Do We Have Only A Food Scandal, Or Is It More Than Simply That?

In the UK we are, as I write this, going through a food scandal.   It has been found that many ready meals sold in Europe and the UK labelled as beef contained horse meat, in some cases, 100% horse meat.

To be totally honest I am not at all surprised.   When it is possible to buy a ready meal for the same price as a cabbage then there must surely be something amiss somewhere.   What this does show though is just how detached the vast majority of our modern (i.e. Western) civilisation has become from the environment that it actually depends on for its very existence.

We in the West don’t need to know where our food came from, where or who made our clothes, or who was it that picked those tomatoes in Senegal that are on our supermarket shelves, or if those Jordan River dates were grown on seized land or not.   We can ignore everything about food, our homes, our clothes, or our transport as long as we have the money to pay for it.   Most do just that of course, simply ignore what is in front of them by the use of their wallet or purse, but there is always a price to be paid sooner or later by this ignorance, deliberate or not.

The last 60 or so years have seen the depletion of Earth’s resources on a massive scale.   Fossil fuel is diminishing and the world has passed Peak Oil.   The climate is warming causing instability in the world’s weather with “every 100 years” floods, droughts and tornado’s now being regular, often year-on-year events as ecosystems fail.   Deliberate blindness and amnesia does not make a problem, any problem go away.   The fact is that, cheap (horse) meat or not, our present lifestyle is not one that can be afforded.

What is ignored is the fact that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, or what is usually termed as the world’s ‘natural resources’.   

The Western Culture takes in its stride the exploitation and abuse of people in other countries, whatever their age, that lack safe working conditions, honest working hours, a proper roof over their head, running water, and decent food.   Everything is reduced to the bottom line, to a financial or political advantage.  

The total and utter obscenity is that hungry people in arid lands work for a pittance so we can eat cheap food that exports with it their water. (1)  and (1a)  

That badly clothed and badly treated people work so we can wear good clothes. (2)

  

That people that try to protect the oppressed whose lands are being ‘acquired’ by governments and businesses are victims of death squads. (3)

Our modern Western food systems tell of abundance.   Groaning supermarket shelves surely can’t lie... or can they?   Actually they can, and do.   We have manufactured over the last sixty or so years an illusion that cannot be sustained for much longer.

There are droughts in the grain areas of the US (4)

There are droughts in the grain areas of Russia (5)

There are droughts in Australia (6)

There is a seemingly unnoticed farming crisis in the UK (7)

While the above takes place the message is that ‘we’ need to double food production by 2050 to feed a growing population, while even now we waste enough food to do just that.   What has been created is simply a mirage.   A mirage looks real from a distance but as the inevitable happens, time passes and one gets closer to it, it fades.   What is needed is to recognise the mirage of seeming abundance of cheap food while the chance to do so is still available to us.

(1) http://www.wfp.org/stories/sahel-crisis-by-country

(1a) http://www.compagniefruitiere.fr/en/nosproduits/tomatecerise.php

(2) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2188085/Indian-sweat-shop-boys-13-sold-11-month-rescued-forced-cover-murder-11-year-old-beaten-death-young-worker.html#axzz2KdARrHGf

(3) http://www.christianaid.org.uk/statement-about-cicero-guedes.aspx

(4) http://news.yahoo.com/u-drought-expands-top-wheat-growing-state-kansas-170953804.html

(5) http://www.sott.net/article/253663-Russian-drought-means-every-breadbasket-region-on-Earth-has-been-hit-with-crop-failure-in-2012-wheat-prices-set-to-soar

(6) http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/01/heatwaves,-droughts-and-wildfires-in-australia-what%E2%80%99s-the-link-to-climate-change

(7) http://www.ukagriculture.com/farming_today/farming_crisis.cfm

May I wish everyone a happy Christmas season, and a healthy and very peaceful new year.

SO; WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR CHRISTMAS?

I have been lucky in my ministry in becoming involved with people that have been on the edge of society, the suicidal, the depressed, the addicts, the abused, and the victims of society’s deliberate blindness. 

The sad fact is that disaster can overtake anyone from any strata of society. I and my colleagues have worked to help concert pianists, builders, doctors, gardeners, engineers, those that left school unable to read or write and those that had university degrees. It made me realise just how fortunate I am, and just how close are the disasters that can overtake any one of us.

I will freely admit that there have been times when I, like my colleagues, have most certainly put my personal safety in great danger and when I have made myself more than vulnerable, but unless this is accepted, then it is not possible to reach out to those that need help most.

I work with those that have given up much, far more than I, in order to also help those I have mentioned. These are people that have left the security of their everyday lives in order to help those that have lost everything. It has been, and still is, a humbling experience to stand alongside those that could so easily be very wealthy in the eyes and standards of the world and yet these heroes have, as I have, endured the sarcasm and derision of some for not just the thought of helping others, but who for any act of kindness is seen as pathetically stupid. Yet the people that I work with have made the commitment to devote their lives in order to help those far less fortunate than they are.

