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The end of easy oil is also closely linked to rising food prices. The cost of corn, rice, wheat, and other key staples doubled or tripled in 2008, producing riots around the world... Analysts have given several reasons for this alarming trend, including soaring global demand, the scarcity of cropland, and prolonged drought in many parts of the world (widely attributed to global climate change). But according to a World Bank analysis, the catastrophic 2008 spike, at least, was largely driven by rising energy costs. The report notes that the increase in oil prices raised the price of fertilizer and other chemicals that are energy-intensive to produce. With fuel, fertilizer, and chemicals accounting for as much as 34 percent of the cost of producing corn in the United States, a threefold increase in the price of petroleum – as occured between 2005 and 2008 – was bound to have a powerful impact on the price of food.

Michael T. Klare. The Race For What’s Left. The Global Scramble For The World’s Last Resources. 2012

World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch.

• Two planets need by 2030 at this rate, warns report • Humans using 30% more resources than sustainable

The world is heading for an ‘ecological credit crunch’ far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4 trillion to $4.5 trillion every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection.

The problem is also getting worse as populations and consumption keep growing faster than technology finds new ways of expanding what can be produced from the natural world. This had led the report to predict that by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle.

The Guardian. Woensdag 29 oktober 2008

Even if it is technically feasible to produce enough grains, vegetables, and meat to feed the planet’s growing population, most analysts believe that food prices will remain stubbornly high in the decades te come – causing malnutrition and starvation for hundreds of millions of people unable to afford the rising coasts, and profoundly affecting world affairs. Most middle-income people will be able to adjust to increase in the price of oil, coal, copper, iron, and so forth by making do with less, but steady and substantial increases in the price of food are certain to produce widespread suffering among the poor  and trigger periodic explosions of rage. This is evident, for example, in the wave of antigovernment protests that swept through Arab countries in the spring of 2011: though they were propelled primarily by political concerns, resentment over rising food prices also fueled the tumult.

Michael T. Klare. The Race For What’s Left. The Global Scramble For The World’s Last Resources. 2012

‘The recent downturn in the global economy is a stark reminder of the consequences of living beyond our means,’ says James Leape, WWF International's director general. ‘But the possibility of financial recession pales in comparison to the looming ecological credit crunch.’

The report continues: ‘We have only one planet. Its capacity to support a thriving diversity of species, humans included, is large but fundamentally limited. When human demand on this capacity exceeds what is available - when we surpass ecological limits - we erode the health of the Earth's living systems. Ultimately this loss threatens human well-being.’ Speaking yesterday in London, the report's authors also called for politicians to mount a huge international response in line with the multibillion-dollar rescue plan for the economy. ‘They now need to turn their collective action to a far more pressing concern and that's the survival of all life on planet Earth,’ said Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the president of WWF International.

Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific adviser, said: ‘We all need to agree that there's a crisis of understanding, that we're removing the planet's biodiverse resources at a rate which is as fast if not faster than the world's last great extinction.’

At the heart of the Living Planet report is an index of the health of the world's natural systems, produced by the Zoological Society of London and based on 5,000 populations of more than 1,600 species, and on an ‘ecological footprint’ of human demands for goods and services.

The Guardian. Woensdag 29 oktober 2008

Land degradation and water shortages threaten global food production – UN

Degraded dryland ecossystems put at risk the social and economic well-being of millions of people. Photo: Binh Thuan, Thien Anh Huynh/Vietnam/UNEP

Global food production is being undermined by land degradation and shortages of farmland and water resources, making feeding the world’s rising population – projected to reach nine billion by 2050 – a daunting challenge, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report unveiled today.

The past five decades have witnessed a significant rise in food production, but in many places the better yields have been associated with agricultural practices that have degraded the land and water systems, according to FAO’s State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) report.

Farming systems ‘face the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture use and practices,’ says the report.

Competition for land and water is increasing – including competition between urban and industrial users – as well as within the agricultural sector between livestock, staple crops, non-food crop, and biofuel production.

