one more OWS

And this is the third interesting piece about the OWS. This one is by Naomi Klein.
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Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now
Naomi Klein | October 6, 2011

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shutdowns.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.

§ What we wear.

§ Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

§ Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

§ Our courage.

§ Our moral compass.

§ How we treat each other.

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.

More on OWS

The following is the David Harvey article on OWS. Enjoy

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David Harvey—The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis

By David Harvey / 28 October 2011

The Party of Wall Street has ruled unchallenged in the United States for far too long. It has totally (as opposed to partially) dominated the policies of Presidents over at least four decades (if not longer), no matter whether individual Presidents have been its willing agents or not. It has legally corrupted Congress via the craven dependency of politicians in both parties upon its raw money power and access to the mainstream media that it controls. Thanks to the appointments made and approved by Presidents and Congress, the Party of Wall Street dominates much of the state apparatus as well as the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court, whose partisan judgments increasingly favor venal money interests, in spheres as diverse as electoral, labor, environmental and contract law.

The Party of Wall Street has one universal principle of rule: that there shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective. Those possessed of money power shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative potentialities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable.

These principles and practices do not arise out of individual greed, short-sightedness or mere malfeasance (although all of these are plentifully to be found). These principles have been carved into the body politic of our world through the collective will of a capitalist class animated by the coercive laws of competition. If my lobbying group spends less than yours then I will get less in the way of favors. If this jurisdiction spends on people’s needs it shall be deemed uncompetitive.

Many decent people are locked into the embrace of a system that is rotten to the core. If they are to earn even a reasonable living they have no other job option except to give the devil his due: they are only “following orders,” as Adolf Eichmann famously claimed, or “doing what the system demands” as others now put it, acceding to the barbarous and immoral principles and practices of the Party of Wall Street. The coercive laws of competition force us all, to some degree or other, to obey the rules of this ruthless and uncaring system. The problem is systemic, not individual.


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The Party’s favored slogans of freedom and liberty to be guaranteed by private property rights, free markets and free trade, actually translate into the freedom to exploit the labor of others, to dispossess the assets of the common people at will and the freedom to pillage the environment for individual or class benefit.

Once in control of the state apparatus, the Party of Wall Street typically privatizes all the juicy morsels at below market value to open new terrains for their capital accumulation. They arrange subcontracting (the military-industrial complex being a prime example) and taxation practices (subsidies to agro-business and low capital gains taxes) that permit them freely to ransack the public coffers. They deliberately foster such complicated regulatory systems and such astonishing administrative incompetence within the rest of the state apparatus (remember the EPA under Reagan, and FEMA and “heck-of-a job” Brown under Bush) as to convince an inherently skeptical public that the state can never ever play a constructive or supportive role in improving the daily life or the future prospects of anyone. And, finally, they use the monopoly of violence that all sovereign states claim, to exclude the public from much of what passes for public space and to harass, put under surveillance and, if necessary, criminalize and incarcerate all those who do not broadly accede to its dictates. It excels in practices of repressive tolerance that perpetuate the illusion of freedom of expression as long as that expression does not ruthlessly expose the true nature of their project and the repressive apparatus upon which it rests.

The Party of Wall Street ceaselessly wages class war. “Of course there is class war,” says Warren Buffett, “and it is my class, the rich, who are making it and we are winning.” Much of this war is waged in secret, behind a series of masks and obfuscations through which the aims and objectives of the Party of Wall Street are disguised.

The Party of Wall Street knows all too well that when profound political and economic questions are transformed into cultural issues they become unanswerable. It regularly calls up a huge range of captive expert opinion, for the most part employed in the think tanks and universities they fund and splattered throughout the media they control, to create controversies out of all manner of issues that simply do not matter and to propose solutions to questions that do not exist. One minute they talk of nothing other than the austerity necessary for everyone else to cure the deficit, and the next they are proposing to reduce their own taxation no matter what impact this may have on the deficit. The one thing that can never be openly debated and discussed, is the true nature of the class war they have been so ceaselessly and ruthlessly waging. To depict something as “class war” is, in the current political climate and in their expert judgment, to place it beyond the pale of serious consideration, even to be branded a fool, if not seditious.

But now, for the first time, there is an explicit movement to confront The Party of Wall Street and its unalloyed money power. The “street” in Wall Street is being occupied—oh horror upon horrors—by others! Spreading from city to city, the tactics of Occupy Wall Street are to take a central public space, a park or a square, close to where many of the levers of power are centered, and by putting human bodies there convert public space into a political commons, a place for open discussion and debate over what that power is doing and how best to oppose its reach. This tactic, most conspicuously re-animated in the noble and on-going struggles centered on Tahrir Square in Cairo, has spread across the world (Plaza del Sol in Madrid, Syntagma Square in Athens, now the steps of Saint Paul’s in London as well as Wall Street itself). It shows us that the collective power of bodies in public space is still the most effective instrument of opposition when all other means of access are blocked. What Tahrir Square showed to the world was an obvious truth: that it is bodies on the street and in the squares not the babble of sentiments on Twitter or Facebook that really matter.

The aim of this movement in the United States is simple. It says: “We the people are determined to take back our country from the moneyed powers that currently run it. Our aim is to prove Warren Buffett wrong. His class, the rich, shall no longer rule unchallenged nor automatically inherit the earth. Nor is his class, the rich, always destined to win.”

It says “we are the 99 percent.” We have the majority and this majority can, must and shall prevail. Since all other channels of expression are closed to us by money power, we have no other option except to occupy the parks, squares and streets of our cities until our opinions are heard and our needs attended to.

To succeed, the movement has to reach out to the 99 percent. This it can do and is doing step by step. First, there are all those being plunged into immiseration by unemployment, and all those who have been or are now being dispossessed of their houses and their assets by the Wall Street phalanx. It must forge broad coalitions between students, immigrants, the underemployed and all those threatened by the totally unnecessary and draconian austerity politics being inflicted upon the nation and the world, at the behest of the Party of Wall Street. It must focus on the astonishing levels of exploitation in workplaces—from the immigrant domestic workers who the rich so ruthlessly exploit in their homes, to the restaurant workers who slave for almost nothing in the kitchens of the establishments in which the rich so grandly eat. It must bring together the creative workers and artists whose talents are so often turned into commercial products under the control of big money power.

The movement must above all reach out to all the alienated, the dissatisfied and the discontented, all those who recognize and deeply feel in their gut that there is something profoundly wrong, that the system the Party of Wall Street has devised is not only barbaric, unethical and morally wrong, but also broken.

All this has to be democratically assembled into a coherent opposition, which must also freely contemplate what an alternative city, an alternative political system and, ultimately, an alternative way of organizing production, distribution and consumption for the benefit of the people, might look like. Otherwise, a future for the young that points to spiraling private indebtedness and deepening public austerity, all for the benefit of the one percent, is no future at all.

In response to the Occupy Wall Street movement the state backed by capitalist class power makes an astonishing claim: that they and only they have the exclusive right to regulate and dispose of public space. The public has no common right to public space! By what right do mayors, police chiefs, military officers and state officials tell we, the people, that they have the right to determine what is public about “our” public space, and who may occupy that space, and when? When did they presume to evict us, the people, from any space we, the people, decide collectively and peacefully to occupy? They claim they are taking action in the public interest (and cite laws to prove it), but it is we who are the public! Where is “our interest” in all of this? And, by the way, is it not “our” money that the banks and financiers so blatantly use to accumulate “their” bonuses?

