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Enviro Warrior - Wake up and smell the Homus ... then tread lightly upon the planet.
Switch the news on, or pick up the paper; or simply visit your local supermarket and you will already know that food prices around the world have sky-rocketed, in some cases up to 83%!!
Food protests and riots from Italy to Mexico have begun capturing worldwide attention, and whilst the polic...
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Here's one I hugged earlier ...
Location unknown...
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They say that necessity is the mother of invention and with Ireland previously importing nearly 90% of its fossil fuel needs, it remained particularly vulnerable to global supply disruptions, sitting as it does, at the end of Europe's pipelines.
Eamon Ryan : Irish Green Party" wrap="1" ti...
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Oh its almost too good to be true, isn't it? But here it is... a new grant to investigate the possibilities even further, sealed this month with a 1.5 million cheque, allowing further development of a photovoltaic solar-cell-paint which can do just that!
The idea of being able to build up ...
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Thats an astonishing 100,000 megawatts, which is the same as saying enough electricity for the needs of 150 million people, already... and we have only just begun to harvest the cleanest, freest energy on our world the wind...and If the full cost of carbon emissions are incorporated into the p...
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At first glance these two subjects look like they have nothing in common and it may indeed appear that the Envirowarrior has lost her bearings - bear with me, because that is the point - the point of the compass that is due-north, isnt it?
You mean, Earths Magnetic Fields, our collective...
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Night-cap of moonlight,
Half-dose of dew,
Crystals of star-shine,
Raindrops, a few
Skyful of sunsets,
Clear draughts of dawn,
Taste of the winds,
Scent of mowed lawn;
Eyeful of mountains,
Balm of a tree,
Essence of flowers,
All of the sea.
Measure of sunshine,
Distilled dro...
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Gold-en Sun-light that is.
Im talking super, solar power-highways, like the types now being re-thought, re-designed and road-tested in both Europe and the US. Engineers, scientists and businessmen putting their minds and resources together towards gold 'n green, boldly illuminating the...
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"A man is bitten by a rattle snake in Montana. A hurricane rips through Mexico. A turtle lays an early egg on a Pacific Island. An epidemic of Rift Valley fever breaks out in Kenya. At last the conductor that has been orchestrating these, and thousands of other seemingly random incidents, thro...
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With over 10 of the species - listed in my Endangered Species Post of January 2007 - already extinct, I found this story of the Californian Condor Conservation program, heart warming in the extreme.
It is nice to think that a growing human awareness, now understands that resource management is...
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Shabby Chic is not new to our homes, nor is watching what we eat, but how about what we wear? The new buzzword amongst the world's leading fashion designers is 'eco-chic' and with Sienna Miller, and the wife of U2s Bono, Ali Hewson, lending support to the movement, ethical and planet-friendly cloth...
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Growing evidence suggests that the global economy is now destroying its own ecological base and offering little to billions of impoverished people.~World Watch Institute
Environmental decline and persistent mass poverty suggest that the dominant model for economies worldwide is in crisis.
~ Gar...
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As a burgeoning global population reaches the point of maximum consumption of current resources, the question of a future for that population comes into ever sharper focus.
Amongst the many areas of concern, the major issue of sustainable fresh clean drinking water supplies. In fact, recent ...
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I am reposting this question as I have come under very harsh criticism by a non-registered orbler, who has harassed and abused me endlessly about what he claims are my incoherent babblings of the previous post by this name, where, he feels, I failed to put things into perspective.
Perhaps he is...
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LED lighting is not terribly new, but this little gem from Lemnis Lighting is ... and if you bought one today, you would still be using it in 2042.
Talk about a green gift that just keeps on giving...
It's called the "Pharox" light bulb and although at first it seems like just another anothe...
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Switch the news on, or pick up the paper; or simply visit your local supermarket and you will already know that food prices around the world have sky-rocketed, in some cases up to 83%!!
Food protests and riots from Italy to Mexico have begun capturing worldwide attention, and whilst the policymakers are busy pointing fingers at a litany of perpetrators - everything from climate change, high oil prices, a weak dollar and the bio-fuel boom, to sheer population blowout and even ‘meat eaters in China?’ – we can’t overlook a lack of water management either as another 'pet' cause.
