From an article AP news article published April 13, 2008:
“Skyrocketing prices of rice, wheat, corn, cooking oil, milk and other foodstuffs come against a backdrop of a spreading global financial crisis, a US economy teetering on recession and currency market imbalances.
According to a World Bank report released last week, increases in global wheat prices reached 181 percent over the 36 months leading up to last February, and overall global food prices shot up 83 percent.
In recent months, rising food costs have lead to violent protests in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.
In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses.”
Several years ago, while working on the update to the City of Waterford's General Plan I speculated on the impacts of global warming and what our economic landscape would look like when gas prices approached $5.00 a gallon. Saturday, I paid $4 at a pump on Hwy. 140 in Mariposa County for premium (to feed my Corvette). It's mid-April here in Mariposa and after a promising early series of winter storms, it looks like 2008 will be listed as a Dry Year if not a Drought Year. Climate Change?
As I sit here this morning at this key-board, I feel a little frustrated at how simplistic my vision of the future was three years ago.
With the Global Warming issue, scientists refer to “accelerators” or “compounding influences” of climate change. i.e. when the ice caps melt, it reduces solar reflection and increases heat accumulation on the darkened surfaces of the earth. Thus, more heat is captured, more green-house gasses are relapsed in the melted perma-frost and the entire warming process is "accelerated."
In matters of policy, increases in fuel costs translate into a whole host of other increased costs associated with food production. To complicate things even further, we implement policy which encourages the conversion of food (corn) into fuel AND THEN, the price of fuel rises to make this food-to-fuel process more economically viable AND, AND THEN, food costs soar. Not exactly "cause and effect" but compounding is clearly operating here.
Over the past year, we have seen how mid-west hog farmers have had to deal with the increased costs of grain. We are just beginning to see a sharp rise in the price of beef, pork and chicken at the supermarket. Other sectors of the farming economy are on the rise as well as increased costs of fuel begin to be passed on to the consumers. Irrigation flows are being cut back with the Turlock Irrigation District and similar actions are being considered by other irrigation districts that rely on the winter snow melt of the Sierra.
And whatever happened to conservation practices and new investments in technology to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels? This is a far stretch from finding “alternative” sources of fossil fuel such as oil shale, coal, nuclear generators or “food-to-fuel” technology.
Public policy needs to have the same rigor applied to its design as we use in understanding natural system. We all know about primary and secondary impacts when applied within the context of environmental analysis. If we had applied this same level of rigor to the food-to-fuel policy, would we have moved in the same direction that we are now moving? What further consequences will we face with this federal policy direction? What will happen to the new facilities that we are approving around the country to convert corn to fuel if it is determined to be a step in the wrong direction and we decide to abandon the program?
There are many significant challenges facing us in the near term. In my home-town, Mariposa, people have not even thought about the new climate realities we face with respect to extreme dry-periods, potential for fire storms similar to those of Southern California last year, and significant changes in plant and animal life patterns. And what about the state of our “visitor” economy. Will people be willing to spend precious resources on gas; would a visit to the world famous Yosemite Valley still be the experience it is presently with its majestic waterfalls and bubbling creeks and the Merced River?
Looking to the future is a much more stressful exercise for Urban Planners these days; It has also become a more critical exercise so that we can provide needed information to our policy makers. We need to become more informed and lift our vision beyond the present “housing crises”.
“Skyrocketing prices of rice, wheat, corn, cooking oil, milk and other foodstuffs come against a backdrop of a spreading global financial crisis, a US economy teetering on recession and currency market imbalances.
According to a World Bank report released last week, increases in global wheat prices reached 181 percent over the 36 months leading up to last February, and overall global food prices shot up 83 percent.
In recent months, rising food costs have lead to violent protests in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.
In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses.”
Several years ago, while working on the update to the City of Waterford's General Plan I speculated on the impacts of global warming and what our economic landscape would look like when gas prices approached $5.00 a gallon. Saturday, I paid $4 at a pump on Hwy. 140 in Mariposa County for premium (to feed my Corvette). It's mid-April here in Mariposa and after a promising early series of winter storms, it looks like 2008 will be listed as a Dry Year if not a Drought Year. Climate Change?
As I sit here this morning at this key-board, I feel a little frustrated at how simplistic my vision of the future was three years ago.
With the Global Warming issue, scientists refer to “accelerators” or “compounding influences” of climate change. i.e. when the ice caps melt, it reduces solar reflection and increases heat accumulation on the darkened surfaces of the earth. Thus, more heat is captured, more green-house gasses are relapsed in the melted perma-frost and the entire warming process is "accelerated."
In matters of policy, increases in fuel costs translate into a whole host of other increased costs associated with food production. To complicate things even further, we implement policy which encourages the conversion of food (corn) into fuel AND THEN, the price of fuel rises to make this food-to-fuel process more economically viable AND, AND THEN, food costs soar. Not exactly "cause and effect" but compounding is clearly operating here.
Over the past year, we have seen how mid-west hog farmers have had to deal with the increased costs of grain. We are just beginning to see a sharp rise in the price of beef, pork and chicken at the supermarket. Other sectors of the farming economy are on the rise as well as increased costs of fuel begin to be passed on to the consumers. Irrigation flows are being cut back with the Turlock Irrigation District and similar actions are being considered by other irrigation districts that rely on the winter snow melt of the Sierra.
And whatever happened to conservation practices and new investments in technology to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels? This is a far stretch from finding “alternative” sources of fossil fuel such as oil shale, coal, nuclear generators or “food-to-fuel” technology.
Public policy needs to have the same rigor applied to its design as we use in understanding natural system. We all know about primary and secondary impacts when applied within the context of environmental analysis. If we had applied this same level of rigor to the food-to-fuel policy, would we have moved in the same direction that we are now moving? What further consequences will we face with this federal policy direction? What will happen to the new facilities that we are approving around the country to convert corn to fuel if it is determined to be a step in the wrong direction and we decide to abandon the program?
There are many significant challenges facing us in the near term. In my home-town, Mariposa, people have not even thought about the new climate realities we face with respect to extreme dry-periods, potential for fire storms similar to those of Southern California last year, and significant changes in plant and animal life patterns. And what about the state of our “visitor” economy. Will people be willing to spend precious resources on gas; would a visit to the world famous Yosemite Valley still be the experience it is presently with its majestic waterfalls and bubbling creeks and the Merced River?
Looking to the future is a much more stressful exercise for Urban Planners these days; It has also become a more critical exercise so that we can provide needed information to our policy makers. We need to become more informed and lift our vision beyond the present “housing crises”.