Climate change is expected to alter the patterns of temperature, precipitation and river flows upon which the world’s food production systems depend, according to the report, which also notes that the problem could be more acute in developing countries, where quality land, soil nutrients and water are least abundant…

UN News Center. 28 november 2011.

One out of every eight people in the world is chronically undernourished… In a report on food insecurity, the UN agencies said 868 million people were hungry in 2010-2012, or about 12.5 percent of the world's population…

Reuters. 9 oktober 2012

Between 1961 and 2009, the world’s cropland grew by 12 per cent, but agricultural production expanded 150 percent, thanks to a significant increase in yields of major crops, the report says.

One of the warning signs pointed out in the study is that rates of growth in agricultural production have been slowing in many areas and are currently only half of what they were at the height of the ‘Green Revolution’ – the period between the 1940s and the late 1970s when the world’s agricultural productivity rose dramatically.

Overall, the report paints a picture of a world experiencing an increasing imbalance between availability and demand for land and water resources at the local and national levels.

The report for the first time provides a global assessment of the state of the planet’s land resources.

A quarter of the land is highly degraded, while another eight per cent has moderate degradation, 36 per cent is classed as stable or slightly degraded and 10 per cent ranked as “improving.”

The rest of Earth’s land surface is either bare (around 18 per cent) or covered by inland water bodies (around two per cent).

Large parts of all the continents are experiencing land degradation, with particularly high incidence noted along the west coast of the Americas, across the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe and North Africa, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, and throughout Asia.

The greatest threat is the loss of soil quality, followed by biodiversity loss and water resources depletion, the report notes.

UN News Center. 28 november 2011.

Het is beter voor Nederland en de internationale gemeenschap dat Obama de verkiezingen wint.

Geert Mak. EO Radio, 6 november 2012.

Met deze feiten in het achterhoofd zal duidelijk zijn dat dit soort beweringen van de westerse mainstream-opiniemakers niet alleen absurd zijn, maar zelfs misdadig omdat hun propaganda de burger in slaap wiegt in plaats van klaar wakker te maken. Obama en alle andere hedendaagse politici ondersteunen een neoliberaal systeem dat alleen door groei kan overleven en dus de wezenlijke problemen negeert.  De mensheid staat aan de vooravond van talloze nieuwe oorlogen om grondstoffen, zoals de NAVO betrokkenheid aantoont bij de recente gewelddadige strijd in onder andere Libie en Mali, Syrie en Iran. Zoals professor Michael T. Klare in The Race For What’s Left stelt

the desire to control natural resources has fueled international strife throughout human history. Ancient dynaties fought wars to secure more agricultural territory; European colonial empires battled one another over their resource-rich outposts overseas. To a consideable extent, therefore, the race for what’s left can be interpreted as just a continuation of this age-old struggle. But whereas previous centuries generally witnessed conflict between just a few dominant powers, today many more countries are industrialized or on the path to industrialization – so the number of major contenders for resources is greater than ever before. These new challengers also often harbor large and growing populations, whose desire for consumer goods of all sorts cannot be long denied. At the same time, many existing sources of supply are in decline while few new reservoirs are waiting on the horizon. With more nations in the resource race and fewer prizes to be divided among them, the competition is heating up and governments are being pressed to assume a more active role.

Even in nations like Canada and the United States, which have long relied on private companies to acquire critical materials, government agencies are now assuming greater responsibility for seeking out and securing distant resource deposits.

Ook de Amerikaanse en Britse invasie in Irak illustreerde deze ontwikkeling, zoals naderhand bleek uit de uitspraak van Alan Greenspan, 18 jaar lang hoofd van de Amerikaanse Federale Bank, die verklaarde dat

het politiek niet van pas komt om te erkennen wat iedereen weet: de Irak oorlog draait grotendeels om olie.