Through all these wonderful media efforts, the majority now believe that due to the affluence and ‘good life’ provided by the discovery of oil, the human population of this planet is growing beyond the planet’s ability to produce enough food to meet the future head on...
Look a little deeper though into the recent food riots in several African countries, Indonesia or Haiti - and beyond to the UN Food and Agricultural Organiser’s warning of another 37 countries also facing food shortage - and you’ll soon see that (as FAO Director General, Jacques Diouf put it…) …
"This is not Greek tragedy where fate is decided by the gods and humans can do nothing about it. No, we have the ability to influence our futures with good solutions bought about by good management.”
Hmmm ... modern day governments and good management? Seems to have become an oxymoron, especially when you hear words like 'kickback' and a rarely mentioned … *erghm* … deregulation.
Yep, pundits across the 1st world have exhausted us all with endless 'air-time cliché’s' describing '...the deregulated financial markets that sparked the mortgage crisis,' bla bla bla ... but the regulatory state of global agricultural markets is something most policymakers and share-invested consumers, don't want to think about at all, let alone try to understand ... and strangely absent from the media’s ever eager eye. Almost taboo, even .. however, the dynamics at play in the collapse of both markets is the same, although the ‘scale of deregulation, proportionate to the scale of consequences,’ varies.
According to FAO statistics, '...the deregulation in agricultural markets - like economic deregulation in other sectors - reached full tilt in the US in the eighties and nineties. Trade and development guru’s preached the wonders of open agricultural markets, unfettered production, and “intensive industrial agriculture.' And, on the backs of their convincing words, the World Bank and International Monetary Funds conditioned new loan policies, which quickly set about purging (heretofore) failsafe government intervention in agricultural markets.
Global ‘commodity agreements,’ ‘price supports for local farmers,’ and other mechanisms which had previously helped maintain stability in global supplies and prices were suddenly dismantled. The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture, together with multi-lateral and bilateral agreements - including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - slashed agricultural taxes in the developing world, opening up markets for a new global “agribusiness industry.”
Current World Annual Wheat Production
In the U.S., the 1996 Farm Bill eliminated the last vestiges of 'domestic price supports' for the independent farmer, whilst cheaper (imported) feed crops fuelled industrial-level livestock production, increasing meat consumption and driving out many small producers completely.
As one economist in the Organic Consumers Association puts it,
“Thanks to non-existent anti-trust enforcement and rampant vertical integration, we've reached a level of concentration in our global agriculture system that would make Standard Oil blush. Three companies-Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge-control the vast majority of global grain trading, while Monsanto controls more than one-fifth of the global market in seeds. Consumers from Sioux City to Soweto are more and more dependent on fewer and fewer producers.
By eliminating the breadth and diversity of the system, it seems we've also eliminated its ability to withstand shock, or (worse) manipulation.”
Oh dear, it seems that deregulation hasn’t paid off at all. Indeed, for centuries, since the first hunter-gatherers settled down on the land, grain reserves have been an essential component of functioning food systems in all countries across the globe.
In this way, when market prices are high due to bad growing conditions, ‘grain reserves’ can be released on the market, keeping the prices down for consumers. So too, when prices are low, “reserve (storage) systems” buy up the cheap grain, bringing prices back up… also ensuring ‘rainy day’ supplies for the next spike.
Alarmingly, in the last two decades, however, most ‘free trade’ governments have foolishly allowed ‘reserve systems’ to wither. They have placed full faith in free market imports from poorer third-world countries to self-correct imbalances, totally eliminating a last minute “emergency response mechanism.”
Too bad if there are floods, fire or drought, right … the consumer can starve?
Meanwhile, back on the farm...
Well, after the US mortgage crisis, investors needed a new place to put their money and the idea of growing crops for ethanol was sold to U.S. farmers (for a short while), as a way to '...bail out the rural crisis and channel excess supply,' all the while letting the free market continue to dictate prices.
All this too, despite an alredy volatile market and full knowledge that grain reserves were well depleted. The ‘mega-giant, grain traders” once again started withholding supply in hopes of higher prices for their annual profit margins. '..They played off currency differentials, and quickly exploited shifting production and investments in search of greater ‘bottom line returns,’ all made possible by deregulated markets.
