $US2 a day, while billionaire plutocrats dominate an increasingly corrupt ‘miracle’ economy, are at real risk of vast social dislocation. The activities of commodity ‘traders’ during such a crisis are positively diabolical, but that’s really existing market capitalism for you.
What I find impressive, and unsurprising, is the global elite’s insouciant unconcern as the tide of hunger, malnutrition and premature death rises. You’d think that they were actually looking forward to the disaster, and I do imagine that they do just that. The elite have made no secret, over decades, of their desire for global population reduction, by the crudest Malthusian means if necessary. These are not the Dunning-Krugerites of the denialist rabble. They can understand the science and they know that we are on the brink of the precipice, but they are absolutely determined not to reduce their wealth or consumption. I’d say that war,famine and pestilence (look out for novel zoonotic epidemics, possibly enhanced in the biowarfare programs financed by billions in recent decades) are about to be visited on those populations the masters see as ‘useless eaters’.
The Queensland big wet, big flood and climate change
Have you noticed that no-one in the media is discussing Climate Change and the devastating Queensland floods? Floods that are directly affecting over 200,000 people, closing down three quarters of the coal mining industry in the state, plus major highways, rail links and public airports. Estimates of the damage are now running into the billions of dollars with at least 10 people killed so far.
Related: FoE: Heavy metals released into flood waters
The extent of the flooding has been described as a ”disaster of biblical proportions” affecting an area the size of New South Wales, or of France and Germany combined, with at least 40 towns and cities suffering innundation. The flooding has set new river flood height records, with some saying the flood is the worst in living memory, at least a one in a 100 year event. Widespread flooding of mines has also caused Heavy metals released into flood waters.
While Queensland is in the middle of the disasterous floods, one of the world’s largest insurers, Munich Re announced that the number of climate related disasters soared in 2010 killing as many as 295,000 people. “The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change.” said Munich Re in a press statement. Nine tenths of the disasters in 2010 were severe weather-related events.
As the atmosphere and oceans continue to warm, the ability for more water vapour to be carried in the atmosphere intensifies leading to more frequent and more intense precipitation events. The weather in Australia during the latter half of 2010 and into 2011 is being affected by a strong La Niña event bringing increased precipitation to Eastern Australia. According to the Bureau of Meteorology 2010 has become Queensland’s wettest year on record with the state annual average rainfall being 1109.73 millimetres, eclipsing the previous record of 1103.77 millimetres in 1950 in 110 years of rainfall records. http://indymedia.org.au/2011/01/06/the-queensland-big-wet-big-flood-and-climate-change
It takes independent news media to report about the greatest threat in human history.
Given the interdependency of oil and food, think it’s bad now? For myself, I’ve been doing the elementary maths on how much oil reserves there are in the world, both claimed and possible (half of the official figure), and got a handle on how little is known, audited and confirmed, and how much is possibly in the ground (again with an uncertainty range that makes MBH98′s error bars look like 100% certainties). It was the fake figures for reserves that alarmed me the most. Think the 2008 banking collapse was bad and a big surprise? Watch out for 20 to 30 years from now when a surprise oil collapse is a reasonable proposition.
Just imagine the aftermath of a worldwide oil collapse.
Tar sands sourcing needs so much water and natural gas you need to be really dumb to think it’s a physically sustainable and viable means to continue as we are, being able to only provide between 5-10% of what’s needed at today’s consumption rate as far as I can tell.
Back to Ian’s question: “What are the most realistic, significant, drastic, extreme actions one could take to help the human race confront impending collapse?”
I am shaping my answer with Gandhi’s advice, “Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”
Like Gandhi’s view of the British Empire in India, there are some aspects of impending collapse that are welcome and can be endorsed, while other aspects of collapse need to be minimized or eliminated.
I’m not in a position to lead on implementation of the following short list. My role is one of the voices that ripple across the so-called six degrees of separation to multiple decision makers. In social psychology, it takes about six months for a radical idea to start to take root in others’ minds, claimed as their own, so one must be very patient and consistent.
There is one welcome aspect of impending collapse, we can foresee a decline in our access to the fossil energy that has multiplied the dreadful human impact on each other and the rest of the planet. I would welcome fossil fuel rationing, with some reserves for future peaceful uses, like medical tubing and food packaging, uses that we might really miss. (See emergency management.)
