It is worth noting that China and Russia have implemented a policy of massive food reserves. These countries have not forgotten that the revolutions that caused so much death and destruction in the course of their history were catalyzed by food crises. So the governments of these countries have long-term views and stockpile rice and cereals to prevent such blows as sudden price rises or the collapse of production. And since agricultural products are considered of strategic importance, export limits have also been put in place.
No, Malthus was not wrong; he simply did not foresee oil and the Green Revolution.
However, we could produce more if we switched to a diet lower in animal proteins. In India, only five percent of cereal production goes to nourish animals, while the same proportion is 60 percent in the USA. The tendency in the world is toward a diet rich in animal proteins, following the example of Western nations. Additional agricultural land not being available to support this demand, the price of cereals is going to go up, and the poorest people will no longer be able to feed themselves. Bio-fuel production is not going to help the problem, since using a part of maize production for vehicles subtracts that amount from consumption as food. Finally, great quantities of food (estimated at one third) are wasted or thrown away, while in poor countries, 10-15 percent of food stocks are destroyed by rodents and insects.
The result of all this is that food prices are going up by ever greater and more frequent leaps. In 2007, between a heavy increase in demand, floods, droughts, higher fertilizer prices, and speculation, food prices increased by 40 percent on average.
What are we going to do? Africa, a historically fertile and thinly populated continent, will reach a population of one billion by 2025. It will only be possible to nourish 25 percent of that population with the agricultural land there. So there will be 750 million Africans suffering chronic famine who must be saved or who will emigrate, without which they will suffer a drastic decrease in their numbers—a polite euphemism for saying that hundreds of millions of them will drop dead on the spot. Such problems will not get taken care of without considerable trouble.
Many have put forward the argument that GMOs—genetically modified organisms—already in use for cotton, soybeans, and maize, will be the miracle solution. The first years of use seem to show that their productivity quickly wanes, not to speak of the risk of contaminating normal crops, nor of health effects still difficult to measure. Private management of GMOs takes from farmers the means of reproducing their own seeds, and tomorrow, of their own livestock.
Yet there is a solution that, in spite of being simple, has been proven to work. In countries which still practice traditional agriculture, also known as permaculture or organic subsistence agriculture, there is no famine, water is not overused, and there is no need for fertilizer. Associated with low-birthrate policies, these techniques offer inspiration. But apart from initiatives by small groups of farmers, public authorities prefer to subsidize industrial agriculture. This is destructive, inefficient over the long term, and gobbles up water, energy, and polluting fertilizers; but, it has the support of well-organized lobbies. . . .
While we are on the subject of lobbies, think of the fierce struggle of different countries to maintain or augment their fishing quotas. The number of fish has declined by 90 percent in one century. In 1950, 19 million tons of seafood were harvested from the sea; in 1997, this became 93 tons. Since then, it has been going down continuously. There are parts of the ocean where not a single fish can be found—genuine dead zones. By 2010, over 75 percent of marine ecosystems were considered exhausted.
My in-laws have vacationed on the Île d’Oléron, on the Atlantic coast of France, since the 1950s, and the stories they tell are anecdotal but edifying: for decades you could just wade in with a fishing net and catch a great number of fish and crustaceans. Today, hardly any fish can be caught apart from certain exotic specimens, which have apparently migrated there because of increased water temperatures.
When you add to this that veritable islands of plastic waste several times larger than France or Texas have formed by accumulation in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, you begin to recognize the harmful effects of an industry so careless about marine ecosystems that it is turning them into the world’s ultimate garbage cans. Worse, the amount of plankton, the micro-organism that serves as the primordial food in the marine food chain, has diminished sharply: 40 percent since the 1950s from pollution and changes in acidity (which also affects coral, another indirect victim of human activity). Rivers are also strongly affected by pollution, which causes the fish to disappear—as, for example, in China, where 80 percent of rivers no longer contain any fish. All this is accelerating. At this pace, there will be no more fishing industry by 2050 due to a lack of fish. This is a tragedy for fishing communities, which have only piracy as an alternative.
Just as devastating as the lack of food is the fact that since the last mass extinction event 65 million years ago, animal and vegetable species have never disappeared so rapidly. This disappearance represents 25 percent of mammals, 15 percent of birds, 50 percent of reptiles, 50 percent of insects, 33 percent of conifers, 75 percent of flowering plants, etc. It is simply colossal. A species disappears every 10 minutes. In reality, the exact figures are unknown, since we do not know how many species exist on earth. Estimates vary between 1.5 million and 100 million. What’s certain is that such extinctions—due to deforestation, the disappearance of habitats, over-fishing, desertification, pollution from herbicides and insecticides, monoculture and what not—is making ecosystems even more fragile and leading them to collapse.