While farmers in the U.S. may have seen the price for a bushel of corn go from US$2 to $6 in the last two years, in Australia fruit farmers are still only getting the few cents per piece of fruit they did 10 years ago. In the meantime, everything from seeds to fertilizer; and from diesel for tractors, has almost tripled in price, severely deflating any increase in income to the farmer at all.
Falls In Australian Wheat Production
We’ve all heard the catchy phrases that explain the difference between a ‘short windfall’ and a ‘long term profit shift’ but either way, the truth of lies in the farmers profit and his ability to pass on price increases to consumers, in order to cover his cost of production and living. Thanks to deregulation, that is a term that – these days - only the “big guys” have the market power to do…
Last year’s financial reports showed that Mega-agri-companies like Cargill's third-quarter, increased in profits of over 86%. General Mills' were up 61%, and Monsanto's margin rose by a nice tidy 45% ... none of it to be donated to the recent call by World Bank President, Robert Zoellick’s for governments to help make up the US$500 million aid shortfall of the World Food Program.
What, not a cent to help the world's poorest regions, where hundreds of thousands are threatened with starvation?
Sacry, but true... the Agri-giants have become more than just food producers to feed (or not feed) people, they have become common traders - similar to financial traders - but in livestock, commodity and human futures. In an un-regulated global market, these ‘big guys’ have '...gained enough market share that through buying and selling, they can play off both supply and demand' .. and their actions now set the direction of global prices.
They can send shockwaves through the entire system, whenever they want.
That brings us to the first major difference between the housing crisis and the food crisis: the scale of the consequences. When a housing bubble inflates till it pops, people lose their homes. But when a food bubble grows till it bursts, people starve
The problem with “booms” is they're almost inevitably followed by busts. Worse news is that the experts say that what we're seeing right now - skyrocketing food prices and growing hunger - are still the effects of the last ‘forced’ biofuel boom.
What if the weather should turn bad now?
Well, the commodity prices – we are told - could still double over the next few months. But with the stability of the food and agriculture system left up to the whims of mother nature's next crop yield, or how Cargill, ADM and the 'venture capitalists' spin the roulette wheel, it is safe to say that the bust itself ‘is in the making?’
If the domestic rural farm economy collapses completely; we’re not only set to see more farm foreclosures and another banking crisis, but much more global hunger that will make the sub-prime mortgage effects look like a single grain of wheat in an entire wheatfield ... not to mention the old adage that he who controls the food, controls the world.
So what are the UN and world leaders doing about this impending crisis, having so nicely removed themselves from the equation since implementing deregulation …
So far?
Nothing.
In the US the architects of the failed free market system are now prescribing more of the same, and with nowhere left to go, the policymakers are swallowing it part and parcel. However, rather than workable solutions to the problems, Bush's $200 million food aid proposal looks as ineffective as his $300 tax returns, in terms of actually fixing economic malfunction, or widespread malnutrition.
At its root, hunger today is not about lack of food; it's about poverty and inequity, and the inability to access available food because of the core origin of the current free market system and those who control it.
Sources :
Organic Consumers Association Really Long Link
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation http://www.fao.org/
The Daily Reckoning Really Long Link
Business Spectator Really Long Link
www.ennnews.com
Here's one I hugged earlier ...
Location unknown
They say that necessity is the mother of invention and with Ireland previously importing nearly 90% of its fossil fuel needs, it remained particularly vulnerable to global supply disruptions, sitting as it does, ‘at the end of Europe's pipelines.’
Eamon Ryan : Irish Green Party
It is to this end that, in the ‘Green Isle’ - where, coincidentally, the Green Party holds the environment ministry - Ryan's Green Party, joined Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's coalition government (following a general election last May), with a massive push to develop energy self-sufficiency by 2035.
Since then ‘Irish green’ has continued to astound the world with it’s verdent growth rate and more announcements last week, of a further government-backed guaranteed price for offshore wind power. Under the new initiative the government's 'feed-in tariff scheme' will offer investors 1403 Euros ($202.9) per megawatt hour for all offshore wind power produced.
