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Peak food, water (13 posts)

  1. truthmod
    Administrator

    Peak food, water

    Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources. Use of either of these forms of resources beyond their rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion.

    Resource depletion is most commonly used in reference to the farming, fishing, mining, and timber industries. The most frequently noted direct causes of resource depletion are in the manufacturing, mining, and oil industrial cycle. Other examples include Ozone Depletion and Hubbert peak theory for oil.

    A part of Judeo-Christian theological dispensationalist prophecy of the end times is predicated upon resource depletion.

    Getting Resourceful About Resources
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...

    The limits of a Green Revolution?
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6496585.stm

    Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point
    http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file...

    Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply
    http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/159

    Posted 17 years ago #
  2. truthmod
    Administrator

    The coming water wars chart from Princeton University:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/water.h...

    Posted 17 years ago #
  3. truthmod
    Administrator

    Richard Heinberg's new book is "Peak Everything"

    http://www.richardheinberg.com/books

    Posted 17 years ago #
  4. Danse
    Member

    In addition conventional development, which virtually identifies development with growth, is ecologically suicidal. Even the richest countries are blindly committed to development without end, i.e., to the continual and limitless increase in production for sale and in GDP. Their supreme goal is in other words economic growth. However, over the past 40 years an overwhelmingly convincing limits to growth analysis has accumulated, making it abundantly clear that rich countries are producing is consuming at rates that are grossly unsustainable. The result is rapid depletion and destruction of resources ecosystems and social bonds. (See Trainer 1997.)

    Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. --Murray Bookchin

    Posted 17 years ago #
  5. truthmod
    Administrator

    Thanks Danse. Glad someone recognizes the significance of these issues.

    I wish more people in the 9/11 truth movement had the vision to extend their analysis/critique of the system to this scale.

    I've just started reading a fascinating book, "Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization." It's going into the early roots of human evolution, agriculture, greed, hierarchy, hoarding, etc. Seems very timely, as the system of perpetual growth in resource use and population expansion seems to be about to hit the wall in our lifetimes. I guess this is the big awakening. If 9/11 truth isn't a stepping stone for people to come to these larger realizations, I only see it as a myopic, manipulative, and insignificant issue. I would actually like to see a massive offensive against the anti-environmental ignorance in the movement. These people need to be acquainted with some more information.

    http://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-Agriculture-Hi...

    Posted 17 years ago #
  6. Danse
    Member

    "I've just started reading a fascinating book, "Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization." It's going into the early roots of human evolution, agriculture, greed, hierarchy, hoarding, etc."

    Haven't encountered that book in particular but I've read a fair number on the subject. Especially enjoyed Richard Heinberg's "Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age". He argues that the "garden of eden" was the leisurely lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer, that the "forbidden fruit" and resulting "fall" was the birth of agriculture, and that the representation of Satan as goat can be explained by the domestication of animals.

    The problem I have with the primitivist critique of civilization is that it lets capitalism off the hook. The word reductionist comes to mind. Everything is blamed on an all-encompassing "civilization" without taking into account the radically different ways "civilization" could potentially evolve. A stream of stats is presented to convince the reader that the end is nigh, yet the information is never qualified. Ignored, for instance, is the simple fact that capitalism = endless waste. The majority of what is produced in this society is essentially junk. Andrew Flood sums it up in his critique of primitivism:

    "As long as capitalism exists it will continue to wreak environmental havoc as it chases profits. It will only effectively respond to the energy crisis once that becomes profitable and because there will be a lag of many years before oil can be replaced this might mean worsening poverty and death for many or the poorer people in the world. But we cannot fix these problems by dreaming of some lost golden age when the world's population was low enough to support hunter gathering. We can only sort it out by building the sort of mass movements that can not only overthrow capitalism but also introduce a libertarian society. And on the way we need to find ways to halt and even reverse some of the worst of the environmental threats capitalism is generating."

    "I wish more people in the 9/11 truth movement had the vision to extend their analysis/critique of the system to this scale."

