Guardian: Global riot epidemic due to demise of cheap fossil fuels

[GliderGuider]

Global riot epidemic due to demise of cheap fossil fuels

The post-2008 crash era, including 2013 and early 2014, has seen a persistence and proliferation of civil unrest on a scale that has never been seen before in human history. This month alone has seen riots kick-off in Venezuela, Bosnia, Ukraine, Iceland, and Thailand.

Even before the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, analysts at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned of the danger of civil unrest due to escalating food prices. If the Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) food price index rises above 210, they warned, it could trigger riots across large areas of the world.

These local conditions are being exacerbated by global structural realities. Record high global food prices impinge on these local conditions and push them over the edge. But the food price hikes, in turn, are symptomatic of a range of overlapping problems. Global agriculture's excessive dependence on fossil fuel inputs means food prices are invariably linked to oil price spikes. Naturally, biofuels and food commodity speculation pushes prices up even further - elite financiers alone benefit from this while working people from middle to lower classes bear the brunt.

Of course, the elephant in the room is climate change. According to Japanese media, a leaked draft of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) second major report warned that while demand for food will rise by 14%, global crop production will drop by 2% per decade due to current levels of global warming, and wreak $1.45 trillion of economic damage by the end of the century. The scenario is based on a projected rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius.

The epidemic of global riots is symptomatic of global system failure - a civilisational form that has outlasted its usefulness. We need a new paradigm.

The chickens are coming home to roost. Climate breakdown, rising fuel and food prices, a dysfunctional global financial system, the desire of most people in the world to keep BAU running, and the desire of politicians to keep the people happy (and thus get re-elected) are all joining forces to rocket global techno-industrial civilization toward a full-on system breakdown. Buckle up!

[Bigmack]

1. Gosh.... I didn't see this in any US media.....nt

[kristopher]

2. This looks like a not-very-good exercise in reductionist thinking

The one common denominator of the era is a squeeze on the global economy by a conservative economic power structure.

Energy is just one arrow in their quiver.

[cprise]

3. Your bosses at RMI should start thinking about instability

and how it could halt renewables development.

While they're at it, getting a clue on subjects like overpopulation would be instrumental as well.

[kristopher]

4. My "bosses at RMI"?

I wish.

So you think that a think tank devoted to moving the world to renewable energy and energy efficiency is somehow vile because of overpopulation?

And you further think creating that weird connection and hurling an *accusation* that I work for them is somehow a refutation of my point about the poor thinking in the OP article.

Two points, first is my use of the word accusation. I know that is how you intended it, but I certainly wouldn't take it as a negative if I did work there; I'd be extremely proud of the fact and would almost certainly include it as part of my profile page. Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute are a first rate outfit that has done more for the effort to move away from fossil fuels than almost any comparable entity I know of.

Perhaps you could share with us the specific alternative policies and proposals that you endorse to move us away from fossil fuels while simultaneously addressing energy poverty in the developing world? That's the second point. I'm forced to ask *again* because all you ever deliver are increasing hard to understand blurts of rage that seem to be rooted in the idea that anyone who works on real world solutions to our real world problems is evil.

You might want a different world, I do too in many ways. But the difference between you and let's say "my ilk" to include all the science based policy professionals trying to address climate change, is that we are actually doing something to make things better.

'razzled' made this remark on another thread this morning and I think it is one of the best I've read in a long time. The topic is "politics" but it certainly applies to most of the 'critics' of the efforts to build a renewable energy system here on DUEE.

razzled Sat Mar 1, 2014, 10:35 AM
1. My take on this is ...

that some people's relationship to politics is purely oppositional. Half-measures or incremental progress is never seen as acceptable. Let's call it, to be nice, "perfectionism."

I understand this attitude. I had it myself in another context, but once I realized how unproductive it was I tried my hardest to abandon it. In graduate school I sort of made my name by picking apart the theoretical positions or analyses that others were producing in my field. It was successful to the extent that my professors and others were impressed with my ability to find the flaws in complex theories, etc. But I knew it was a total fake: all I knew how to do was criticize. I knew in my heart I could not creatively devise a theoretical position of my own. Or if I did, it would be just as flawed, if not more so, than those I was critiquing. It meant I was never going to do something important, and I eventually left the field.

Same in politics: we can nitpick and criticize all we want. But the people trying to make actual real policy that helps people--maybe not all people, but just a few, or as just a start that can be built upon--and who are trying to do it in the midst of a messy and contentious political environment in which one must compromise with one's enemies at times in order to move another thing forward: these are the real political success stories. Not the people who make proclamations that say all the "right" things in fundraising emails, and not the grandstanders who never are in the position of having to actually accomplish something.

There are real things to rail against and to fight for, but -- as you say -- there is also a need to give credit where credit is due. I admire the people who actually accomplish things in the political realm, no matter how imperfect these things may be. They are the creators, not the nitpickers.

So my take is: if you have nothing but oppositional critique to make in politics, you should get out of the game and concentrate on something else.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4584941

[cprise]

5. I didn't say they were 'vile'

And I'm not placing you into any dualistic good/evil frame (though I sometimes wonder about *your* own framing, with the way you react to some of the pro-renewables people).

When you veer off into the 'economics uber alles' shtick, however, its clear there is hubris associated with a vision of market-based renewal (or one that is as naive as yours).

You didn't so much make a point, because you offered nothing to back it up.

As for who gets credit for moving people off fossil fuels, I'll stick with entities that have borne the lion's share of successful research, thank you. NREL, Fraunhofer Institute, etc.

Anyway, I am constantly supporting stuff that you and others post on here. If you can't take even this much backtalk then there is something worryingly oppositional about YOU.

[kristopher]

6. When are you going to understand that "economics" isn't vile either?

Economics is nothing more or less than a toolkit for exploring the way people make decisions.

Are you really that freaked out by an organized process to study decision making just because some people abuse it? If so, you must have a fucking heart attack when someone mentions physics or chemistry.