The Irish tabloids were buzzing again last Thursday, when Ireland's Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced it’s intentions to also come to the party, with a new initiative and investment program of 22 billion Euros ($34.72 billion). It is understood that half of this amount is to go directly to the continued development of wind, tidal and biomass sources of energy.
In fact, ESB also aims to half its carbon emissions within 12 years, by which time it wants to be delivering one-third of its electricity from renewable generation, achieving its goal of a complete "carbon net-zero" by 2035.
Rising world fuel prices have continued to coax Ireland to look for domestic solutions. However, after initial costs of new infrastructure are in place, it is now also hoped that developing renewable energy sources will also have the add-on affect of reducing electricity prices paid by future consumers too.
Indeed, putting its money where its mouth is, another major milestone of pure Irish green progress this month, when the world’s largest tidal-turbine, weighing 1,000 tonnes, was successfully installed in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. The SeaGen is rated at 1.2 megawatts, which means it has the capacity to power a thousand or so, local homes.
Manufactured by Marine Current Turbines, the gigantic SeaGen Turbine weighs around 1,000 tonnes and has the distinction of having been built in the same shipyards, which built The Titanic herself; Harland and Wolff, (1853) in Belfast, who these days, have diversified their activities to include a growing market in renewable energy infrastructure, guaranteed to sink!
The SeaGen has twin rotors measuring 16 meters in diameter, and turn for about 18-20 hours per day to produce a seamless supply of clean, green electricity.
SeaGens Propellors
The rotors of this type of the SeaGen turn slowly: about 10 to 20 revolutions per minute. By comparison a ship’s propellers, typically run 10 times faster, therefore the engineers claim that the risk of impact from SeaGen rotor blades is small, because the marine creatures that swim in strong currents tend to be agile, and can avoid slow-moving underwater obstructions.
Strangford Lough : North looking south to the sea
The Turbine was positioned 400 meters off shore in Strangford Lough, because it is an area of sea known for its fast tidal current, whilst also offering good protection from severe weather.
It is anticipated that the SeaGen will operate for up to 18-20 hours per day - when started up later this year - producing a seamless supply of clean, green Irish energy.
The Green Isle it seems, is certainly that!
Oh it’s almost too good to be true, isn't it? But here it is... a new grant to investigate the possibilities even further, sealed this month with a £1.5 million cheque, allowing further development of a photovoltaic solar-cell-paint which can do just that!
[ Click here to read more ]
That’s an astonishing 100,000 megawatts, which is the same as saying enough electricity for the needs of 150 million people, already... and we have only just begun to harvest the cleanest, freest energy on our world… the wind...and If the full cost of carbon emissions are incorporated into the price of natural gas and coal, onshore wind will also become the cheapest electricity source on the planet.
[ Click here to read more ]
At first glance these two subjects look like they have nothing in common and it may indeed appear that the Envirowarrior has lost her bearings - bear with me, because that is the point - the point of the compass that is… due-north, isn’t it?
[ Click here to read more ]
"A man is bitten by a rattle snake in Montana. A hurricane rips through Mexico. A turtle lays an early egg on a Pacific Island. An epidemic of Rift Valley fever breaks out in Kenya. At last the conductor that has been orchestrating these, and thousands of other seemingly random incidents, throughout history, has finally been unmasked. His name is El Nino."
[ Click here to read more ]
With over 10 of the species - listed in my Endangered Species Post of January 2007 - already extinct, I found this story of the Californian Condor Conservation program, heart warming in the extreme.
It is nice to think that a growing human awareness, now understands that resource management is vital to all biospheres and that the native creatures within each biosphere, are an integral part of maintaining it. Each species, is not a dysfunctional member of a random collective –
CR - Critically Endangered (See below for link to Table of Reference)
like humans themselves, perhaps - but the product of a carefully planned and executed whole; adding its distinction to the surrounding environment through its life-cycle and style, contributing 'optimum health’ of the planet, through mutual symbiosis. My guess is that this fellow would certainly keep the wild rabbit population down.
[ Click here to read more ]
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121 Posts dating from September 2006
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