In the face of the organized power of the Party of Wall Street to divide and rule, the movement that is emerging must also take as one of its founding principles that it will neither be divided nor diverted until the Party of Wall Street is brought either to its senses—to see that the common good must prevail over narrow venal interests—or to its knees. Corporate privileges to have all of the rights of individuals without the responsibiities of true citizens must be rolled back. Public goods such as education and health care must be publically provided and made freely available. The monopoly powers in the media must be broken. The buying of elections must be ruled unconstitutional. The privatization of knowledge and culture must be prohibited. The freedom to exploit and dispossess others must be severely curbed and ultimately outlawed.

Americans believe in equality. Polling data show they believe (no matter what their general political allegiances might be) that the top twenty percent of the population might be justified in claiming thirty percent of the total wealth. That the top twenty percent now control 85 percent of the wealth is unacceptable. That most of that is controlled by the top one percent is totally unacceptable. What the Occupy Wall Street movement proposes is that we, the people of the United States, commit to a reversal of that level of inequality, not only of wealth and income, but even more importantly of the political power that such a disparity confers. The people of the United States are rightly proud of the their democracy, but it has always been endangered by capital’s corruptive power. Now that it is dominated by that power, the time is surely nigh, as Jefferson long ago suggested would be necessary, to make another American revolution: one based on social justice, equality and a caring and thoughtful approach to the relation to nature.

The struggle that has broken out—the People versus the Party of Wall Street—is crucial to our collective future. The struggle is global as well as local in its nature. It brings together Chilean students who are locked in a life-and-death struggle with political power to create a free and quality education system for all, and so begin dismantling the neoliberal model that Pinochet so brutally imposed. It embraces the agitators in Tahrir Square who recognize that the fall of Mubarak (like the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship) was but the first step in an emancipatory struggle to break free from money power. It includes the “indignados” in Spain, the striking workers in Greece, the militant opposition emerging all around the world, from London to Durban, Buenos Aires, Shenzhen and Mumbai. The brutal dominations of big capital and sheer money power are everywhere on the defensive.

Whose side will each of us as individuals come down on? Which street will we occupy? Only time will tell. But what we do know is that the time is now. The system is not only broken and exposed but incapable of any response other than repression. So we, the people, have no option but to struggle for the collective right to decide how that system shall be reconstructed and in what image. The Party of Wall Street has had its day and failed miserably. How to construct an alternative on its ruins is both an inescapable opportunity and an obligation that none of us can or would ever want to avoid.

Big Food and Big Finance!!!

Although we will not discuss food production in this course many have demonstrated an interest in the field. As a result I would like for you to take a look at the accompanying article from Mother Jones.


Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street
Because Big Food makes Big Finance look like amateurs.

By Tom Philpott | Fri Oct. 14, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
Because Big Food makes Big Finance look like amateurs.
Tom Philpott [1]

The Occupy Wall Street protests grew out of anger at the outsized power of banks. But as they've expanded nationwide, the uprisings have evolved into a kind of running challenge to the way power is concentrated in all aspects of our economy—concentrated into the hands of people with an interest in maintaining the status quo.

No doubt, the financial sector is a stunning example. This MoJo chart [2] shows how the 10 largest banks came to hold 54 percent of US financial assets, up from 20 percent in 1990. As big banks gobbled smaller banks and became megabanks, they managed to extract more and more wealth out of the economy [3]. Even after the epochal meltdown and bailout, the financial sector now claims fully a third of US corporate profits [4]. They've invested a chunk of that windfall in what is probably Washington's most formidable lobbying machine [5]—which is precisely how they managed to slither away unscathed despite the economic carnage they caused.

But other economic sectors are similarly concentrated, and have a comparable grip on public policy. Consider the industry I cover. Our national food policy is both in desperate need of reform and utterly trapped under the heel of industry influence. So, as Occupy Wall Street evolves, food policy should be on the plate. Here are four reasons why:

1. The food industry is a big fat monopoly.
Agribusiness is concentrated to a point that would make a Wall Street master of the universe blush. Vast globe-spanning corporations, many of them US-based, dominate the industry.

Let's start with "inputs," the stuff farmers buy before they plant their crops. As of 2007, six companies owned 75 percent of the global pesticide market, and four companies sold half of the globe's seeds, ETC Group reckons [6]. Here's the kicker: Three of them—Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dupont—are on both lists. The agrichemical makers have transitioned into seed barons, genetically engineering their major seed lines to resist their own herbicides.
Three companies process more than 70 percent of beef in the US; four slaughter and pack more than 58 percent of our pork and chicken.

Monsanto is an interesting case. In addition to being the planet's largest seed vendor, with 23 percent of the market, it licenses its patented genetically modified traits to other companies. Think of the physical seed as the hardware and traits as the software. In the trait market, Monsanto holds a near monopoly: By 2007, according to ETC Group, 87 percent of the acreage dedicated to genetically engineered crops contained crops bearing Monsanto traits.

Okay, so farmers rely on a small handful of firms for their inputs. But it turns out the same thing holds true when they harvest and sell their crops. Just four companies—Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Louis Dreyfus—control up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. In the United States [7], three of those firms process 70 percent of the soybeans and 40 percent of the wheat milled into flour. The bulk of corn and soy grown by US farmers ends up feeding animals in vast factories, and here, too, the consolidation is dramatic: Three companies now process more than 70 percent of all beef, [8] and just four firms slaughter and pack upwards of 58 percent of all pork and chicken.
By 2002, just four companies produced 75 percent of cereal and snacks, 60 percent of cookies, and half of all ice cream.

Finally, let's look at the supermarkets. Walmart opened its first grocery-selling "superstore" in 1988. Today, it controls 2,750 superstores and more than a quarter of the US grocery market [9]. As a result, the combined market share of the four largest grocery players has doubled, from less than 20 percent in 1992 to nearly 40 percent today.

And, despite acres of shelves groaning with thousands of products, only a few large companies stock supermarkets. By 2002, the USDA reported [10], four companies churned out 75 percent of breakfast cereal, 75 percent of snacks, 60 percent of cookies, and 50 percent of ice cream.

2. The food industry screws farmers, its own employees, and the environment.
In antitrust theory, when four players control more than 40 percent of a market, they're said to wield "market power"—that is, they can manipulate the prices they charge consumers and the terms on which they deal with their suppliers. So, rather than raise prices, the food industry has slashed costs—at the expense of workers, farmers, and the environment.

The meat industry provides a stark example. Today, you can grab a McDonald's McDouble burger or a McChicken sandwich for a dollar [11]. As I noted above, just a few companies process the great bulk of meat consumed in the United States. How can they do that profitably, when McDonald's is practically giving burgers away? Simple: screw the workers.
Some 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States go to livestock facilities, the FDA reports.

From 1976 to 2009, according to USDA figures [12], the inflation-adjusted average hourly wage of meatpacking workers plunged, as did union membership among meatpacking employees. Predictably, working conditions deteriorated. (See our recent Hormel Foods exposé: "The Spam Factory's Dirty Secrets [13].") In 2005, Human Rights Watch issued a damning report titled "Blood, Sweat, and Fear," [14] which concluded:

Employers put workers at predictable risk of serious physical injury even though the means to avoid such injury are known and feasible. They frustrate workers' efforts to obtain compensation for workplace injuries when they occur. They crush workers' self-organizing efforts and rights of association. They exploit the perceived vulnerability of a predominantly immigrant labor force in many of their work sites. These are not occasional lapses by employers paying insufficient attention to modern human resources management policies. These are systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment. [Emphasis added.]