    Unfortunately, the majority of people in the movement seem to be following the lead of Alex Jones and Ron Paul. I never hesitate to criticize either figures because I view their right wing "free market" libertarianism as literally insane.

    Posted 17 years ago #
  7. truthmod
    Administrator

    Yes, 6 or 9 billion people hunting and gathering is not going to work. And just because agriculture has been a historically negative development (i.e. enslaving the earth and man's separation from nature), doesn't mean we can't do it in a more conscious manner in order to save ourselves and the planet.

    It is widely accepted that that our crafty hunter gatherer ancestors also wasted, overkilled, and sent large numbers of prey animals into extinction. The point is that at some point humans got "smart" enough to dominate their environment but not smart enough to realize that doing so would lead to their own (and the planet's) downfall. And we're still in this general paradigm, in an increasingly detached, ignorant way. According to this, I would say that we're actually the stupidest species on earth.

    Recently I've been creeped out by some libertarians' totally isolationist, human-centric, selfish philosophy. I don't think these people will want to accept that not only do humans have rights, but nature and all the other species we share the planet with do as well.

    Permaculture is, of course, one of the most well-known models that has been proposed a solution to our insane greed and resource use. I haven't read extensively about it, but it is compelling, and I sadly get the impression that most in the 9/11 truth movement just aren't interested in that kind of hippy stuff.

    http://www.permatopia.com

    Posted 17 years ago #
  8. Danse
    Member

    "It is widely accepted that that our crafty hunter gatherer ancestors also wasted, overkilled, and sent large numbers of prey animals into extinction. The point is that at some point humans got "smart" enough to dominate their environment but not smart enough to realize that doing so would lead to their own (and the planet's) downfall."

    Indeed, one of the theories on why mankind first adopted agriculture was that he was FORCED into the tedious practice by over-hunting. Thus, it was not a question of epiphany but necessity:

    "Indeed it is suggested that even the 10 million hunter gathers who may have existed before agriculture may have been a non sustainable number. Evidence for this can be seen in the Pleistocene overkill(8), a period from 12,000 to 10,000 BC in which 200 genera of large mammals went extinct. In the Americas in this period over 80% of the population of large mammals became extinct.(9) That this was due to over hunting is one controversial hypothesis. If correct than the advent of agriculture (and civilisation) may even have then due to the absence of large game which forced hunter gathers to 'settle down' and find other ways of obtaining food."

    Then, with the birth of agriculture came the birth of hoarding, incessant warfare and eventually its prime expression: the state.

    I think some primitivists offer a valuable critique of civilization that could potentially enrich anarchist theory. There's no reason why, for instance, we could not develop a society somewhere between Zerzan, Kropotkin, Bakunin and Tucker.

    I just dislike the either/or paradigm embraced by people like Jensen -- it's "either" civilization "or" primitivism. Jensen once said, "I want civilization brought down and I want it brought down now!" This does not help. Such thinking is the luxury of the priveleged.

    As for overpopulation and resource scarcity:

    "Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset have shown in their book World Hunger: Twelve Myths that the world already produces enough grain to provide every human being on the planet with 3,500 calories a day. This estimate does not take into ac- count many other commonly eaten foods, such as vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Altogether, there is enough to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day. Hunger persists despite the fact that increases in food pro- duction during the past thirty-five years have outstripped the world's population growth by about 16 percent. According to Dr. Peter Rosset, Executive Director of Food First, "The true source of world hunger is not scarcity but policy; not inevitability but poli- tics. The real culprits are economies that fail to offer everyone opportunities and societies that place economic efficiency over compassion."8