Agriculture. Development of farm policy more dependent on human agricultural labor, not so much on the techno alternatives of PV, wind etcetera that don’t do agriculture so well anyway. Scale down the subsidies for fossil-fuel driven agriculture, so commodities like African cotton and Mexican corn can again support a population staying on the land, not migrating to coastal cities. Encourage small farms and help the debt-heavy agribusinesses to phase over. The backyard gardeners are a good part of this step, but the mid scale farms are important.
Emergency management. In the US and around the world emergency management is a mix of military and private. The impending upscaling of risk was clear in understaffed responses to western US wildfires and Hurricane Katrina, because state National Guard units were already deployed overseas in war. In Russia in 2009 the failure to allow wetlands to recover was also part of the wildfire severity. We need to train and support units that are prepared to respond to the Big One earthquake, and the hurricanes, blizzards, floods, wildfires, and heat waves that will affect large populations. The units can do proactive measures like reactivate wetlands or plant trees, between responses to disaster events.
We want people and businesses to move back from the coast lines, or make careful provision for storm effects on shipping and fishing that has to stay coastal. Disaster insurance should be at least a hot topic that gets people thinking. The poor people hovering on the edge of the sea are not influenced by insurance premiums, however.
Keep talking, and the walking will come with it.
Joan Savage said “I would welcome fossil fuel rationing, with some reserves for future peaceful uses, like medical tubing and food packaging, uses that we might really miss. (See emergency management.)”
There are solutions already on the table, they just have to be adopted.
Experts Produce Plastic Without Fossil Fuels
Up until now, scientists have always considered that the only possible way of producing plastic, one of the main materials in our civilization, is through modifying and altering fossil fuels, primarily oil. But now, a team of South Korean scientists has managed to produce the compound for the first time without using any of these polluting fuels. Rather than extracting it from chemicals, they have managed to bioengineer it, proving once and for all that changes can be made to our way of life through innovation.
The achievement does make one wonder how it is that it was not made in one of the countries where the oil companies ruled, such as the United States or Canada. In short, there is no interest in such products in these nations, where the extent of the influence that oil corporations have on governments is difficult to quantify.
The South Korean accomplishment also points at the fact that the oil industry is indeed dispensable. Previous studies, done elsewhere, also demonstrated that plastic-like compounds, even more efficient than the actual plastics, could be made of hemp as well.
“The polyesters and other polymers we use everyday are mostly derived from fossil oils made through the refinery or chemical process. The idea of producing polymers from renewable biomass has attracted much attention due to the increasing concerns of environmental problems and the limited nature of fossil resources. PLA is considered a good alternative to petroleum based plastics as it is both biodegradable and has a low toxicity to humans,” Professor Sang Yup Lee, the leader of the new study, explains. The research was done by the KAIST University and the Korean chemical company LG Chem.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Experts-Produce-Plastic-Without-Fossil-Fuels-127667.shtml
Plastic made from clay and water eliminates use of oil
Takuzo Aida and his team from the University of Tokyo, Japan, have hit upon a novel method of manufacturing plastics from clay, sodium polyacrylate and glue. If such a practice becomes popular, it could lessen our dependence on oil for making plastic. Where sodium polyacrylate serves as the thickening agent, the molecular glue provides the non-oil-based plastic with elasticity.
Process, put in plain words:
One of the primary breakthroughs is the overall simplicity of the procedure coupled with the exceptional physical properties of the final assemblies. Toughness, self-healing and robustness are just some of the initial physical properties that will be found for this new class of materials.
Craig Hawker, University of California, Santa Barbara.
The mixture, that is almost 98 percent water, transforms into an elastic hydrogel in less than three minutes. When clay is exposed to the thickening agent, the surface area of the former is increased. The supramolecular forces cause water molecules to affix to the clay sheets and allow the mixture to regain its strength if it fails to obtain essential elasticity. More quantity of material means more strength of the hydrogel.
http://www.greendiary.com/entry/plastic-made-from-clay-and-water-eliminates-use-of-oil/
Plastics industry seeks plant-based alternatives as oil prices climb http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article4192987.ece
Envion Oil Generator turns plastic waste into oil http://www.gizmag.com/envion-plastic-waste-to-oil-generator/12902/
“Maybe the most important is to transition American culture to value local independence.”