Farmers, too, got the shaft. As a few big hog processors like Smithfield gobbled market share and began raising millions of their own pigs, pork prices tanked and tens of thousands of farms went belly up, despite an increase in the total number of hogs being slaughtered. In 1992, America had 240,000 hog farms, the USDA [15] reports, but only 60,000 of them remained by 2007. Similar trends have hit the poultry industry [16].

Meanwhile, shunting livestock production into huge factory-style facilities has led to a massive concentration of toxic animal waste. Using data collected by the EPA, the Environmental Integrity Project recently showed [17] that animal factories routinely emit levels of particulate matter, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide that are well above acceptable health limits. A good deal of that manure ends up in groundwater, too, fouling drinking water supplies [18] and fish habitat. [19]

Finally, to keep their animals alive and growing fast under dire conditions, the meat industry laces feed rations with antibiotics. The FDA recently revealed [20] that 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States go to livestock facilities. Nearly every US public health and farm oversight agency has acknowledged [21] that the practice contributes heavily to the rise of antibiotic-resistant human pathogens—vicious superbugs like MRSA, a resistant form of staphylococcus that kills now more Americans than AIDS does [22].

3. Wall Street's greed leaves millions to starve—literally.
One obvious reason that Occupy Wall Street should focus on food is that Wall Street itself focuses on food.

As I reported last month [23], two recent UN reports directly implicate commodities speculators for driving up the price of key food staples like rice and wheat—leaving tens of millions of people around the world hungry in order to make a buck. A new study [24](PDF) reaching the same conclusion has emerged from the New England Complex Systems Institute—and was reviewed by two Harvard economists and an official from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Sure, these analyses note, US and European biofuel programs have played a role in all this by (foolishly) diverting key food staples into car fuel. But Wall Street took the biofuel craze to a whole new level. Olivier de Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, puts it bluntly [25]:

The promotion of biofuels and other supply shocks were relatively minor catalysts, but they set off a giant speculative bubble in a strained and desperate global financial environment. These factors were then blown out of all proportion by large institutional investors who, faced with the drying up of other financial markets, entered commodity futures markets on a massive scale.

And here's what the New England Complex Systems Institute team had to say:

The two sharp peaks in 2007/2008 and 2010/2011 are specifically due to investor speculation, while an underlying upward trend is due to increasing demand from ethanol conversion.

They illustrated this with the following chart.

From: "The Food Crises: A quantitative model of food prices including speculators and ethanol conversion," by Lagi, Bar-Yam, Bertrand, and Bar-Yam, 2011. From: "The Food Crises: A quantitative model of food prices including speculators and ethanol conversion," New England Complex Systems Institute, 2011.

When the first speculative shock hit food markets in 2007, "at least 40 million people around the world were driven into hunger and deprivation as a result," de Schutter writes. The bubble burst with the 2008 Wall Street meltdown but has since reinflated as Wall Street returned to profitability and its speculative ways. In real terms, global food prices are now hovering above their former peak in 2008, meaning misery for millions of people globally.

How did the global food supply become a Wall Street profit center? In a July 2010 Harper's article called "The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It," journalist Frederick Kaufman laid out the story [26] (PDF). It all started with a financial instrument Goldman Sachs conjured up in back in 1991 to allow the its clients to invest in the commodities market without having to pick specific winners. Here's how Kaufman describes it.

[Goldman's financial engineers] selected eighteen commodifiable ingredients and contrived a financial elixir that included cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs, and a variety or two of wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.

For years, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index was a stable, boring instrument that didn't draw much attention as investors chased flashier instruments like tech stocks and real estate. But it generated enough client fees to inspire other firms, including AIG, JP Morgan, and Bear Stearns, to roll out similar food-centered instruments, Kaufman reported.

By 2005, the tech bubble had long since burst, and real estate had reached dizzying heights. And the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000—the same Clinton-era legislation that "introduced obscure financial derivatives like 'credit default swaps' into the American lexicon and ultimately caused the collapse of mortgage and stock markets," notes [27] blogger Eric Michael Johnson—had deregulated derivatives markets. With this backdrop, President Bush and Congress began to ramp up US corn ethanol production in an absurd attempt to kowtow to the mythical notion of energy independence [28]. This gave Wall Street the story it need to sell investors en masse on commodity crops. Suddenly, billions of dollars were flowing into the food funds, and crop prices soared.
Goldman Sachs designed its customers' food betting so the bank would make money regardless of food prices.

When those prices crashed again in 2008, Kaufman reports, Goldman's clients who had bet on ever-rising prices lost money, but the firm itself didn't. It had rigged the instrument so that the bank made money no matter what. The subsequent rebound has left global food prices well above levels justified by supply and demand factors, according to the United Nations.

In a sense, the dramatic rise in commodity prices could at least benefit farmers around the world. After all, until 2005, crop prices had been falling or stagnating for 30 years. But the upswing has mainly benefited the agribusiness giants I mentioned above. That's because, as crop prices rise, the prices for inputs like agrichemicals and genetically modified seeds rise in tandem, keeping farmers squeezed.

The price of farmland has also jumped, as (yes) speculative [29] cash swept into heartland real estate. (See chart.) That means a windfall for farmers who own their land but rising rents for those who lease.

In Africa, rising food prices have inspired hedge funds, institutional investors, and nations like Saudi Arabia and China to gobble up farmland for export crop [30]s at a time when domestic populations are going hungry.

What can be done to curb food speculation? The Dodd-Frank financial reform law signed by President Obama required the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to rein in speculation in ag markets. But as the New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson reported [31] last month (hat tip, Tom Laskway [32]), the commission has proposed rules that "might actually encourage speculation in the commodities markets."

This suggests that the political system is so shot through with finance sector cash that it's incapable of properly regulating Wall Street's food fetish.



4. Our politicians are in bed with agribusiness.

Like the big banks, the handful of companies that dominate our food system dedicate loads of cash to throwing their weight around in DC.

From 1998 through 2011, the agribusiness sector dropped $1.4 billion on lobbying, reports [33] the Center for Responsive Politics. That's considerably less than the finance and health sectors, but enough to put it sixth on the CRP's list of clout-wielding sectors, beating out defense contractors ($1.3 billion) and trial lawyers ($366 million).
"Not only is there lack of support," complained the USDA's chief slaughterhouse inspector, "but there's outright obstruction, retaliation and abuse of power."

So what does the industry get in return? A 2010 study [34] by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Iowa State University gives us a taste. The researchers polled more than 1,700 employers of the USDA and FDA, the two federal agencies overseeing food and ag companies, on the topic of industry influence. The results are chilling:

Hundreds of survey respondents identified undue corporate influence as a major problem. More than 620 respondents (38 percent) agreed or strongly agreed that "public health has been harmed by agency practices that defer to business interests."…And more than 300 respondents (25 percent) said they personally experienced corporate interests forcing their agency to withdraw or significantly modify a policy or action designed to protect consumers in the past year. When asked that same question about Congress and non-governmental interests, more than 260 respondents (24 percent) and more than 240 respondents (22 percent) said yes, respectively.

One of the respondents, a USDA veterinarian named Dean Wyatt who manages the agency's slaughterhouse inspectors, spoke bluntly. "Upper level management does not adequately support field inspectors and the actions they take to protect the food supply," he told the pollsters. "Not only is there lack of support, but there's outright obstruction, retaliation and abuse of power."

