Food Riots ‘An Apocalyptic Warning’
April 14th, 2008Their headline, not mine.
Via: ABC:
Basic access to food is slipping out of reach for many people in developing countries.
The cost of the rice has risen by more than three-quarters in two months and the price of wheat has more than doubled in the same time.
The desperation in dozens of countries has turned deadly of late. In the past week alone there have been violent, food-related riots in Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cameroon.
World Vision Australia head Tim Costello says the situation is desperate and chronic.
“It is an apocalyptic warning,” he said. “Until recently we had plenty of food. The question was distribution.
“The truth is because of rising oil prices, global warming and the loss of arable land, all countries that can produce food now desperately need to produce more.”
“The truth is because of rising oil prices, global warming and the loss of arable land, all countries that can produce food now desperately need to produce more.” He left out, “…and because Americans would rather feed their SUVs than their fellow human beings”
anothernut, “Americans” above should probably read “certain elements in the American federal bureaucracy.” Almost everyone in this country is clueless about ethanol subsidies and are being abusively lead around by their noses in general.
In 20 years time, car ownership will be a distant pleasant memory for most people. It will go back to the way things used to be where very few people drove cars and they were primarily the rich. The suburbs of today will be tomorrow’s slums since they were built around a car culture and are not near anybody’s place of work. Alternative fuels are not going to save the day as we are witnessing high food prices because of bio fuels. Most people will have to give up their cars because it will come down to a choice between food or wheels and we all know you can’t live without food no matter how much you love your car. The idea that bio fuels will some how replace oil completely and can be used on the same scale as oil is a cruel joke. We simply do not have enough farmland for bio fuels and feed the earth’s population at the same time. There is no easy replacement for depleting oil reserves. We are just going to have scale back our energy intensive lifestyles and live on less.
Sapphire – we could use trees for fuel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,547312,00.html
Has everyone heard of the big arson in Seattle by a group which read (and they might have been misinformed about the building) that the horticulture building contained research for breeding rapid growing poplars. I thought it was interesting that they picked this as a top target 8 years ago above quite a few other things: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003289715_uwfire05m.html