This makes a lot of sense and made me think of an interesting television series that aired a couple of years ago called “Jericho”. The story is about the fictional Kansas town of Jericho after a series of terrorist nuclear attacks on major American cities leads to a total breakdown of government, infrastructure and society. After this collapse, In the absence of communication, and with no ability to obtain more food, fuel, and supplies, the members of this community come together; organizing food stores and supplies, bartering with another town to build a small windmill for electricity, etc. They quickly adapt to this harsh new world and their community becomes self-reliant. Things go badly, and armed marauders try to take over the town forcing the people of Jericho to bear arms and defend their little town.
While we may not be headed for a nuclear holocaust, we are obviously headed for catastrophe. So as adaptation is essential, it only makes sense for individuals to start planning for this collapse and to start thinking more about local independence. Here are a few of my ideas on becoming self-reliant and building local independence.
Disaster management on a local level: In the days and weeks after the major flood that hit the state of Tennessee last May, there was a great community outpouring. While the federal, state and local government response was far better than that of Katrina, the situation was still overwhelming, so the citizens of Tennessee organized to pick up the slack. Locals rented excavating equipment to clear roads, volunteers set up emergency shelters, others organized food drives, and still more volunteered to help clean out and rebuild homes and businesses. In the future, disaster management on a local level will be key, as disasters happening on a greater scale and with more frequency will render federal responses less efficient. This makes a case for our need for more community organizers.
Bartering within your local community: In recent years, I’ve seen a resurgence of bartering on a local level. My wife and I barter with a local organic farm by providing website services in exchange for a weekly bushel of produce throughout their 23 week growing season. During the summertime, I barter homemade granola with a neighbor for his lawn mowing services. Bartering has great potential in this deteriorating world of shrinking resources. It can help struggling people acquire some of the everyday services and goods they need. It helps strengthen small businesses and families, AND it helps to build and strengthen communities.
Learn to hunt wild game: Up until recently, I’ve never entertained the thought of shooting and killing an animal in the wild, but the way things are headed, this concept is starting to make sense to me. While this is not practical for everyone, I can see the value in having the ability to hunt for one’s own food if you live in certain parts of the country. One good deer kill could provide a years worth of meat for my family, meet that would be far healthier than any meat you could buy in a supermarket.
Improving individual fitness and health: The current obesity epidemic in America has rendered much of our society in a state of ill health (it has now surpassed smoking as the number one cause of preventable death). While this is not a priority that most want to address, getting a grip on this will be key for our survival long-term. If individuals can take a more holistic approach to their health and well-being, they become more self-reliant. The healthier you become, the more effective and productive you are in your everyday life, and the less strain you will put on the healthcare system. You’re keeping your health local. Besides, if things go really bad, being physically strong will be a key attribute.
As most people won’t change unless forced to, I believe Gandhi’s ideal is our best hope – “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
Answer to Ian’s question: start eating lower on the food chain, and encourage everyone you know to do likewise. There is no other fruit available to us that is so low-hanging, with such an incredible impact, across so many fronts. We can solve the global food distribution problem, but not until we start addressing the livestock problem.
What’s likely driving up food prices is mostly excessive commodities futures speculation:
Taibbi/Rolling Stone : The Great American Bubble Machine
One of the main problems with fighting climate change is that Wall Street appears to want to profit from the chaos.
I strongly suspect that the previous price bubble in 2008 and the subsequent bad press for biofuels was a test run of such a profiteering scheme, as was the oil price bubble under the Bush administration. Taibbi documents how during the Bush administration oil price bubbles an average barrel of oil was traded 27 times before it reached the consumer.
The housing bubble could be small change compared to the profits generated by the chaos of AGW.
I’ve been putting off reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism for way too long.
[JR: No. Clearly there are multiple factors. But in any case given that peak oil is here, it is hard to identify what is "excessive commodities futures speculation" and what is just smart investment.]
G’day,
I have an idea which probably wont be the most popular in this crowd and as an disinterested agnostic I have little personal interest in being part of the growing interface between religions and the collective action of our species, but…these groups are powerful NGO actors who have large extant networks and a huge amount of emotional and social capital among the faithful.
