Fast crash or slow grind? Sharon Astyk lays it down

[GliderGuider]

I've always liked Sharon's style.

We Regret to Inform You…

When climate change and peak oil thinkers run out of other things to worry about, there’s always the endless, inevitable debates about whether we are facing a “fast crash” or a “slow grind.” And I admit, I’m worried about my fellow environmentalists - because I think they are about to lose their favorite distraction. When no one was looking, we got an answer. Fast crash wins. And we’re in it now.

*********************************************************

In early 2008, the world’s food and energy train came off the rails. What was startling was that it didn’t happen either gradually or in a linear way - instead, things simply fell apart at an astounding rate, faster than anyone could have predicted without being accused of lunacy.

It started with biofuels and growing meat consumption rates. They drove the price of staple grains up at astounding rates. In 2007, overall inflation for food was at 18%, which created a new class of hungry, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. In 2008, the month to month inflation was higher than 2007’s annual inflation. At that rate, the price of food overall was set to double every other year. Rice, the staple of almost half the world’s population rose 147%, while wheat grew 25% in just one day. Price rises were inequitable (as was everything else) so while rice prices rose 30% in rich world nations like the US, Haitian rice prices rose 300%.

After riots over long bread lines threatened to destabilize Egypt, the Egyptian government set the army to baking bread for the hungry. Forty nations either stopped exporting grains or raised tariffs to make costs prohibitive. Food prices rose precipitiously as importing nations began to struggle to meet rising hunger. The UN warned that 33 nations were in danger of destabilizing, and the list included major powers including Pakistan, Mexico, North Korea India, Egypt and South Africa. Many of these hold nuclear weapons.

(...)

Industrial agriculture, described as “the process of turning oil into food” began to struggle to keep yields up to match growing demand. Yield increases fell back steadily, with more and more investment of energy (and higher costs for poor farmers trying to keep yields up). Yield increases, which had been at 6% annually from the 1960s through the 1990s fell to 1-2%, against rapidly rising demand. Climate change threatened to further reduce yields in already stressed poor nations - Bangladesh struggled with repeated climate change linked flooding, the Sahelian African countries with growing drought, China with desertification.

All future indications were that both food and energy supplies would fail to keep up with demand. Unchecked (the only kind we’ve got) climate change is expected to reduce rice yields by up to 30%, and food production in the already starving Sahel is expected to be reduced by half. GMOs, touted as a solution, have yet to produce even slightly higher yields. Arable land is disappearing under growth, while aquifers are heavily depleted - 30% of the world’s grain production comes from irrigated land that is expected to lose its water supply in the next decades.

(There's more)

All these influences and more are factors in my analysis of Africa's food situation: Africa in 2040. Sharon and I drink the same tea and are reading the same tea leaves.

[kestrel91316]

1. Hey, another Casaubon's Book groupie!!!!!

I love her blog. She is doing really good works!!

[phantom power]

2. A hundred years after Poincare, and we're still surprised by nonlinear dynamics.

[arendt]

3. "The Limits to Growth" crowd is saying "I told you so." K&R n/t

[kristopher]

4. You mean drinking the same KoolAid...

I mean, come on, using Haiti as a predictor??? That country has one of the absolutely worst managed ecologies in the world.

Reactionary fear-mongering.

[NickB79]

5. Haiti isn't the only predictor, though

"The UN warned that 33 nations were in danger of destabilizing, and the list included major powers including Pakistan, Mexico, North Korea India, Egypt and South Africa. Many of these hold nuclear weapons."

[kristopher]

9. So what did the UN say, precisely?

Here is one warning as related by AP:

Tensions could destabilize Haiti

Published: April 3, 2008 at 11:35 PM

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, April 3 (UPI) -- A U.N. report says tensions in Haiti could destabilize the country if leaders don't increase their efforts and engage in the political process.

The United Nations is urging leaders in Haiti and the international community to step up efforts to restore stability to avoid slipping into violence. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a report saying there have been strides made towards judicial reform and also establishing a new electoral council. But Ban raised concerns about security and the potential for Haiti to face a return of gang violence, the United Nations reported.

"It is imperative that all those involved in the stabilization of Haiti redouble their efforts to enable the country to seize this historic opportunity to emerge from the destructive cycles of the past," Ban wrote in the report. " … The institutions of governance continued to suffer from a lack of qualified personnel, poor infrastructure and limited resources."

Ban warned leaders in Haiti to avoid tensions between political actors that are distracting from the reform agenda and a sustained peace.

© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

[NickB79]

10. Ah, so that whole "33 nations in danger of destabilization" statement was a joke then

Those silly UN people, what with their graveyard humor.