And evidently, data-fudging to protect industry interests is commonplace:

…190 respondents (16 percent) said they witnessed officials selectively or incompletely using data to justify a specific regulatory outcome. One-hundred-and-five respondents (10 percent) said agency decision makers inappropriately asked them to exclude or alter information or conclusions in an agency scientific document. Ninety-eight respondents (9 percent) said agency managers asked them to provide incomplete, inaccurate or misleading information to the public, regulated industry, media or government officials.

Plenty of observers were hopeful that industry influence over federal watchdog agencies would decrease dramatically with the exit of George W. Bush. But the poll detected only a "very small" reduction of influence-wielding under Obama.

Another way to gauge industry influence is to look at particular cases. Take the genetically modified seed industry dominated by Monsanto, Dupont, and Syngenta. According to a 2010 report [35] (PDF) from Food & Water Watch:

These companies and organizations spent more than half a billion dollars—$547.5 million—lobbying Congress between 1999 and 2009, the most recent full year of available data. The firms employed more than 100 lobbying firms in 2010 alone, as well as their own in-house lobbyists. Lobbying expenditures rose 102.8 percent from $35.0 million in 1999 to $71.0 million in 2009.

That's money well spent. As I've written before [36], the GM foods industry has enjoyed a rather laissez-faire regulatory environment since it emerged in the 1990s, despite steady public pressure for more oversight.

That tradition continues under President Obama. In January, the USDA green-lighted Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa [37] after signaling that it would place restrictions on the crop to protect organic farmers from genetic contamination. The Wall Street Journal later reported [38] that the White House had intervened to force the decision, "as part of the administration's review of 'burdensome' regulation."

And in July, the USDA declined to regulate genetically modified turf grass, issuing a decision that opens the door for a whole slew of novel crops to avoid even minimal oversight. [39] This, despite the agency's admission [40] that the novel grass will likely contribute to the herbicide-resistant "superweed" problem and contaminate non-GM grass crops.

The hands-off approach to GM crops evidently extends to other corners of the administration. Indeed, in some agencies, the attitude is downright boosterish. Regarding the labeling of foods containing GM ingredients, a notion with strong public support, a State Department officially has publicly sided with the industry line, the Des Moines Register reports [41]. Speaking at a panel organized by CropLife America, the main agrichemical/GM seed industry trade group, State Department economic specialist Jose Fernandez told the crowd what it wanted to hear: "If you label something there's an implication there's something wrong with it."

The Register adds: "The State Department has been working along with the Agriculture Department to encourage foreign countries to permit the production and use of biotech crops."

On the potentially scary problem of livestock being pumped with antibiotics, regulation has been practically nonexistent, even though, as I've pointed out before [21], the USDA, FDA, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all acknowledged the dangers of essentially neutering the best weapons we've got against outbreaks of bacterial disease in humans.

What we're left with is a system of government oversight crumbling in the face of industry influence, an election-year atmosphere of anti-regulatory zeal, and a political system polarized to the point where it is incapable of addressing the problem. At times when our leaders have proved unwilling or unable to defend the public interest, a social movement like Occupy Wall Street becomes vitally important.

Slavoj Zizek en Occupy Wall Street

An interesting, informative and yet entertaining presentation by one of the top intellectuals in the world. Take a listen

I am for clean energy provided it is in someone else's backyard

It has often been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well in this case it sure is.
I honestly think that it would be redundant to say much about the accompanying image, it tells the whole story and very effectively for that matter. It also demonstrates clearly that most of us are not that sincere about the claims that we make.(Thanks Marcia)

Rogue Herbicide

It is as if the problems associated with Round up , a herbicide produced by Monsanto, are not enough to worry about. As the previous post notes that gave us the Super Weed. Not to be outdone DuPont's Herbicide; Imprelis; designed to stop weeds from growing is killing trees and poisoning the water table wherever it is used. It has been labelled the Rogue Herbicide by Jim Hightower whose full column follows:
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In the corporate world's tortured language, workers are no longer fired. They just experience an "employment adjustment." But the most twisted euphemism I've heard in a long time comes from DuPont: "We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms," the pesticide maker recently stated.

How unfavorable? Finito, flat-lined, the tree is dead. Not just one tree, but hundreds of thousands all across the country are suffering the final "symptom."

The culprit turns out to be Imprelis, a DuPont weed-killer widely applied to lawns, golf courses, and — ironically — cemeteries.

Rather than just poisoning dandelions and other weeds, the herbicide also seems to be causing spruces, pines, willows, poplars, and other unintended victims to croak.

"It's been devastating," says a Michigan landscaper who applied Imprelis to about a thousand properties this spring and has already had more than a third of them suffer outbreaks of tree deaths. "It looks like someone took a flamethrower to them," he says.

At first, DuPont tried to dodge responsibility, claiming that landscape workers might be applying the herbicide improperly. The corporation even urged customers to be patient and leave the tree corpses on their lawns to see if they'd come back to life in a few years.

However, faith-based landscaping was a hard sell. Disgruntled homeowners began filing lawsuits. Then DuPont had its own "aha!" moment when trees on the grounds of the DuPont Country Club also developed the "unfavorable symptoms" of Imprelis poisoning.

So, with DuPont's cooperation, the EPA has finally banned sales of the tree-killing herbicide. But because of inadequate testing and a rush to profit, the poison will remain in the soil — and our water— for many moons. Trees will continue to die. Will we never learn?

Super Weeds

Well it happened again. Monsanto the company that gave us Terminator seeds, those that are designed to become infertile so that farmers will have to buy seeds every year has managed to let lose in the US agricultural fields another genetically designed disaster.

This time around it is not “Gene Use Restriction Technology”, GURT, that is the issue but it is Roundup the weed killer and the Roundup ready seeds. Roundup is a bestselling weed killer that is also engineered into the seeds of corn or soybean in order to keep weeds under control, increase crop yields and generate more profits for Monsanto. Unfortunately, and dare I say as expected, the use of Roundup has resulted in the creation of Super Weeds that have already spread to 11 million acres of fertile farmland in the US and threatens to spread into much larger areas. Simply stated the weeds have developed immunity to Roundup that was designed to kill them.
The new Super Weeds are called “waterhemp” and grow four feet tall. These Super Weeds are super because they can grow two inches a day and can withstand multiple applications of the herbicide Roundup. These weeds do their damage by sucking up the moisture and the nutrients out of the soil which increases the cost of farming and decreases the productivity of the farmer not to mention its environmental damage which could be permanent.

Is the Tomato that ate Manhattan far behind Will we ever learn not to mess around with Mother Nature?

Smart Planet

Frankly , I post this with lots of trepidation since , as you should know by now, I do not share the view that the following information has much to do with environmentalism:-). Yet, I do not want anyone to miss taking advantage of an opportunity that is deemed to be of value to the student. I guess that I am warning you that IBM might be piggybacking on the interest in green living and environmental education but IBM might be , on the other hand, very sincere in its commitment to a Smarter Planet. You decide.

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Join the hunt for a Smarter Planet
Do you have the right skills to get a top job when you graduate? IBM wants to make sure you do!