I think many sci-fi authors can be quite visionary and do more thinking about our near future than our political class. One idea often touted is using a cult, in the religious studies usage of the word where all ontologically organized groups of people we call relgions are called cults, to achieve an end. That is a bit sinister in many ways and disengenuous at the very least, but an interesting thought for a book i.e. ‘strange in a strange land’ by Heinlein.
Never the less, I would suggest we tackle the low hanging fruit and begin to serioiusly utilize religiously organized peoples and not continue to be spread into little warring factions that the top 1% split us up into so we can all be ineffectual against them ‘together’. I think Green issues, poverty, and hunger are all related. The idea of reducing our consumption is a long standing religous principle as is taking care of the land. I think a grand revival of these ideals in the progressive churches, mosques, synagogues, gudwaras, temples etc of america and the world could be far more transformative than any governmental mandate that will slowly or not so slowly get repealed by industry, courts, and non-enforcement.
There exist a large group, around 85% of the populace who claim some religous affiliation who have strong emotional and social capital invested in the only community identification many of them have left. As family, ethic groups, neighborhoods and language groups get diluted into the american mass media pool of thought, religion remains the last bastion of community and inovlvement for many people. I think this is already happening all over the US as religious leaders get invovled.
I think there are local politcal, religous community, and business leaders. There is no national leadership, only a national federal followship as it were of know-nothing poll watchers pursuing the status quo as the business/ownership class see things.
When you want to act, run for local office, but also talk to your local religous leaders. Greening houses and improving efficiency in low income areas will go along way to connecting religous leaders to green causes by pairing them with issues of poverty and ideas of stewardship, loving your neighbor, and living with community/relgion prosperity raised above the cause of increasing your individual prosperity.
If you want to act and get things done, then get out there and talk to those religious leaders! They have 6 days off a week from religous duties and spend nearly all of it interacting and influencing their communities. Let’s make sure they’re influencing the people for the betterment of humanity and very directly the betterment of their own community.
Cheers,
spiritkas
Bicycles are nice but it takes knobby tires
when there is various debri to ride over or
to ride off road. No flat Slime also works
well.
Blending the definitions of adaptation and
mitigation still means planning and working
with what you have to work with.
We only had mild effects of the hurricanes
in what 2005, but emergency management
said to stay off the roads and banking services
among many other services went down off
and on that month.
That people will adapt is one concern, but that
Lack of service or ability to provide is counted as
Mitigation only serves religion to ease the conscious.
Afraid new world.
The fact that our global economic system is dependent on growth, that it cannot continue so forever, and the task of retooling our system to something sustainable must be terrifying. Most economists are totally clueless.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/calculating_the_true_cost_of_global_climate_change__/2357/
We have hit the walls of our finite world.
With a sickly economy, there is no will to do the right things.
Among those things would be, IMHO, a Manhattan project to develop and deploy effective carbon capture technology. That would buy us the time to replace all the fossil fuel power plants.
I am glad the unemployment figure dropped. We need our economy to be healthy enough to save itself.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in decision makers. So often they don’t know what they don’t know… and need to know… to make smart decisions.
I am fervently hoping we do not get into a Lucifer’s Hammer scenario.
Commodities speculation is a feedback, not a forcing, if you don’t mind the analogy. I saw a report in Natl Geo mag last year that per capita food production has declined globally for five years running, albeit by a small amount. Nonetheless reversing a decades-long trend.
I think the aspect that hasn’t had enough focus is hinted at by Russia’s policy regarding exports. A sustained rise in global food prices will result in exporting countries capping or stopping their exports. We will then revert to a regional food system with some countries seeing their prices drop, and famine returning to those countries that either cannot grow enough, or convince exporters to sell them food. For example, will China be able to force the US to export food to them by holding the financing of our debt as hostage? The politics is going to be very messy.
We already have the carbon and capture technology and we know how to deploy it. It’s called plant-based nutrition and forestation. This is not rocket science. Fifty percent of the 48-state U.S. landbase is allocated to livestock production. The global picture is not much different and it’s getting worse. We are allocating more and more land to livestock production, and taking down more forest to do it. We can feed double the world’s present population on a fraction of the land base we now have allocated to food production – if we eat low on the food chain – and we’ll still have enough land for massive forestation.