[kristopher]

11. Where did they say it and what exactly did they say? Things often get distorted in the telling...

[GliderGuider]

14. It was Robert Zoellick, Predsident of the World Bank

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN02390609

WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Wednesday called for a new coordinated global response to deal with spiraling food prices exacerbating shortages, hunger and malnutrition around the globe.

Speaking ahead of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, Zoellick said the global food crisis now required the attention of political leaders in every country, since higher prices and price volatility were likely to stay for some time.

Severe weather in producing countries and a boom in demand from fast-developing countries have pushed up prices of staple foods by 80 percent since 2005. Last month, rice prices hit a 19-year high; wheat prices rose to a 28-year high and almost twice the average price of the last 25 years.

Around the world, protests against higher food costs are increasing and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports, he said.

Zoellick said the World Bank estimated 33 countries could face social unrest because of higher food and energy prices.

[phantom power]

6. Come on, nobody is "managing" their ecology.

They're just an economically poor island, and so they hit their local wall faster.

[kristopher]

8. Bullshit. The Dominican Republic proves that false.

[phantom power]

12. I don't see how.

The arctic ice is disappearing. Grain reserves are dropping to zero as we speak. China is trying (and failing) to hold back its choking smog and sand-storms long enough to get through the Olympics without putting any athletes in the hospital. The world's population continues to grow. 2.5 billion people in Asia are choosing to emulate America's love affair with automobiles and coal-fired electricity, laying waste to all the "environmental leapfrogging" theories from the 1990s. Arable land and forests are declining. Wildlife preserves are being torpedoed by global warming and sea level rise. The Kyoto treaty -- the closest thing ever attempted to an international agreement on CO2 management -- was DOA.

I'm sure I left some good ones out but you get the idea.

If anybody is managing, they're clearly not succeeding.

[kristopher]

13. None of which is related to Haiti and DR.

Each has half the island. Haiti has chronically trashed their half, the DR hasn't.

Your litany of woes isn't an intellectual argument at all, it is an appeal to emotions. That's a logical fallacy, in case you were wondering.

[phantom power]

15. I'll return to the bit that started all this...

You claimed that using Haiti as a predictor for what's coming was bogus, because Haiti was badly managed. I made the point that the entire world is being badly managed. The implication being that Haiti isn't such a bad test case after all. You succinctly responded "bullshit," and so I cited my list of current events that backs up my conclusion that it is not bullshit. The world is, indeed, being badly managed.

So, no, I was not appealing to emotion. I was appealing to current events. Unless you deny that those events I mentioned are actually happening, or you think that I'm ignoring some list of really great current events that cancel all of that out and demonstrate that actually, humans are doing an OK job of managing our ecology.

Whether or not the DR did better than Haiti is somewhat beside the point, although it might be an educational case study of ways we could do better on a planet-wide scale. My claim is, we aren't. I think current events back me up on that.

[kristopher]

16. Ok I understand.

Let me lay out what I've seen.

The OP makes a case about world hunger that is apocalyptic. I quote:

"And I admit, I’m worried about my fellow environmentalists - because I think they are about to lose their favorite distraction. When no one was looking, we got an answer. Fast crash wins. And we’re in it now.

*********************************************************

In early 2008, the world’s food and energy train came off the rails....

Then relates to the UN statement, tying in nuclear weapons:
"The UN warned that 33 nations were in danger of destabilizing, and the list included major powers including Pakistan, Mexico, North Korea India, Egypt and South Africa. Many of these hold nuclear weapons."


So the tenor of the piece is one eliciting anxiety.

While there are a lot of very severe problems, the uniqueness, linkage and severity of the problems as presented in the article is poorly established and tenuous at best. As demonstrated by the use of Haiti as an example. Just as Haiti has a set of circumstances that aren't addressed in this article, all of the other examples offered also have their own unique set of circumstances.

This type of anxiety isn't anything new. You can find the same mindset in each and every age, always finding omens of the final disaster in the severity of the problems faced by the world they live in.

Do you remember the nuclear clock being just a couple of seconds before midnight? Those problems can be real.

But let's take another example, terrorism. Although the terrorist are a real danger, if seen in the perspective of other world problems, they are just another challenge. Even though their is a distinct potential for them to kill millions of people, some people are able to evaluate the problem coolly and recognize when someone is conflating a number of loosely related problems into an amalgam designed to do nothing but elicit anxiety.

That is what I see happening with energy issues and climate change.

Those who believe in action on terrorism to the point of desperation, want support to the extent that they lose sight of the hyperbole in their zeal. The more flawed arguments the terrorism avenger makes, the more they self-validate the faulty mental model they've created.

Climate change, energy, overpopulation, hunger, famine, droughts, natural disasters, wars and sheer cussed human stupidity are all part and parcel of what we've been dealing with for a long, long time. If they mean the world is coming to an end, then it has been that same long, long, time in coming.

