Filed under: Environment, Politics | Tags: California, Ecology, Pollution, Tennessee, Texas
Not good, not good
Fire season in Texas — looks really bad.
California drought has reached emergency levels. Could have repercussions for the rest of the country.
TVA coal ash spill six miles long in Tennessee could take up to 10 years to restore.
Filed under: Economy, Environment, Human Rights, Politics, war | Tags: collapse, energy, food crisis, hunger, peak oil
Just not up for very much blogging today, but here’s a roundup of items related to food, economics, and politics. This is a sort of follow-up to a post I wrote for Left in Alabama yesterday on the threat to food banks posed by food shortages (and see my two long comments to that post, as well). I don’t think we should wait to see how bad things really are before we begin to make preparations for the possible food shortages we could face this year. If we prepare and it turns out that there aren’t significant shortages in the U.S., we haven’t lost very much. I, personally, think we’re about to see a period of rapid transition in our society.
This is just an opinion, and I could be wrong. But soon, I think, the gap between wages on the one hand, and the price of food and fuel on the other, is going to be so great that a lot of people are going to have to find some way of feeding themselves other than going to work. Maybe not this year, but sooner than most people realize.
Here’s a very comprehensive article about the problems we’re seeing with the way captialism organizes food production. It also has some interesting information on the underground food movement. via Sideshow.
The Big Picture says Fed policies may be to blame for the food shortages we’re seeing around the world. I think this is what Spengler was referring to when he wrote that the U.S. is trying to inflate it’s way out of the economic crisis.
Joseph Stiglitz says the recession we’re in is going to end up being our worst since the 1930s.
And here’s an article on the collapse of capitalism I picked up from comments on the Feral Scholar post. I think the article runs the risk of making the collapse seem more certain and more imminent than it actually is. But I find it interesting that it echoes many of the themes from several posts I’ve linked to over the last couple of months:
Natasha at Pacific Views: Global Suicide Pact
Ian Welsh at FDL: The Age of Light
Peak Oil Crisis: Load Shedding . . . (peak oil, climate change, and instability); and
Food Shortages Everywhere . . .(food shortages, mass migrations, famine, and war)
Update: Fuel shortage in Great Britain threatens to become a crisis. This is at the top of Monkeyfister’s blog right now, but I’m adding the permalink for future reference.
Filed under: Economy, Environment, Politics | Tags: energy, Opec, petroleum
Left-Handed Leftist makes a good catch:
the price of oil is the product of a “common understanding,” says one Abdalla Salem el-Badri, the secretary-general of OPEC. Here’s the quote from the AP story, so it’s clear I’m not paraphrasing or spinning:
“‘Oil prices, there is a common understanding that has nothing to do with supply and demand,’ el-Badri said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Rome.”
This little tidbit comes to us in a story about the national average gas price hitting $3.50!
He goes on to catch the AP using factoids that point to pressures on supply as the reason for rising gas prices. Then he wraps up in grand style by discussing something a lot of us could probably stand to think a little more about in this brave new economy: cartels.
My two cents: High gas prices hurt. And, they’re probably influenced to a great extent by price fixing at many different points in the ground-to-gastank process. However, the environmentalist of my better nature says we should be paying high prices for gas at this point. More than that, though, we should be changing our development patterns so that more people can work and shop closer to their houses, and building more and better public transportation.
Spengler says the global food crisis is caused by changes to U.S. monetary policy in response to the credit crisis. It seems China and other countries who have been holding massive dollar reserves and buying (now junk) U.S. securities are trading their dollar reserves for food to preserve the value of their investments. The losers? The U.S., countries dependent on imported grain, and countries that have their currencies pegged to the dollar. (The latter two categories combined mean “most of the world.” That’s why it’s a crisis!)
He also says this could have been averted by lifting restrictions that prevent foreign countries from buying U.S. companies. The theory is that countries holding U.S. debt (like China) would have preferred to purchase American corporations when the credit markets went bad, but since they can’t, they’re cornering the global market on rice and other food staples instead.
First paragraph:
The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America’s attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington’s economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.
Morbidly amusing last paragraph:
The George W Bush administration might as well have used the State Department as a set for the Jackass reality show. American arrogance has eroded the ground under many of the governments on which its foreign policy depends. It is hard to characterize what will come next, except, like the stunts on Jackass, that it is going to hurt.
Most important part in between, with emphasis added:
Never before in history has hunger become a global threat in a period of plentiful harvests. Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world’s rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price.
He has some nifty charts that show the price of rice tracking both the rise in the value of the Euro against the dollar and the rise in the price of oil almost perfectly.
How much truth is here? I can’t tell you, because this is way outside my area of expertise, but it seems plausible to me. Read the whole thing and judge for yourself. I would love to know what a well-known economist, or even an excellent blogger who’s good enough to predict housing trends three years out (and who may be an economist herself for all I know) has to say about it.
Filed under: Environment, Mississippi, Politics | Tags: Alabama, Earthquakes, Natural Disasters, New Madrid
As if hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes weren’t enough, the AP is reporting that the recent earthquake centered on Illinois may have been caused by seismic activity on the New Madrid fault. I’ve heard that this quake was felt in North Mississippi and Alabama. I haven’t found any specific government or media reports to support that, but I have seen a report that says it was felt as far away as Georgia, so it makes sense that it would have also been felt in Mississippi and Alabama.