IBM is coming to Pace on October 11th with the ”Smarter Planet Comes to You: Developing Skills for a New Level of Smart” tour, where you can:

Participate in a high-tech on-campus scavenger hunt that will help build your know-how about making our planet smarter. (Including $800 in prizes, and, of course, food!)
Visit the Skills Zones throughout the event. Try your hand at beating Watson in the gaming zone, learn about jobs, skills development, talk to experts, and more.
Attend the after-party information session for a deeper look at how you can better compete in this smarter job market. Learn what recruiters are looking for, access skills education, resources and job/internship postings. Network with IBM executives, skills and sales professionals, alumni, professors, your peers and more after a panel discussion on Skills for the 21st Century


Building a Smarter Planet requires a new way of thinking and a new way of applying technology to solve business and world problems. This is also increasing the demand for highly skilled workers and toughening the requirements for the best jobs. As the next generation of business and technology leaders, come and learn more about what it takes to build a smarter planet, ways to enhance your skills profile, and how to get engaged. We hope to see you on October 11th. Register at www.smarterplanetcomestoyou.com

o Take 2 mins to learn more about this event in this fun video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCB1L3AEn4

o Follow us on Facebook for updates and early hints/clues for the hunt... facebook.com/ibmskillstour

o Where: Pleasantville Campus, Kessel Student Center on Tuesday, October 11, 2011
o Scavenger Hunt: Sign-in 3:15pm, Hunt 4 – 5:30pm, After-party Info session/prizes 5:30 – 6:45pm
o IBM Skills Zones – throughout the event

Green Capitalism: A failure

The attached powerpoint presentaion ia a brief set of "bullets" that I used for a lecture at the LeftForum in which I maintain that "Business as usual" is unacceptable and actually immoral. Our only chance for avoiding a cataclysmic failure is at a minimum to be found in a Steady State Economy .

The left forum

View more presentations from guston1.

US Upcoming elections and Climate Change.Elections

The following article appeared a few days ago in NatureNews. It should prove helpful in helping you understand the positions taken by the major two political parties in the US on the major issue of our time; Climate Change.
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US midterm elections: A chilly season for climate crusaders

Open scepticism of global warming could rule next Congress.

Jeff Tollefson


Nineteen of the 21 serious Republican challengers for seats in the US Senate believe that climate science is either "inconclusive" or "incorrect", according to an analysis by Washington DC's non-partisan National Journal. A more comprehensive list compiled by the left-leaning Wonk Room website suggests that 31 out of 37 Republican Senate candidates — including nine out of ten sitting senators — have recently disputed the science. Five of the remaining six actively oppose existing climate bills.

It is not clear exactly how concerns about climate-change regulations will affect the US midterm elections next month. Battles about political ideology and the state of the US economy are more pressing. But one thing is certain: scepticism about climate science has become one of the many litmus tests for candidates backed by the surging right. Even Senator John McCain of Arizona, who once championed climate legislation, has said that the world needs to know whether the scientific community's conclusions about global warming "were flawed by outside influences". In trendsetting California, where the science of climate change is not at issue between the leading gubernatorial candidates, concern over the economy could still lead to a deferral of greenhouse-gas emission cuts (see 'State watch: California').
Click here for more on the midterm elections.

If Republicans take the House or Senate, US climate scientists could be targeted for investigations that challenge findings related to global warming. In the House, Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has promised to give climate science "a careful relook". In the Senate, long-time climate sceptic James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) would relish the opportunity to subpoena climate scientists for hearings before the Committee on Environment and Public Works, which he is likely to chair if Republicans take control.

Democratic leaders pushed many members to vote for a comprehensive climate bill in the House in 2009, only to see the issue fizzle out in the Senate. Republican candidates are now using that vote to campaign against Democrats such as Zack Space, who has been accused by his Republican opponent in Ohio, state senator Bob Gibbs, of voting for a "cap-and-trade energy tax that will kill over 100,000 Ohio jobs".

The use of climate science as a weapon to skewer political opponents does not bode well for bipartisan progress on climate after the election. "If the message is that climate legislation is political poison, then that will make it harder to bring it up in the future," says David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington DC.

Prospects for the kind of emissions-trading programme that allows polluters to buy and sell permits on a fluid carbon market have already faded, says Frank Maisano, an energy specialist with the lobby firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington DC. Maisano notes that most of the sitting lawmakers who are likely to lose in November — moderate Democrats and Republicans — did not support aggressive action on climate science in any case. "This is regional politics, not partisan politics."

A more divided Congress could take up smaller initiatives targeting energy efficiency, renewable energy and long-term investments in clean-energy. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to act on a 2007 court ruling giving it authority to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. Some observers suggest that the fear of direct EPA regulation could help to spur a legislative solution among moderates of both parties.

That kind of political compromise might yet be possible if the climate rhetoric tones down after the elections. "Climate-science denial is a by-product of extreme partisanship and a kind of reactionary mode among conservatives, and I expect that this will wane," says Paul Bledsoe, a senior adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist think tank based in Washington DC. He says that most Republicans in the current Congress accept the science even if they disagree over what to do about it. "But if large parts of the Republican Party begin to deny consensus science," he adds, "then the climate community will have to confront them about it."

Climate Change: The Bickering Goes On

The Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement to fight climate change, will come to an end in two years, 2012. The world, including the US who is not bound by Kyoto, has been trying frantically for over a year to come to agreement on what is to replace Kyoto. The Copenhagen conference, last year, turned out to be totally unproductive. Yet the major players have not given up hope for reaching an agreement that would be legally binding to all its signatories.
Unfortunately the progress has been very slow to nonexistent. The meeting at Tianjin, China ended up last week in total disarray. The meeting which was expected to resolve a few of the obstacles preventing an agreement was described by participants as being full of bickering. "At times it has been like watching children in a kindergarten," said Wendell Tio from Greenpeace International.
Although the talks are scheduled to move to Cancun, Mexico, next month not many are hopeful that the level of disagreement between the US and China will diminish. Kyoto divided the world into two groups, the developed and the developing, with the former subject to strict legal limits on its emissions of carbon dioxide while the latter is subject only to voluntary restraints. And that is the rub.
Officially China has become the largest emitter of carbon in the world, replacing the US but by all conventional metrics China is a developing country and so is refusing to abide by the US demands that China and other large developing countries should be subject to strict emissions quotas also. Obviously the Mr. Su, the Chinese representative at the talks, would have nothing of these demands. Mr. Su likened the U.S. criticism to Zhubajie, a pig in a classic Chinese novel, by saying "It has no measures or actions to show for itself, and instead it criticizes China, which is actively taking measures and actions."
It is this inability to view climate change as a global problem that demands a global solution that has wrecked Copenhagen, is threatening Cancun and will probably doom the final resolution to a meaningless gesture that will do nothing to control climate change. As long as various players are attempting to guard their own selfish interest then no meaningful solution is to be expected. This is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons whereby individual actors believe that they are doing what is good for themselves but wind up in hurting themselves and all other players as well.
What do you think: Should the less developed be exempted from strict limits on emissions so that the developed will shoulder the greater part of the burden of emission reductions? Does nature discriminate on the basis of the national origin of carbon emissions? What would be a fair allocation of the burden and how heavy shed it be?

Frankestein Salmon?

Many will argue that a genetically engineered Salmon is safe to eat. That might be the case in the short run but we cannot be sure that such genetically modified species is totally safe especially if it is allowed to cross breed with other established specie. This case of approving a genetically modified Salmon is a clear violation of the Precautionary principle. The following article appeared in the NYT. Thanks Syed.


Members of a federal advisory committee seemed to conclude that genetically engineered super-salmon would be safe to eat and for the environment, but they also found gaps in the studies used to support that conclusion.The committee met to advise the Food and Drug Administration on whether to approve what would be the first genetically engineered animal to enter the American food supply.

The Atlantic salmon, which would be raised on farms, contain an extra growth hormone gene that allows them to grow to marketable size about twice as fast as conventional fish.