Right now, the global forest is holding about 1.5 times the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Increase forest by 1/3, decrease carbon in atmosphere by 1/2. Obviously a gross oversimplification, but the basic idea is sound. We need to put as much emphasis on increasing the drain as we do on turning down the faucet. We need sink. Forestation is the ONLY way we are going to get the carbon out of the atmosphere. What the heck are we waiting for? Be the change we need to see in the world, absolutely. Gandhi was a vegetarian. Get healthy, go plant-based, spread the word.
At this point, if you consider yourself reasonably well-informed about human nutrition and climate change, and you haven’t yet given up the consumption of animal products to save civilization and insure greater food security for all, you’re behaving like a psychopath.
Thanks everyone for your responses to my question.
Prokaryotes #34, hemp is grand stuff. Have you seen the old movie reel of Henry Ford hitting a car made from hemp with a sledge-hammer, and failing to dent it? And I remember an article in the China Reconstructs years ago, where a tiny group of very long-lived Chinese peasants put their health and longevity down to hemps seeds. I, cynical fool that I am, thought that must be code for ‘they smoked a lot of weed’, but now, of course, we know that hemp seed oil is wonderfully healthy, providing high levels of Omega 3 & 6 oils in proper balance for human nutrition. And Dean #41, I believe that the situation will be the exact obverse of your scenario. As long as its agriculture holds up, the USA will use food as a weapon against other nations, with subsidised exports destroying entire farming communities, as has happened in Mexico with regard to maize, and Haiti with rice as the agricultural weapon.
Would hemp to plastic be the same as wood to bio-char without the soil benefits? Carbon sequestration none the less. Perhaps even less energy to convert.
You ain’t seen nothin yet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/07/algeria-riots-food-prices
This strikes me as silly. It takes decades to see changes in climate. When you have a near doubling of food prices in less than 5 years, doesn’t that have to be something other than climate change?
[JR: You have missed the point. The climate is changing now, driving more extreme weather, which is contributing to food price rise.]
George@ 48: How many decades have we on the left been trying to get your attention. At least since President Carter and many of us far longer. ~ 10 years age the Earth had over a year of grain reserves, about 5 years ago that was down to about 6 months and today grain reserver are non existent. Today Humanity lives from field to mouth. Very perilous. Books have been written. Try “Dirt, the Erosion of Civilization.” The similarities with global warming are spooky, and I must say, disheartening.
George @48 — World has been rapidly warming for 35 years now. Extreme weather events are now beginning to affect the food supply in a world with how many more billions of people?
Leaked Cable: Hike food prices to boost GM crop approval in Europe
In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General Alfredo Bonet “noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports.”
It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that “The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number,” reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.
The unprecedented high in food prices in 2008 caused an additional 250 million people to go hungry, pushing the global number to over a billion. 2008 is also the first year “since such statistics have been kept, that the proportion of the world’s population without enough to eat ratcheted upward,” said Kaufman.
All to boost acceptance of GM foods, and done via a trading scheme on which Wall Street speculators profited enormously.
Mass food riots in several nations ensued, as did an investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, resulting in a finding that, yes, unrestricted speculation in food commodities caused soaring prices.
In a comment at the end of the cable, the diplomat also revealed a level of pessimism about Spain’s willingness to help force GM foods on Europe:
“This was a very good substantive discussion. However, it is clear that while Spain will continue sometimes to vote in favor of biotechnology liberalization proposals, the Spaniards will tread warily on this issue given their own domestic sensitivities and other equities Spain has in the EU.”
That pessimism was largely unfounded, as “Spain planted 80 percent of all the Bt maize in the EU in 2009 and maintained its record adoption rate of 22 percent from the previous year,” noted a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).
The leaked cables, amounting to over 1,300 right now, reveal US obsession with expanding the biotech market:
One leaked cable confirms US concern with promoting GM foods in Africa, which Richard Brenneman described as “a significant item on the State Department’s agenda.”
In another leaked cable describing the potential to expand US interests in “isolationist” Austria, that nation’s ban on GM foods is highlighted.
According to a leaked cable from 2007, of concern was French President Sarkozy’s desire to implement a ban on GM foods in line with populist sentiment. According to GM Free Regions, France maintains its opposition to GM foods today.
In this leaked cable, the Pope openly blamed global hunger on commodity speculation and corrupt public officials, so far refusing to support the use of GM foods. (Also see my Dec. 12 piece, “Leaked cables confirm Pope’s distance from GMO debate and limited stance on bioethics.”