Everyone knows pollutants are dangerous, but the danger is generally underestimated. Besides killing the animals who interfere with them, pollutants cause deformities, changing the animals’ social and reproductive behavior, and becoming more concentrated the farther you go up the food chain, ending up in the body of the ultimate predator—man. Cancers have never been more common. 15 percent of American women have enough mercury in their bodies to render pregnancies risky.
Natural balances are what made life possible. As soon as they are undermined, the risk of illnesses and poisoning rises. We are destroying useful species, as the worrisome mass death of bees demonstrates. Humanity needs the multitude of blessings that plants, insects, and microbes bring. To destroy biodiversity is to commit suicide.
This fall in biological and alimentary diversity is reflected in the disappearance of a number of varieties of cultivated grains. In the U.S., the National Center for the Preservation of Genetic Resources compared the seeds sold in 1903 with those sold in 1983. The results speak for themselves:
Variety
1903
1983
Beets
288
17
Cabbages
544
28
Corns
307
12
Lettuces
497
36
Melons
338
27
Peas
408
25
Radishes
463
27
Squash
341
40
Tomatoes
408
79
Cucumbers
285
16
This diminution follows the same proportions for cereals, rice, and animals destined for breeding. This erosion of the genetic base leaves us fragile in the face of diseases or parasites tied to one of the species we depend on.
Is it possible to get people to manage the whole of nature better through economic principles? This is the question Alain de Benoist tries to answer in his book Demain, la décroissance! Penser l’écologie jusqu’au bout (“Tomorrow, Decline: Thinking Ecology Through To the End”). The problem is that up to now, no measures have been able to prevent a global deterioration of the situation. Prohibitions have rarely been binding, and even more rarely respected. Ta
xes and fines are often laughable compared to the damage caused. Ecological practices, however fine, are insufficient to reverse general tendencies. The “polluter pays principle,” which states that pollution ought to be taxed in proportion to the damage caused, has been applied here and there, but results have not been conclusive. Worse, studies have even shown that tricks have enabled certain enterprises to enrich themselves on the backs of taxpayers. “Pollution permits” could only be priced according to a made-up schedule based on guesswork, for it is impossible to determine the total price of an act of pollution—we do not know the long-range consequences. As for the “precautionary principle,” how are risks to be evaluated? Who shall determine what measures will be taken? Political decision-makers? They are bound to a short-term electoral logic. Experts? They are often named by commissions answerable to political power. Scientists? They will be under suspicion of lobbying. Industrialists? They are blind to long-term and even medium-term fallout. And public opinion is far from being more enlightened; indeed, it is manipulated by media belonging to large industrial corporations.
All these problems are connected. If a water shortage begins, we will need oil to run the drills to dig new wells and run the pumps. If the price of oil rises, the result will be a steep rise in the price of foodstuffs. If we burn more oil and coal, there will be more pollution and greenhouse gases will keep building up. If deforestation increases in order to obtain more land for agriculture, we lose biodiversity and destroy ecosystems important for our survival. There is a good chance that whatever we do, we shall set in motion destructive cycles difficult to stop.
The ecosystem of which man is a part, and on which he depends, is fragile. It is on the road to collapse.
What can we do? Instead of preserving ecosystems, soils, species, and our environment in general, industrial activity destroys them. Yet these are the true, only, and indispensable foundations for all wealth on earth. Without nature, no food. Without food . . . I think you get my drift.
*
Mike yells into the telephone:
“I don’t give a damn about the phosphate crisis! What am I going to do about my thousand acres of maize? I need that damned fertilizer, especially since I can’t afford diesel for my machines. I’m warning you, if I don’t get the fertilizer I paid for, I’m going to miss the English soda market, and then I’ll send my lawyers after your ass!”
Mike is in a tough situation. Although he’s 58, he has 10 more years of bank payments—bringing the new harvester-threshers up to European standards has cost him dearly . . . and then he has already sold the futures on his harvest . . . and this is not the time for a fertilizer shortage. He knows that his yields have been going down. It seems the soil is not like it was before. Too weak, the expert said two years ago. And the dryness doesn’t help. Not a drop of rain in three months. Incredible. In 45 years of work, he has never seen that. At least he has been able to water thoroughly—not like the farm next door, where there is no water for the pigs. So much the better, thinking on the mountains of shit produced by the pig factor! Pew!