Committee members, who were not asked to vote on whether the fish should be approved, did not point out anything about the fish that would seem dangerous, despite one study suggesting a possible increase in the potential to cause allergic reactions. They said the chance the fish would escape into the wild was low.

“They didn’t see any glaring holes” in the data, Gregory A. Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who was the consumer representative on the committee, said after the meeting ended.

Still some panel members did say the studies the F.D.A. relied on to reach its own conclusion that the salmon would be safe were flawed, often using only a few dozen fish or even fewer.

“I do get heartburn when we’re going to allow post-market surveillance to finalize our safety evaluation,” said one committee member, Michael D. Apley, a pharmacology expert at Kansas State University.

The criticisms could add to the time needed to approve the salmon. It could also provide grist for consumer and environmental groups, many of which testified on Monday that the salmon should not be approved.

Approval of the salmon could pave the way for other such biotech animals to enter the food supply, like a pig developed in Canada that has more environmentally friendly manure.

The results could also influence other countries. Eric Hallerman, a fisheries expert at Virginia Tech, told the committee that fast-growing versions had already been developed for 18 different types of fish in various countries.

The salmon contain a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon and a genetic switch from the ocean pout that turns on an antifreeze gene. That allows the salmon to make growth hormone in cold weather, whereas salmon usually produce it only in warm weather.

Ronald L. Stotish, the chief executive of AquaBounty Technologies, the company that developed the salmon, told the committee that its AquAdvantage salmon would help the world meet rising demand for seafood without further devastating natural fisheries. He said it would be economical to grow the fish in inland tanks in the United States, saving the cost of flying in the fish from Chile or Norway, from which the United States now gets most of its Atlantic salmon, he said.

For now, though, the company’s eggs are being hatched at a company facility in Prince Edward Island, Canada. And the fish would be grown to size in only limited quantities at a company facility in Panama.

The company said that fish would not escape because they are grown inland in facilities with containment mechanisms. If any did escape, it said, the rivers outside the Canadian and Panama facilities would be too salty or warm for the fish to survive. And the fish would all be female and almost all would be sterile, so they would not interbreed with wild salmon.

But some committee members, as well as some environmental groups, said the government’s environmental assessment should evaluate what would happen if the salmon were grown widely in many facilities.

“The F.D.A. must consider issues related to realistic production scenarios,” said Anna Zivian, a senior manager at the group Ocean Conservancy.

One test showed a possible increase in the potential to cause allergic reactions that was almost statistically significant even though only six fish were used in each group in the study.

But several committee members said the meaning of that test’s results were open to question since it was not clear what amount of increase was meaningful.

Kevin Wells, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri and a committee member, said he doubted the fish would cause extra allergies.

“The salmon contains nothing that isn’t in the human diet,” he said.

The fish are being regulated under the process used to approve veterinary drugs. The F.D.A. held a half-day session on Sunday to give the committee, made up mostly of veterinarians, a primer on genetic engineering.

Approval, if it comes, is likely to take at least several months. The F.D.A. said it would prepare an environmental assessment that would be open to comment for 30 days. If the agency decides that there could be a significant environmental impact — something that does not appear likely — it will have to do a full environmental impact statement, which could take months or years.

The F.D.A. will have a public hearing on whether the salmon, if approved, should be labeled.

Family Planning: The Cheapest Way To Prevent Climate Disaster?

(This post appeared in National Geographic News and it does touch on an issue that we discussed in class today. Hat tip to Sayed)

A sturdy condom could be humankind's best weapon to prevent a climate calamity, according to a cost-benefit analysis by British economists.

Contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies as a means of combating climate change, the London School of Economics concluded after comparing all the alternatives to reducing future emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The simplest solution, in other words, is to cap human population growth.

The study looks only at the economic alternatives. The organizers of the research are fully aware of the controversial nature of the suggestion that the human population growth rate needs to be slowed, which is perhaps why they point out that that every additional person, "especially each rich person" in developed countries, reduces everyone's share of the planet's dwindling resources even further.


Distribution of resource-rich populations, as suggested by electricity consumption at night.

Image courtesy NASA

Each U.S. $7 spent on basic family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a tonne (2,200 pounds), said the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a British think tank concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. OPT commissioned the research from the London School of Economics.

"To achieve the same result with low-carbon technologies would cost a minimum of $32," OPT said in a statement."The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended."

Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost

The report, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost," concludes that "considered purely as a method of reducing future CO2 emissions," family planning is more cost-effective than leading low-carbon technologies. It says family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction.

Meeting basic family planning needs along the lines suggested would save more than billion tons of CO2 between now and 2050--equivalent to nearly six times the annual emissions of the U.S. and almost 60 times the UK's annual total, OPT said.

"It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions--the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up."

Roger Martin, chair of OPT, said the findings vindicated OPT's stance that population growth must be included in the climate change debate. "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions--the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up," Martin said.

"The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal. Stabilizing population levels has always been essential ecologically, and this study shows it's economically sensible too.

"The population issue must now be added into the negotiations for the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

"This part of the solution is so easy, and so cheap, and would bring so many other social and economic benefits, from health and education to the empowerment of women. It would also ease all the other environmental problems we face--the rapid shrinkage of soil, fresh water, forests, fisheries, wildlife and oil reserves and the looming food crisis."

All of these problems would be easier to solve with fewer people, and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more, Martin added.

"Meanwhile each additional person, especially each rich person in the OECD countries, reduces everyone's share of the planet's dwindling resources even faster.

"Non-coercive population policies are urgently needed in all countries. The taboo on discussing this is no longer defensible."



In this UN map of world contraceptive use in 2007, the scale ranges from pale yellow (less than 20 percent) to dark blue (75 percent or more).

The London School of Economics study, based on the principle that "fewer people will emit fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide," models the consequences of meeting all "unmet need" for family planning, defined as the number of women who wish to delay or terminate childbearing but who are not using contraception, OPT said.

"One recent estimate put this figure at 200 million. UN data suggest that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 billion. Between 2010 and 2050 12 billion fewer "people-years" would be lived - 326 billion against 338 billion under current projections."

The 34 gigatonnes of CO2 saved in this way would cost $220 billion--roughly $7 a tonne. However, the same CO2 saving would cost over $1 trillion if low-carbon technologies were used, OPT said. "The $7 cost of abating a tonne of CO2 using family planning compares with $24 for wind power, $51 for solar, $57-83 for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, $92 for plug-in hybrid vehicles and $131 for electric vehicles."

The study may understate the CO2 savings available because the estimates of unmet need are based on married women alone, yet some studies suggest up to 40 per cent of young unmarried women have had unwanted pregnancies, OPT added.

Said Martin, "The potential for tackling climate change by addressing population growth through better family planning, alongside the conventional approach, is clearly enormous and we shall be urging all those involved in the Copenhagen process to take it fully on board."

What do you think about this? Should the leaders meeting in Copenhagen have a serious discussion about addressing population growth through better family planning?

Which is worse BP oil or BP dispersants?

The chemicals BP has relied on to break up the steady flow of leaking oil from deep below the Gulf of Mexico could create a new set of environmental problems.

Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world’s supply. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.

The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

“There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil,” said Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills who is a senior policy advisor for Marine Programs for Defenders of Wildlife and is chairman of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. “It’s a trade-off – you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t -- of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore.”

BP did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Dispersants are mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other additives that break up the surface tension of an oil slick and make oil more soluble in water, according to a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences. They are spread over or in the water in very low concentration – a single gallon may cover several acres.