    Andrew Kimbrell, President of the International Center for Technology Assessment, argues that one of the greatest causes of world hunger is food dependence-the fact that increasing num- bers of people do not grow their own food but must purchase it with scarce cash. Food dependence comes from industrial society's enclosure of land, which forces peasants off the land so that it can be used for export crops. "The result of enclosure," writes Kimbrell, "has been, and continues to be, that untold millions of peasants lose their land, community, traditions and most directly their food independence.,19 Flocking to cities, former peasants become the new urban poor. But are the megafarms that displaced them re- ally so efficient? According to Kimbrell, "Conventional efficiency analysis completely ignores the social and environmental cost of large-scale industrial farming. The costs of water and air pollu- tion, topsoil loss, biodiversity loss are not consideredu-nor are the human health costs of eating pesticide-laced food or the so- cial costs stemming from the millions of dislocated peasants. None of these costs are factored into the "real" price of food produced on industrial farms. In 1989the United States National Research Council was commissioned to assess the efficiency of large in- dustrial farms as compared to smaller scale alternatives; their conclusion was that "well-managed alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms. Reduced use of these inputs lowers production costs and lessens agriculture's potential for adverse environmental and health ef- fects without decreasing-and in some cases increasing-per acre crop yields. . . ."lo

    Biotechnology builds on the failed assumptions at the core of industrial agriculture. As agricultural biotech takes hold, farm- ers are becoming ever more dependent on giant corporations like Monsanto-not only for pesticides and fertilizers (of which they will eventually need more, not less), but also for patented, gene- engineered seed. The enclosure of the biological commons will soon be complete. And should the centralized, industrial food system ever fail for any reason (i.e., natural disasters, corporate mismanagement or financial woes, or the unexpected ecological side effects from altered genes), the present simmering crisis of world hunger could explode into world famine."

    Posted 17 years ago #
  9. I wish more people in the 9/11 truth movement had the vision to extend their analysis/critique of the system to this scale.

    After almost 3 years of day to day 9/11 activism and related research, I'm beginning to educate myself on the many other untruths and world problems. In some way, Truthmove has opened my eyes up to those very important issues of our time.

    I have been waivering back and forth lately about the 9/11 movement's ability to 'win.' I don't know if that will happen, especially if we continue down our current path. Of course that doesn't mean Im' giving up....just means that I'm going to start expending more of my energy on some of the other important issues of our time - our environment, renewable energy, corporate profiteering, media reform, peak oil, pharmaceutical abuses etc.......

    Posted 17 years ago #
  10. truthmod
    Administrator

    Richard Heinberg interview:

    Peak Everything Waking up to the Century of Declines

    http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Heinber...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  11. chrisc
    Member

    Another Richard Heinberg interview:

    Richard Heinberg on The Reality Report

    The Reality Report hosts Richard Heinberg, faculty member of New College of California, fellow of Post Carbon Institute, author of the books The Party's Over, Powerdown, The Oil Depletion Protocol, and most recently Peak Everything. This program covers many of the topics in his latest book, which more than others considers the social implications of energy decline.

    The program begins with a review of the connections between energy and society, drawing from the work of cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris. A discussion of relationship between climate change and fossil fuel depletion ensues. The program concludes by offering some perspective on how to cope psychologically with difficult information. Jason Bradford hosts The Reality Report, broadcast on KZYX&Z in Mendocino County, CA.

    http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinberg_on_t...

    Not listened to it yet...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  12. truthmod
    Administrator

    Why the price of 'peak oil' is famine
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?view=D...

    Vulnerable regions of the world face the risk of famine over the next three years as rising energy costs spill over into a food crunch, according to US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

    "We've never been at a point in commodities where we are today," said Jeff Currie, the bank's commodity chief and closely watched oil guru.

    Global oil output has been stagnant for four years, failing to keep up with rampant demand from Asia and the Mid-East. China's imports rose 14pc last year. Biofuels from grain, oil seed and sugar are plugging the gap, but drawing away food supplies at a time when the world is adding more than 70m mouths to feed a year.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  13. chrisc
    Member

    Wow, this paper, the Torygraph is the most right-wing broadsheet in the UK.

    "Peak Oil" is morphing into "Peak Food".

    Indeed...

    Posted 16 years ago #

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