The End of the Financial System
<
paul krugman
economist
/2011/
<
eustace c. mullins
researcher
//1923-2010//
<
henry ford
industrialist
//1864-1947//
<
hu jintao
president of the people’s republic of china
/2011/
<
karl otto pöhl
economist
/1995/
We have seen that we live in a world with ever more people, ever less oil and resources, and which is in danger of suffering nutritional and ecological crises. In such a world, economic growth is nothing less than a necessity.
The idea of economic growth seems natural to us today, but is, in fact, a new idea. It was unknown during the greater part of human history, when men sought merely to survive and reproduce their social structures, while marginally improving the conditions of their existence. Growth is the principal characteristic of the industrial economy. What’s more, in the past century, growth has become an obsession, to such a point that recessions are called periods of “negative growth.” You see this in all discourse and commentary: growth is good, the opposite is bad. We want more growth, more trade, more prosperity, more, more, always more. This economic growth has been made possible by the use of fossil energy; thus, what most people call “wealth”—digits in bank accounts—is really the product of more primary resources.
In any case, we must recognize that in the meteoric economic growth of the past two centuries, certain activities remain close to the main source of wealth. The activities that really contribute to prosperity are those connected to the production of energy and industrial goods, agriculture, research and technological progress, medical care, etc. But we see that for several years, the West has no longer been dominant in these areas. It is losing power. If we take the first economic power, the United States, as our benchmark, we see that it is in a phase of steep decline.
United States in 1950
United States in 2010
Greatest producer and exporter of oil worldwide
Greatest importer of oil worldwide
Greatest producer and exporter of industrial and consumer products
Greatest importer of industrial and consumer products
Creator of jobs and wealth
Destroyer of industrial jobs through outsourcing
Practically self-sufficient in all resources
Greatest worldwide importer of natural resources
Greatest worldwide creditor
Greatest worldwide debtor
Destination for skilled immigrant labor
Destination for the masses of unskilled labor
40 workers for every retiree
3.3 workers for every retiree
More than 50 percent of manufactured products bought by Americans and Europeans are imported. For the first time in two centuries, the West is not master of the game anymore. Three words can explain this failure: blindness, greed, and arrogance. Political and economic leaders bear a crushing responsibility. For years, we have watched the rise of Asia in fascination, only to discover, too late, that it was due to our aid and financing. By exporting our work and know-how, we have created the conditions for new dependence.
Everywhere in the West, the social elevator seems definitively blocked. Americans themselves are feeling dubious about the “American Dream.” In Europe and in the U.S., by exporting jobs through off-shoring and outsourcing, business leaders and politicians have implicitly betrayed the confidence of their employees and constituents and trampled upon the social contract that cements a nation. In order for our current economic system to function at its peak—and to maximize the present to the detriment of the future and the profits of a tiny number of privileged persons to the detriment of the rest of humanity—all logistical, political, moral and cultural barriers had to be blown up. It became a fait accompli with the end of the Soviet Union. This is when the Indian and Chinese way of thinking changed, opening a source of cheap labor to the West. A process was quickly established for transferring Western jobs and industries to emerging countries. This globalization accelerated the dismantling of the industrial infrastructure that had enabled Europe and then the U.S. to dominate the world.
This process isn’t “liberalism” (or “h
yper-liberalism” as it’s sometimes called in Europe): it’s socialism for the rich, disguised with the tinsel of the “market” and “liberalism.” Globalization is an ideal way to privatize the profits of big companies (by off-shoring production), socialize the losses (obtaining subsidies for the social costs of unemployment caused by local companies), then—the height of brazenness—obtaining state aid, i.e., taxpayer funding, for themselves whenever they are losing money. Never has an investment in lobbying been so profitable!
Globalization has also permitted large-scale distributors to massacre small businesses and artisans with cut-rate prices, made possible by economies of scale and production carried out in low-cost lands that are less particular about working conditions. These small businesses and artisans, however, were the heart of the social fabric, not only thanks to their work, useful in itself, but because their activity strengthened the communal bonds of their neighborhoods, towns, or regions. In Western Europe, for example, we first outsourced to Eastern Europe for five-euro-a-day wages, then to Asia for 99-cents-a-day wages. We have destroyed the economic topsoil of our nations in exchange for cheap products.
Alas, the multinationals are bound to no country. Nomadic and fatherless, nearly all of them are installed in financial Elysium. They pay very little in taxes, thanks to opaque accounting games, costs and income cleverly spread between subsidiaries of their complex organisms. Often, these large groups benefit from generous subsidies, where their local contribution is insignificant. In heavily off-shored areas, there is desolation: the closure of a factory that was often the only local source of employment can ruin a whole town after causing the professional and social death of its inhabitants. The Detroits and Coventrys of the world are more and more numerous.
Survive- The Economic Collapse Page 7