Let's take a concrete example. Most of the oil production is controlled by state entities. Sometimes those entities act to address world problems related to crude production. What if, instead of a petroleum shortage due to geologic constraints, we are looking at a world community acting to put the US on an energy diet whether we like it or not.
They spent the 80s and 90s turning the production of this societal lynch pin into an affair informed by newly enhanced (computers) understanding of economic behavior of people. (Did you see Syriana, and get the main point of the movie) The price of gasoline is now DOUBLE the highest predicted for now at the time of Kyoto, while coal is 1/4 of the price predicted.
I interpret that as coal being our non-reaction and the price of oil being their response to our non-action. I mean, we were expected to take action on this issue. We've made a lot of "good for the world" arguments to all of these state players about why they should pump oil every time our economy gets a cold, but under both clinton and bush we were buttheads and abdicated our leadership role on CC (a proven global crisis) to focus on our coal industry and then, to top it all off, we invaded IRAQ for fossil politics under the guise of responding to 911.

If you had control of the oil spigot, what would you do; continue to feed a bloated powermad but necessary beast, or tame it and put it on a healthy diet?

All that is MY speculation on the facts I see. I have no 'proof' and I claim none beyond what is offered above.

To close, here is the article snip GG provided (thanks!) from the World Bank head:
"WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Wednesday called for a new coordinated global response to deal with spiraling food prices exacerbating shortages, hunger and malnutrition around the globe.

Speaking ahead of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, Zoellick said the global food crisis now required the attention of political leaders in every country, since higher prices and price volatility were likely to stay for some time.

Severe weather in producing countries and a boom in demand from fast-developing countries have pushed up prices of staple foods by 80 percent since 2005. Last month, rice prices hit a 19-year high; wheat prices rose to a 28-year high and almost twice the average price of the last 25 years.

Around the world, protests against higher food costs are increasing and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports, he said.

Zoellick said the World Bank estimated 33 countries could face social unrest because of higher food and energy prices."

Does the tone of that match the alarmist way it was used in the OP? Or is it more in the nature of saying this is a manageable problem we need to turn our attention to?

[phantom power]

17. Well, I agree that panic never solved anything.

And I agree there are a lot of things we might try. I have a feeling that the most popular ideas (e.g. biofuels, or coal-based anything), may cause us to take what's left of the biosphere down with us. I think Bad Things are about to happen.

But no, I don't want to give up. I'm not too worried about people giving up, either. For one thing, nobody comes to me for permission to try their various solutions, and two, people are just programmed to try their best to survive. It's in our nature, as we're descended from 3 billion years of survivors.

I'm worried that humans will try too hard at the wrong things. But we'll see how fast we learn.

[XemaSab]

7. .

[hogwyld]

18. Scary scary stuff indeed

I guess it's too late to liquidate all of my assets.

[lutherj]

19. Put your hands over your eyes . . .

Jump out of the plane . . .

There is no pilot . . .

You are not alone . . .

Standby . . .

[robertpaulsen]

20. Sharon writes about her last post.

Ok, Breathe.

So my last post kinda hit a nerve. I broke 100 comments for the very first time (thanks for the lively discussion on nuclear power, guns, veganism and tomato plants), and made the top links at Savinar’s LATOC, the Automatic Earth, Energy Bulletin, etc… Can I just make one little complaint - I asked, nay, begged y’all to argue me out of this belief, and almost no one argued the basic premise at all. I really, really wanted someone to persuade me that things aren’t really going to hell in a handbasket.

Given that that doesn’t seem to be happening, what to do? Where do we go from here? I have compiled a list of suggestions, most of them fairly obvious.

1. Take a couple of deep breaths. Yes, this is a scary thing. Yes, this is a terribly sad thing. Yes, we have every obligation to bust our behinds to do what we can to mitigate the disaster unfolding before us.

And yet, let’s also note that this current crisis was 150 years in the making and had the participation of a lot of people. You didn’t do it by yourself, and you aren’t going to fix it by yourself. You are potentially more powerful than you think - but no delusions of grandeur here ;-). The world will not fall apart if you take a short break. Remember, we are the last fairy godmothers in line at the Christening. We can’t make the curse go away, we can just soften it a little.

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/04/24/ok-breathe/

[GliderGuider]

21. I really liked that one.

It's pretty much the direction I'm heading, though she's a bit more lighthearted. Not exactly "Don't worry, be happy" -- more like "Worry, but take time out to be happy too."

Every once in a while, we need to remember to live in the moment and let destiny take care of itself. Otherwise we'll all go insane before we have to.

[depakid]

22. "If you were reading this in a history book, what ending would you expect to see?"

Hopefully, regional decomplexification ala Byzantium in the 700's.