When you live alongside those that need help, it is obvious that there is an unbridgeable difference between want and need. Those that I and my colleagues reached out to needed help of many differing kinds. Protection from physical violence and sexual and mental abuse, a safe house, medical assistance, shelter from the elements, a hot meal, financial advice, these needs seemed never ending, but more than anything else, they needed someone that cared enough for them, was prepared to listen to them and, after doing so, to offer them advice and help.

When a person’s uppermost thought is how best to commit suicide then there is nothing whatsoever in the world that they want, but much that they need.

“What do you want for Christmas?” This will be a question asked in millions of homes over the next weeks; perhaps the real question should be “what do you need for Christmas?” 

IT'S GLOBAL WARMING STUPID!

I don’t know where you live, but here, in the UK, we had the wettest summer for 30 years with flash floods in many areas. This followed the driest winters for years, near empty reservoirs and a hosepipe ban. There were record droughts across the grain belt in America, worldwide crop failures, worldwide floods, wild fires in Spain and the US, and record ice melt at the poles and Greenland. As I write this, in early November, it is pouring with rain and blowing a gale outside and our son has just phoned to tell us that there is a blizzard where they live in Dorset. I could go on but I am sure you get the picture.

Where we live the fields that surround us are so wet that any farmer taking a tractor out on them would, at the present rate, only be able to drive it back next April; any harvest that remains will rot in the fields and the UK has recently had an Environment Agency alert to be aware of flooding due to the saturated fields being unable to absorb more water. Time after time and month after month we are experiencing once in a century events. Floods, droughts, rainstorms, all coupled with rising sea levels, the changes in the Gulf Stream, (Atlantic Conveyor) the movements in the Jet Stream and the horror that the US has only just experienced with Hurricane Sandy.

Forget Star wars, let’s face the facts, the environment strikes back at our way of life.

There seems to be a mindset in the Western World that it is our God given right to consume, that the earth has no limits, that we can extract what we like, emit what we like, produce what we like, consume what we like and waste what we like. This mindset has been built by, and ruled by, and run in favour by many of the mega companies that have the financial power, and so the political power to rule in their favour. If you think that is an exaggeration then just remember the power that Rupert Murdoch and his News Organisation had over UK governments. What Murdoch said went, and it was only when his company finally stepped so far over the mark that the situation was blindingly obvious that the whole obscene operation came to light.  

We live in a society that is addicted to consumption. In the UK we are regaled by the main political parties about the need to increase our national growth via consumption, the desire is, we are told, to increase national prosperity, but how do you measure prosperity? Is it the need to have what we are told we need in order to have a happy and fulfilled life? If so, why are so many unhappy and unfulfilled?

I know from my own work that many are addicted to prescription drugs, let alone the illegal ones. From the local recycling facilities it is blindingly obvious that local alcohol consumption has rocketed, and yet we are told what we need to do is to grow the economy by consuming more. So what is needed to cure our financial ills is another dose of what caused our financial ills... Really... is that what will make us all happy?

The dream of our Western life has now hit the realities of the environment. The earth has limits. Society cannot continue to pollute the atmosphere, plunder the earth and go to war for ever dwindling resources of fossilised sunlight. We cannot continue to mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s future by ignoring these realities, as the American Indians knew, we did not inherit the world from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children and grandchildren.

The sad fact is that this Global Warming (Climate Chaos) environmental disaster has been forecast for many years and yet the population in general seems to be of the opinion that this is but a recent discovery.

 In 1965, US scientist Roger Revelle forecasted that by the year 2000 there would be 25% more CO2 in the atmosphere and that this could lead to a modification of atmospheric heat balances and marked changes in climate. Revelle also forecast rising sea levels and melting polar ice. US economist William Nordhaus also wrote at this time about ‘the imponderable side effects on society – coastlines and agriculture, on life in high latitudes, on human health and simply the unforeseen’ if CO2 pollution was unchecked.

So, why was this knowledge not acted upon when there was time?

Much in the same way as the tobacco industry used doubt to counter the claims of doctors and scientists (“our weapon is doubt” was said in a leaked memo) the energy and political lobby groups also used doubt and the views and opinions of ‘doctors’ and ‘scientists’ to do the same. The problems were, so the merchants of doubt informed us, “due to sunspots, volcanic activity, were normal climatic events etc, etc”. Meanwhile the future grew ever closer.

In the UK an ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, has said that there is no such thing as Global Warming. In the US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has laughed at Obama’s climate concerns, meanwhile Stephen Hawking, the greatest brain that has ever existed, said that after a nuclear war, the biggest threat to the human race was Global Warming; I know who I would put my money on!