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/12/14/leaked-cable-hike-food-prices-to-boost-g
Sarkozy takes G20 case to Obama as food prices soar
Fri Jan 7, 2011 6:18pm EST
By Emmanuel Jarry
PARIS (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy takes his campaign for greater global food price and currency stability to Washington next week when he seeks Barack Obama’s support for France’s goals as head of the Group of 20 powers.
Soaring food prices and riots in places like Algeria offer Sarkozy ammunition to press for more coordination between G20 governments to combat wild swings in vital commodity prices as well as exchange rates versus the long-dominant U.S. dollar.
The French president wants to use his run at the G20 helm in 2011 to start, if not finish, reforms of the monetary system at a time when many countries are tempted to let their currency drop to promote exports and growth after the worst downturn since World War Two, even if that can be at each others’ expense.
Paris is also pressing for international efforts to impose greater transparency in commodity markets trading and pricing, and for tougher regulation of trading in commodity derivatives along the lines pursued for other investment derivatives in the wake of the financial markets crisis that preceded the economic downturn of 2008-2009, and the government debt crisis now.
“As we sense it, more multilateralism is the best answer to the increased instability in the world,” a Sarkozy adviser said of a meeting happening on Monday in Washington, where Sarkozy will be accompanied by wife and ex-model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as well as his finance and defense ministers.
“We want to broach this thinking with the Americans and see if they are willing to join in such an approach, whereafter we can produce more precise proposals,” said the advisor, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE70664T20110107?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
George havent you been reading Joe’s posts?
Jonathan Maxon (#42) – You make many good points, and you stay away from the classic mistake I’ve heard some vegetarians make where they say something like “If we all were vegetarians, then we could all drive whatever we wanted whenever and wherever we wanted.”
I think we need to avoid such either/or thinking. We need to do it all, including everything mentioned above.
Yesterday I biked up and down a total of about 1500 vertical feet on windy, steep mountain roads including patches of ice in rain to get a root canal, then biked home.
In answer to Ian’s excellent question, I think we need to understand all we can about all the various facets of the problem and communicate that as effectively as we can to as many as we can. Leif’s letter to the editor a day is great, as is any other communication.
I’m suggesting that in every area, we promote a campaign to “Cut it in half.” Ideally we’d cut our population in half at the birth end, not the death end (though I’m afraid nature has other ideas). We’d like to cut CO2 in half, first in the amount emitted but ultimately the total in the atmosphere. Right now both of those seem absolutely impossible, but as Leif says, we have to have ideals in mind, or we’ll never even move in a positive direction.
The “cut it in half” can apply to anything in one’s life. For instance, to take care of my 91-year-old mother we combined two households into one, roughly cutting many things, including household expenses and energy consumption, in half.
Going from an SUV to a car that consumes and pollutes half as much, or driving half as much, or doubling the average occupancy of your car are all ways to cut current driving practices in half.
Home insulation and solar panels, even taken in steps, could cut utility bills and energy consumption in half.
Even if someone seems a hopeless carnivore, they could start by cutting their meat consumption in half. Refusing to eat beef would be a great place to start. (When eating in Portland’s comically politically correct Vegan restaurants with the crunchiest granola activists you’ll ever meet I always loudly order the feedlot veal. As a joke.)
Along with understanding, communication and personal lifestyle changes, we need to work at every level of government to try to change all the legislation we can, with a price on carbon as our ultimate Holy Grail (which are excellent when roasted, and stuffed with ground California Condor and Snowy Owl).
Then we need to understand that most of everything we’ve all mentioned might only move the needle a per cent or two (like the percentage all solar and wind are in generating world and U.S. electricity) before the stuff (and by stuff I mean sh*t) really hits the fan and we’re all forced to change in myriad ways most can’t now even begin to imagine.
We need to be prepared for all the “fires next time” so we can get ahead of these curves as much as possible.
In the end, maybe what is most realistic and meaningful is that we can improve our individual and collective karma as much as possible, while encouraging others to do the same.
While the Bush-Cheney administration denied any climate change whatsoever, military people in the Pentagon were preparing for future wars triggered by countries fighting over food and water shortages. This was documented by author Gwynne Dyer in his 2008 book titled “Climate Wars”. If the military “gets it” then why don’t politicians?