Once they are dispersed, the tiny droplets of oil are more likely to sink or remain suspended in deep water rather than floating to the surface and collecting in a continuous slick. Dispersed oil can spread quickly in three directions instead of two and is more easily dissipated by waves and turbulence that break it up further and help many of its most toxic hydrocarbons evaporate.

But the dispersed oil can also collect on the seabed, where it becomes food for microscopic organisms at the bottom of the food chain and eventually winds up in shellfish and other organisms. The evaporation process can also concentrate the toxic compounds left behind, particularly oil-derived compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.

Studies if oil dispersal have found that the chemicals used can accumulate in shellfish and other organisms.According to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report, the dispersants and the oil they leave behind can kill fish eggs. A study of oil dispersal in Coos Bay, Ore. found that PAH accumulated in mussels, the Academy’s paper noted. Another study examining fish health after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 found that PAHs affected the developing hearts of Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos. The research suggests the dispersal of the oil that’s leaking in the Gulf could affect the seafood industry there.

“One of the most difficult decisions that oil spill responders and natural resource managers face during a spill is evaluating the trade-offs associated with dispersant use,” said the Academy report, titled Oil Spill Dispersants, Efficacy and Effects. “There is insufficient understanding of the fate of dispersed oil in aquatic ecosystems.”

A version of Corexit was widely used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and, according to a literature review performed by the group the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, was later linked with health impacts in people including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders. But the Academy report makes clear that the dispersants used today are less toxic than those used a decade ago.

“There is a certain amount of toxicity,” said Robin Rorick, director of marine and security operations at the American Petroleum Institute. “We view dispersant use as a tool in a toolbox. It’s a function of conducting a net environmental benefit analysis and determining the best bang for your buck.”

Charter, the marine expert, cautioned the dispersants should be carefully considered for the right reasons.

“Right now there is a headlong rush to get this oil out of sight out of mind,” Charter said. “You can throw every resource we have at this spill. You can call out the Marine Corps and the National Guard. This is so big that it is unlikely that any amount of response is going to make much of a dent in the impacts. It’s going to be mostly watching it happen.”

Ryan Knutson contributed to this report. The above was published originally by ProPublica. (Hat tip to Jennifer).

Water Insecurity In MENA

“Water water everywhere ,Nor a drop to drink” from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an adequate description to the water insecurity that is threatening the world as a whole but that is a practical certainty for the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. It is true that many an Arab country is blessed with an excess of Black Gold but the serious scarcity of fresh water availability could make Blue Gold much more important in determining the future of these lands.

Fresh water scarcity is a global problem but in some regions it is much more severe than others. The Middle East and North Africa are classified by the United Nations as the ones with the most water insecurity in the world. Although 75 % of the surface of the planet is water only 2.5% of that is fresh water and ¾ of that is not available since it is frozen icebergs. What is left is less than 1 % of the volume of water and even that 1% is not totally available since some of it is hard to get to and others are just soil dampness. What is important is to note that the amount of fresh water availability is fixed but it is, like most other resources, not evenly distributed. Many regions in the world have access to over 12000 cubic meters per capita per year while others have only a few hundred. Actually, the United Nations considers countries with 500 cubic meters of water per capita per year to be suffering of absolute water insecurity.

Unfortunately, many Arab states are already there, such as Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Gaza. Furthermore it is estimated that the first world capital to run out of water will be Sana’a by 2020. Water availability is so scarce in MENA that the FAO projects that by 2025 17 Arab states will have to be classified under “scarce water supplies”. In order to put this in perspective the average water availability/consumption the typical Arab will be just 700 cubic meters per year when the global average is ten times as high in availability and 3-4 times in consumption. The situation for the most essential resource for life is so critical in MENA that less than 0.5% of the renewable water resources are in this region of the world. The stability of the water resources is even more acute if one is to remember that 75% of the water in this region originates from outside its political boundaries.

Given the expected increase in population in the region in addition to climate change and its attendant increased demand for water for irrigation the availability of water will be halved by 2050 which will imply severe water insecurity for the whole region. Whether these expected shortages translate into political instability and water wars is a potential outcome that needs to be taken seriously. That is at least one reason that calls for a major highly coordinated effort by all the countries to invest heavily in water infrastructure including modern irrigation techniques.

Lebanon is in a slightly better position than the average Arab country but definitely not in an enviable position of any water excesses. The best that can be said about the Lebanese situation is that it is less severe than Jordan, and the GCC to name a few. Estimates of water availability in Lebanon are rough and they vary between a conservative estimate of 2200 million cubic meters per year and almost 4000 million cubic meters of fresh water per year. As it is clear even the upper estimate provides each of the 4.5 million Lebanese only about 900 cubic meters per year. Lebanon is expected to be consuming just about 3000 million cubic meters of water by 2015. As the above figure makes it clear that would then imply that Lebanon needs huge investments in the next few years in order to gather a lot of this water that is wasted every year by flowing into the sea.
More than half of the water usage in Lebanon is needed for irrigation while about 30% goes for domestic uses. The remainder is used by industry.

The warning by Minister Gibran Basil about the impending water crisis in Lebanon must be taken very seriously. Arguably the crisis has already begun and is visible from the constant failure of the water authorities to deliver adequate amounts of water to its clients. One reason is the antiquated infrastructure and another is the lack of awareness to conserve this most precious of resources. Lebanon cannot afford not to construct a series of dams and to build a modern facility to supply Beirut, where half of the Lebanese reside, with the estimated 250 million cubic meters of water that it needs while it is currently getting less than half of that amount. It is also hoped that the impending water shortages will impel the Lebanese government to adopt a meaningful population policy. Lebanon is simply beyond its physical carrying capacity.

Hybrid cars will not save us, less population will.

We are often told that one major consequence of industrialization and modernity is the resulting climate change and its deleterious effects. We are further told that if we value planet earth then we should avoid all the activities that result in a major reallocation of carbon in the world. Note that based on the first law of thermodynamics no element is ever destroyed, all what we can do is to release carbon from being locked in fossil fuels to be released as a gaseous compound in the atmosphere. Is such a minute reallocation important for the planet? If we are to recall that this planet has been hit by a meteorite travelling at a tremendous speed, has experienced a cooling process and has a tremendous capacity to adapt and heal itself. In the words of James Lovelock the earth is a “homeostatic super organism” that will constantly change and adapt as to ensure its survival. So does the planet care about our reallocating carbon or any other element for that matter? Physics and common sense tells us that the answer is an unequivocal no. But that does not mean that climate change is not the biggest challenge that humans have ever been faced with. The operative word in the previous sentence is human.

In order to fashion a real and meaningful solution to any problem requires a clear understanding of what is the problem all about. Climate change is not about maintaining a carbon balance for the sake of the earth but it is a purely anthropocentric concern about life for the human species. No one can deny that human civilization has evolved to become an evolutionary factor. A major by product of human activity is climate change which will result in putting into motion a process that many ecologists are calling the sixth extinction. Climate change combined with the growing needs for more roads, buildings, deforestation have radically changed the nature and characteristics of the habitat and thus is leading to more and more extinction.

If we do value these changes, and we should value them, then the solution is not to develop an alternative to the internal combustion engine, although that is desirable, but what is required is a recognition that the biggest threat to human civilization and biodiversity as we know it is the human species itself. The threat is not purely that of numbers, although numbers do count but it is a combination of numbers and levels of affluence. The expression I= PAT as developed by Paul Ehrlich emphasizes clearly the relationship between environmental degradation (I), pure number of humans (P), lifestyles (A) and the level of technology (T). Note that if we are to constantly seek a higher level of affluence, for a larger and larger population then the inevitable outcome is greater and greater ecological degradation.