Een feit dat nog eens werd toegegeven toen in de herfst van 2011 de Amerikaanse oud-ambassadeur bij de Verenigde Naties, de jurist John Bolton, op Fox News een mogelijke aanval op Iran rechtvaardigde met de opmerking dat  

Iran er nauwelijks een geheim van maakt dat het naar de hegemonie streeft in de regio van de Perzische Golf, het cruciale olie en gas producerende gebied waarover wij zovele oorlogen hebben gevoerd om onze economie te beschermen tegen de nadelige impact van het verlies van deze voorraden of wanneer we er alleen maar over kunnen beschikken tegen zeer hoge prijzen.

Deze autoriteiten die van binnenuit de werkelijke redenen kennen klappen uit de school, spreken hun mond voorbij, hebben nu als gepensioneerden lak aan het systeem dat ze eerder met opmerkelijke kadaverdiscipline dienden, of vertegenwoordigen momenteel andere belangen. Hoe dan ook, de mainstream blijft de neoliberale ‘noodzakelijke illusies’  verspreiden, de ‘noble lies’ zoals de neoconservatieve ideoloog  Leo Strauss ze noemde. Een exponent hiervan is in Nederland ‘professor dr. Ko Colijn, Director of the Clingendael Institute. He is also Head at the Clingendael Security and Conflict Programme (CSCP). Ko Colijn is a well-known journalist, as well as a regular commentator for Dutch and foreign public news services.’ Een maand voor de gewelddadigheden tegen Irak schreef Colijn als opiniemaker:

'15-02-2003

Door Ko Colijn

Het voortbestaan van de Navo staat plotseling op het spel. En dat van de Veiligheidsraad en de Europese eenheid op buitenlands-politiek gebied. Alles hangt af van Blix.

Het ging het afgelopen halfjaar om de ontwapening van Irak. Maar sinds afgelopen weekend zijn de Navo, de Europese Unie en de Verenigde Naties zelf ineens de belangrijkste kwestie geworden. En, nog ongelooflijker, deze driedubbele crisis brak uit nadat nota bene de 'duif' Colin Powell op 5 februari in de Veiligheidsraad een stapel belastende feiten over Saddam Hoessein op tafel had gelegd.'

http://www.vn.nl/Standaard-Media-Pagina/Irak-de-Olympus-schudt.htm 

Het voortbestaan van de NAVO was dus voor de atlanticus Colijn belangrijker dan het feit dat een aanval op Irak volgens het internationaal recht illegaal was. Professor dr. Ko Colijn slikte zonder zelf iets te hebben onderzocht de leugens van Colin Powell, die door de hooggeleerde als ‘een stapel belastende feiten’ werd gekwalificeerd. Desondanks, of beter nog, juist daarom is Colijn nog steeds ‘a regular commentator for Dutch and foreign public news services.’  In onze virtuele wereld is de propangandist onmisbaar, zoals George Orwell al lang geleden liet zien. Zonder enige serieuze politieke, laat staan publieke discussie veranderde de NAVO, na de val van de Sovjet Unie, van een defensief bondgenootschap in een offensieve militaire organisatie die overal kan worden ingezet waar de westerse economische belangen bedreigd kunnen worden. Dat heet in vaktaal: ‘NATO’s New Strategic Concept,’ dat in het militaire jargon ‘moving beyond the status quo’ wordt genoemd, een nieuwe agressieve taak waaraan ook dr. Ko Colijn ideologisch heeft bijgedragen. Tegen betaling natuurlijk, dat spreekt voor zich. Leest u even mee:  

Tijdens de Top in Straatsburg/Kehl in april 2009 gaven de NAVO-leiders de secretaris-generaal de opdracht een nieuw strategisch concept te formuleren. Dit document moet het fundament gaan vormen voor het bondgenoot-schap van de toekomst.

De Atlantische Commissie organiseerde in samenwerking met de Atlantic Treaty Association in mei een tweedaagse internationale conferentie in Den Haag over de vraag wat dit document zou moeten bevatten – en wat niet.

Het conferentieverslag bevat lezingen van sprekers, evenals de discussie met het publiek.