On a related note, everyone should read the 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes Ph.D. or at least watch her lecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
Dear Friends,
Most of the people I know, eat food. This is why I think that the greatest threat to humanity is hunger. Climate change, economic collapse, species extinction and peak oil all threaten to exacerbate this threat. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a cheap and easy way for each individual to reduce their contribution to climate change, world hunger, economic collapse, species extinction and peak oil?
I am particularly fond of methods that do not require corporate or government approval. For example, minerals that anyone can concentrate from sea salt or sea water can cheaply double local and backyard garden food production (and carbon sequestration) in a couple years. I think that getting as many people as possible acquainted with this information is the best thing we can do to help people survive the changes that are coming. A simple open-source method for concentrating these minerals is described at:
http://www.subtleenergies.com/plant-lynx.htm
It appears that these essential plant and animal nutrients that were previously unknown to science. When added to the soil, they double plant growth over a few years time, while increasing drought & freeze tolerance. They also improve the taste and nutrition of the plants. See the link above for examples.
When fed to animals, they increase the early growth and health of chickens and have allowed a cat to regrow a lost tail. See:
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/animal-lynx.htm
These minerals have been concentrated from sea water, fresh water, rocks and even from the air using cheap, open-source methods described at:
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/articles.htm#METHODS
Hunger is a threat because global warming will force us to significantly change our food growing areas, economic collapse will prevent more people from being able to afford good food, peak oil will force us to grow more food locally or starve and species extinction will create holes in the web of life that feeds us. Growing inches of new topsoil and doubling plant production in a couple years will help all species that eat food. It will also sequester more carbon.
Anyone with access to fire and sea water can concentrate these minerals from the sea. If you have access to magnets and plumbing parts you can concentrate them from the air or fresh water using open-source methods.
With kindest regards,
Barry Carter
bcarter at igc.org
Joe, I’ve posted a follow-up discussion to your analysis on my blog, in which I eat a little crow for being overly strident in my initial comment (#25), and then dive more deeply into the plant-based nutrition/livestock/forestation issues. Your coverage of the likely near-term climate change impacts on global food security is well-argued and timely, and it wasn’t my intention to suggest otherwise.
@Prokaryotes #52 & 52: very helpful additions to the conversation, thank you.
@Richard #54: I appreciate where you are coming from, and I can get why you would want to cut the ice a little in a vegan restaurant if it felt too uptight for you, but it’s hard to see how your server and neighbors in that situation would find your humor in good taste. Just be clear that you’re cracking a joke to make yourself comfortable with the situation, not to lighten up the day of the people around you, who are working hard to establish a new and healthier social norm for themselves and their families in a culture where unrestrained consumption of animal products is so obviously the will of the political majority.
As to whether reducing beef consumption by 1/2 is a great place to start, well sure, from a climate change perspective, that’s fantastic; but whether it is the right place for you or anyone else specifically to start really is a choice that should be made after a discussion with an informed and responsible primary care provider or family physician who can provide some decent clinical consultation and patient education in the context of your personal and familial medical history. If you already have atherosclerosis, which most U.S. citizens have by the time they are twenty, and if you have a family history of cardiovascular or heart disease, a responsible physician might counsel you to make more of a wholesale transition to plant-based nutrition, not only because that SHOULD be the only way to avoid a malpractice lawsuit, but also because it is so often clinically easier to just make the shift all at once, for reasons related to psychology, physiology, and home economy.
Keep in mind that we are in the middle of a public health epidemic; that our health care expenditures are completely out of control; and that our personal and family dietary choices affect the health insurance premiums and tax burden of everyone in the system.
Here is another article on food inflation and what is currently contributing to it, including ‘weather shocks disrupting food supplies’, such as the Queensland floods, the Russian drought and severe weather conditions in Argentina:
Full article here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL3E7CC0RQ20110112
Aiming to prod the possibly educable media every day, I just sent this note to the Marketplace (public radio.org) comment site:
In discussing food prices today you referred to the weather numerous times placing the blame on “mother nature”. Surely people staffing your sustainability desk are aware that the weather is no longer solely under the control of mother nature. Humans are having a dramatic and increasing impact on the weather through our changing of the underlying climate. The Russian heat wave and fires, Australian drought followed by floods, Pakistani floods, and unprecedented record breaking heat across the globe. Climate scientists widely agree that all these events are worsened by climate change.