There are a number of studies that show conclusively that the planet is already beyond its carrying capacity. A popular and easy to understand measure is the estimate of how many global acres are required to provide a particular life style. Such estimates vary from one country to the other and from one household to the other. A simple back of the envelope application of the above shows that if a Western life style is to be adopted by the 7 billion inhabitants then the resources of six planets will be required.

Sustainability is everyone’s concern, large countries, small countries, poor countries and rich countries. Since sustainability does not recognize artificial political boundaries then it must be dealt with on a global level and coordinated policies. Yale University in cooperation with Columbia University have developed a rather sophisticated Sustainability Index based on 76 variables and 21 indicators that shows a weak relationship between GDP and Sustainability Index of each of the 146 countries sin the study. For example, three of the top ten most sustainable countries are not OECD member (Uruguay, Guyana and Argentina). Other rankings that are of interest: Japan is the 30th while the US is the 45th and the UK is the 65th.

Peak Oil

Energy is best defined as the “capacity to do work”; there cannot be life without it. That is simply what is meant by saying that life on planet earth will come to an end when the sun becomes so hot in a billion years or so that water on earth would evaporate and life on its surface will become impossible. Meanwhile the energy flows from the sun to the plants that sustain herbivores that in turn are eaten by carnivores and then at the top of this food pyramid the omnivores. This was the case for 100’s of millions of years. A most significant change started with the industrial revolution and it is still going on unabated, the use of machines powered by various forms of terrestrial energy. All machines are in essence dependent on coal, oil or electricity which is produced in most cases from fossil fuels.

The global economy consumes about 500 Quadrillion BTU’s each year and this level of consumption is projected to rise at about 1.4% every year for the next 20 years. Over 86% of all this energy comes from the three major fossil fuels of oil, coal and natural gas. All other forms combined (nuclear, hydro, biomass and all other renewable) account for less than 14% of energy consumption.

Oil supplies the largest proportion of energy in our industrial society and its role is looked upon as being the most crucial for civilization, so much so that a few are already predicting collapse of society as we know it when oil becomes scarce. Peak oil is the term used to describe what some of the best known geologists argue is inevitable. Peak is the point in time when the world would have used half of all the available oil reserves in the world. Whether we have passed the peak as of 2008 or whether we are to pass it in the next couple of years or even decade is not materially important. What is significant is that many, but not all, geologists, energy traders, oil company executives, academicians, environmentalists and common citizens have adopted the new paradigm of peak oil.

Even if we are to leave the issue of climate change aside for the purposes of this post yet it is clear that peak oil is a game changer. The world oil production is about 86-87 million barrels a day and the prestigious and mainstream IEA, International Energy Agency, projects the need for over 110 million barrels each day by 2030. If the world is already at peak then where is the additional oil going to come from? A quick survey of plans by the major oil companies of the world shows clearly that we are digging deeper and in more difficult terrain than we ever did simply because the low hanging fruits have already been picked, so to speak.

There are at least two important implications associated with peak oil. (1) The less the availability of conventional oil then the greater is the incentive to exploit the non conventional oil reserves like Venezuela’s heavy oil, Canada’s tar sands and eventually Colorado’s shale. Each of the above produces oil but at a much greater cost. (2) As conventional oil becomes less abundant; we have already lifted half of all the oil reserves; then again the energy return on investment ; EROI; will decrease and continue decreasing to the point whereby it would require more energy to lift a barrel than the energy embodied in that barrel.

The implications of the above two facts that result from peak oil are very clear. As the world demand for energy increases and the supplies cannot keep pace the resulting imbalances will play havoc with the price of oil. We have already witnessed what a slight shortage could do in 2008 when the price per barrel rose parabolic ally to over $140. Under the scenario of peak oil towards the end of this decade that previous price will be appreciably overshot. There are some who project a price of over $300 per barrel given the tight market conditions predicted by peak oilers.

Arab countries can very easily be producing about 30 million barrels of oil each day by 2020 if Iraq is to achieve its planned goal of 8 million barrels per day. Furthermore it would be easy to project exports of about 22 million barrels each day. If the above scenario is to play out and if the resulting economic crisis does not lead to the use of military force then the Arab oil exporters can expect an annual cash flow of over $1 Trillion. Could peak oil, a major challenge for most of the world be exceptionally beneficial to the Arab countries? And if so are they ready to absorb such flows of funds in order not to clog the international flow of funds.

Earth Day 2010

Forty years ago Earth Day was born and it validated what is perhaps the most promising social movement of the last century and arguably at least the last two centuries. Earth Day did not give rise to environmentalism as an idea but it sure helped spread the awareness and the concern that the nascent field of ecologism had fostered.

A popular movement, especially one whose concern is not limited by geography, ethnicity or religious belief does not just happen. It evolves as a result of deteriorating conditions in the status quo and it attempts to deliver a synthesis, if you will, of the conflicts that had arisen. In this case humans had been exploiting nature, abusing the natural endowment that is so critical for their survival as well as the survival of other species both in the plant and animal kingdoms. Human hubris had dictated to us, at least in the West, that we were created in the image of God, who gave us dominion over all other things on earth. These religious beliefs had become so well established that they contributed towards the creation of science, capitalism, colonialism and ecological degradation on a massive scale. Senator Nelson, the main organizer behind the first Earth Day celebration was merely attempting to provide a forum for individuals to express their concern about the direction in which the world was evolving and thus to empower people to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that has already been challenged by Rachel Carson, Murray Bookchin, Arne Naess and others.

The world was very receptive to the idea that something radical needs to be adopted in order to meet the existential challenge that was facing all of us. Major environmental thinkers, like the ones already mentioned, to their credit saw the challenge not only in terms of open spaces, green grass, fresh water and clean air. They spoke of the need to create a just social order, a society that respects the individual rights but that is guided by the common good as well as global justice. They aimed for a world that is free of gender, religious, racial, ethnic or sexual exploitation; a non hierarchical structure. They argued and rather convincingly that we can never free nature unless we free ourselves of all the prejudices that dominate our relationships with each other.

Forty years ago a serious social movement became well established and even entrenched to save the world, to save us from ourselves and many of us responded with enthusiasm and energy. But only to be disappointed. The vision has been shattered and the accomplishments have been few.

What happened? What went wrong? The simple answer is that we have allowed the establishment, the one we were determined to fight, the order that we were supposed to challenge to co-opt us. Capitalism which was the nemesis of a healthy environment metamorphed into “green capitalism” the saviour , Incentive Based policies were adopted to restore health to an eco system devastated by the markets very own failures, affluence and affluenza are being promoted as a silver bullet for all what ails us despite the fact that over consumption is one of our seminal afflictions, complexity is still being promoted as a tool to become sustainable when the evidence is exactly the opposite and we persist in our belief that all of this was created for us, for the pleasure of the human species.

So far we have failed to address the issue of human population growth, we have made no progress in cleaning the polluted water that we have, climate change has reached a tipping point , grain stocks are the lowest they have been, conventional and non conventional energy are rapidly facing lower EROI; energy return on investment, the world is full and we are way above carrying capacity but what is most painful is that we have thus far allowed a revolution, a paradigm shift, to slip away from us for the simple fact that our concern is not genuine enough otherwise why would we have agreed to be sold for thirty of silver?

Earth Day