The quake is believed to have involved an extension of the New Madrid fault, a network of deep cracks in the earth’s surface, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The fault is at the center of the nation’s most active seismic zone east of the Rockies, something that’s known to Midwest residents, even if they forget it now and then — the last severe earthquake in the region was a 5.0 magnitude quake in 2002.
Back in the early 90s, there was a lot of talk in Mississippi about the New Madrid becoming more unstable. For a few years, people were actually selling earthquake insurance, and the community college I went to developed an earthquake response plan.
USGS says earthquakes east of the Mississippi are felt more widely than earthquakes out west, and they are issuing updated earthquake hazards for the entire U.S. on Monday.
Here’s a map that illustrates the difference in the range of earthquakes of similar magnitude on the west coast and in the Mississippi Valley. The large one is the range of the New Madrid earthquake in 1895.
Map by Whyfiles.org
Wiki has an entry on the New Madrid fault. There were significant earthquakes along this fault in 1811-12, in 1895, and in 1968. There’s some debate as to whether the quake should be classified as a New Madrid quake or as an Illinois Basin quake, because fault lines in the center of the continent are difficult to detect and difficult to monitor. From the USGS
At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, scientists can often determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. The Illinois basin – Ozark dome region is far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbean Sea, and in the Gulf of California. The region is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few earthquakes in the region can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. As in most other areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards in the Illinois basin – Ozark dome region is the earthquakes themselves.
The Kansas City Star has a report with details from the quake. USGS has a page on the history of Mississippi earthquakes. Wouldn’t FEMA and the insurance companies just love it if we had a major earthquake in the Lower Mississippi Valley?
I’m not an expert on plants, but I think this is a hibiscus. Critters get a lot of love from the blogosphere, and that’s a good thing. But plants need love, too. So I’ll try to stock up on flower photos over the next few months and make this a regular feature.
Filed under: Economy, Environment, Human Rights, Politics, war | Tags: energy
Monkeyfister had an apocalyptic post a few days ago about peak oil, climate change, population growth, and instability. He had another Sunday on food shortages, war, mass migrations, and famine.
D-day notes today that the the world hunger crisis (brought about by through-the-ceiling food and energy prices) threatens many countries with disorder.
In The End of Cheap Energy = The End of Cheap Food, I linked to two articles that are very helpful to understanding the relationship between the energy supply and the food supply.
Is a vicious cycle at play here? It takes a lot energy to produce enough food to support the world’s population. But the energy we use accelerates clilmate change, which makes the process of turning energy into food less efficient? And, the energy is running out? It seems to make sense.
I am not an environmentalist, or an economist, but if I did a lot of writing about climate change, I’d be all over it.
Why your vote for preznit matters, by Scarecrow at FDL.
And a great Iraq post by Jonwil at Left in Alabama.
What’s on your mind today?
Filed under: Blogs, Civil Liberties, Community, Economy, Elections, Environment, Human Rights, Iran, Katrina, Media, Mississippi, Politics, Pro-Choice, Progressive, Strategy, war | Tags: activism, Alabama, New Media
If you want to be the New Media voice of the New Southern Left in Mississippi and Alabama you can be.
If you want a revolution in media affairs, right here where we live, you can have one.
Are you ready to show the nationwide progressive movement that we are just as committed to taking our country back as people in Philly and New York and L.A.?
I’ve got you’re compelling new media narrative, neatly framed and ready to roll. I’ve got your target audience. I know where to bring the traffic. I cannot release the story until I’m sure a few people are willing to trust me enough to say what I ask them to say and say it to the people I ask them to say it to. If enough people are willing to help, it shouldn’t cost anyone much of time or energy.
This moment is ours. If you want to join with me and seize it, leave a me a comment here and let me know you’re in. If you’re a registered Left in Alabama member, read this proposal, take the poll, and leave a comment.
I’m giving until it hurts here. I’m begging for support.
Left in Alabama? Cotton Mouth? WriteChic Press?
Alert Readers click links. They also leave comments and thank outstanding bloggers like MEC when they spotlight the issues we care about.
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Community, Economy, Elections, Environment, Human Rights, Iraq, Katrina, Media, Mississippi, Politics, Pro-Choice, Progressive, Religion, Surveillance State, war
I think suppressing an epidemiology study about environmental health risks that could affect as many as 9 million people because injury implies liability qualifies for the list.
Filed under: Environment, Politics, Progressive | Tags: Economy, Energy Crisis, Global Warming
Here are a couple of articles that deal with the consequences of the looming energy crisis, both for the U.S. and for the World.
The Global Suicide Pact from Natasha at Pacific Views.
The Age of Light by Ian Welsh from FDL.
My to-do list for today:
1. Put together an update on FISA.
2. Put together some further reading on Gulf Coast rebuilding.
3. Send e-mails requesting a Congressional hearing on Haley Barbour’s use of housing grant money for purposes other than housing. See Gulf Coast Recovery Action Items for e-mail addresses if you’d like to help out with this.
Also, I’ve barely had time to think about this until now, but Mississippi Democrats and Progressives need to be thinking about what we can do to help the party flip Trent Lott’s Senate seat. There’s an opportunity that might not come again for a long time.