Onder de auteurs bevindt zich Ko Colijn, zoals u kunt lezen op de website van de Atlantische Commissie, de propagandatak van de NAVO. http://www.atlcom.nl/media/boeken/

Nu weer even de werkelijkheid versus Colijn's 'stapel belastende feiten':

A Senate report on intelligence failures would later detail the intense debate that went on behind the scenes on what to include in Powell's speech. State Department analysts had found dozens of factual problems in drafts of the speech. Some of the claims were taken out, but others were left in, such as claims based on the yellowcake forgery. The administration came under fire for having acted on faulty intelligence, particularly what was single-sourced to the informant known as Curveball. Powell later recounted how Vice President Dick Cheney had joked with him before he gave the speech, telling him, ‘You've got high poll ratings; you can afford to lose a few points.’ Powell's longtime aide-de-camp and Chief of Staff from 1989–2003, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, later characterized Cheney's view of Powell's mission as to ‘go up there and sell it, and we'll have moved forward a peg or two. Fall on your damn sword and kill yourself, and I'll be happy, too.’

In September 2005, Powell was asked about the speech during an interview with Barbara Walters and responded that it was a ‘blot’ on his record. He went on to say, ‘It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now.’

Wilkerson said that he inadvertently participated in a hoax on the American people in preparing Powell's erroneous testimony before the United Nations Security Council.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell  

Zie ook: http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie2.html 

Powell later admitted he had presented an inaccurate case to the United Nations on Iraqi weapons, based on sourcing that was wrong and in some cases ‘deliberately misleading.’

The legality of the invasion of Iraq has been challenged since its inception on a number of fronts, and several prominent supporters of the invasion in all the invading nations have publicly and privately cast doubt on its legality. It is argued that the invasion was fully legal because authorization was implied by the United Nations Security Council. International legal experts, including the International Commission of Jurists, a group of 31 leading Canadian law professors, and the U.S.-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, have denounced both of these rationales.

On Thursday 20 November 2003, an article published in the Guardian alleged that Richard Perle, a senior member of the administration's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, conceded that the invasion was illegal but still justified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

De mainstream-opiniemakers kennen de grenzen van de officiele consensus tot op de millimeter en weten exact wat van hen verwacht wordt wanneer een of andere ‘axis of evil’ aangevallen moet worden. Zo gaf de ‘kwaliteitskrant’ NRC/Handelsblad op 20 maart 2003, op de dag dus van de illegale inval in Irak, in een hoofdredactioneel commentaar het volgende klemmende advies:

Nu de oorlog is begonnen, moeten president Bush en premier Blair worden gesteund. Die steun kan niet blijven steken in verbale vrijblijvendheid. Dat betekent dus politieke steun - en als het moet ook militaire.

Het probleem waarmee de westerse ‘democratie’ wordt geconfronteerd is niet alleen de klimaatverandering, het opraken van de grondstoffen, het militair industrieel complex de wereldwijd toenemende kloof tussen arm en rijk en de ingrijpende consequenties van die ontwikkeling, maar ook, misschien wel in de eerste plaats, de gecorrumpeerde macht van politici, bankiers, CEO’s en de overal opduikende opiniemakers als -- in dit geval -- Geert Mak en Ko Colijn, om er slechts twee te noemen. De macht van de gevestigde orde voorkomt een serieuze analyse en een publiek debat daarover. Over die soevereine macht schreef de Amerikaanse auteur Cormac McCarthy in zijn roman Blood Meridian:

The judge wrote on and then he folded the ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his hands together and passed them down over his nose and mouth and placed them palm down on his knees.

 Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

 He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

 What's a suzerain?

 A keeper. A keeper or overlord.

 Why not say keeper then?

 Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgements.

 Toadvine spat.

The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.

 Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can aquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.

The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

 I don't see what that has to do with catchin birds.

 The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.

 That would be a hell of a zoo.

 The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so. 

Morgen meer daarover.