The fact is that the environmental future for our grandson of but a few months will be very different from the environmental life I have been lucky to enjoy, and my hope is that in the future years, when I am probably just an image in a photo, he will read this, because this entire post is for him.

You will wonder H, as will others, why no one did anything about the environmental situation you are now experiencing. The sad fact is that many tried their hardest, but were ignored, decried and laughed at until it was too late to halt it. I would just like you to know that I was one of those that tried their hardest and were ignored, decried and laughed at. I have tried to live as low an impact carbon neutral life as possible.

So when your fellows ask about the environmental situation “Why didn't someone try to do something about it” your answer is quite simple, “someone tried”.   

Granddad

XX

THE POWER OF WE

A big difficulty is that when people are faced with what seems to be an insurmountable problem, the reaction is "But what can WE do about it?" The fact is though that WE can actually do a lot!

Please read my previous post and then sign the Oxfam Petition attached below, then WE can really make a difference to those who lives have been blighted; thank you.


http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/find-an-action/land-freeze?intcmp=hp_87_hych2_landgrabs_2012-10-15

THE REAL COST OF BIO-FUELS "You've got two minutes to get your things and get out. Stop crying. There's nothing you can do. Say goodbye to your home. It's gone."

As banks and private investors scramble to buy land in the developing world, stories of poor farmers and communities driven from their homes, often at the barrel of a gun, left destitute and unable to feed their families have become all too familiar. We would not accept this happening in the developed world, and so should not accept it in the developing world and yet he global land rush is causing vulnerable people to lose their homes and livelihoods in the Third World

The scramble for land is vast and happening across the developing world. In poor countries, foreign investors have been buying an area of land twice the size of Mexico City every five days. In Liberia more than 30 per cent of land has been handed out in large-scale concessions in the past five years, often with disastrous results for local people. Alfred Brownell, community spokesperson in Liberia, says, "You don't need guns to kill people. When you take food from a village by destroying farm lands and cash crops, you are starving its people. These things must stop. Our people deserve the right to survive. They shouldn't be denied their land."

“Europe has helped spark a global rush for [land for] biofuels that is forcing poor families from their homes, while big business piles up the profits. Biofuels were meant to make transport greener, but European governments are pouring consumers' money down the drain, whilst depriving millions of people of food, land and water,” said Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam’s EU Office.

Land used to power European cars with biofuels for one year could produce enough wheat and maize to feed 127 million people, this with the world’s poorest at greater risk of hunger as a result of spiralling food prices.

In Europe, EU biofuel mandates could cost every adult about €30 each year by 2020. In 2008, about €3 billion were spent in tax exemptions and other incentives for biofuel production in the EU, comparable to the value of cuts agreed under the controversial Greek bail-out deal in February. Current EU law requires 10% of transport energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, with almost all of it expected to come from biofuels made from food crops.

 Corn and soy prices reached record highs this summer, hitting poor people hardest as they can spend up to 75% of their income on food. By 2020, EU biofuel mandates alone could push up the price of some foods by as much as 36%. This would affect us all but would have a particularly severe impact on poor people who are already struggling to afford the food they need to survive.

Since 80% of EU biofuels is biodiesel, made mostly from rapeseed, soy and palm oil, EU mandates have a particular impact on the global price of vegetable oil and oilseeds. This drives up the retail price of cooking oil in importing countries such as Haiti and exporting countries such as Indonesia. The latter is one of the EU’s main sources of bio diesel  By 2020, Europe could require a fifth of all the vegetable oil produced globally to meet its demand for fuel. When this happens the world’s poorest will be the ones to suffer, for proof, just watch this Oxfam video; this is happening now, as the rich countries feed their cars by taking the food from the mouths of those in the world's poorest countries.

Prov. 14:31 Anyone who oppresses the poor is insulting God who made them. To help the poor is to honour God.

So, does being ‘Green’ or ‘Christian’ have anything whatsoever to do with the economy?

Let's face facts, being ‘Green’ has nothing to do with lambs bouncing in a field, a combine cutting corn under a sunny sky or wearing wellingtons as one walks in dew soaked pastures.

Being ‘Green’ i.e. being sustainable, living today without losing sight of those as yet born is quite simply fundamental Christian belief and Christian economics.

We are totally addicted to growth, which is why the western World is in the state it is. Borrowing is seen by all major political parties as a necessity, a good thing, and yes we do need some form of economic stimulation and yet countless billions of pounds, dollars and euros have been printed or electronically created, via the quaintly named ‘quantitative easing', in order to stimulate growth in the West.

It has failed.

Constant growth is simply impossible. If you have a calculator handy start with 100 and add 5%, and continue doing this, this will represent the 5% year-on-year growth that economists are telling us is needed. By the 15^th year the figure is 207.89%.

There is no way that within 15 years we will be producing more than twice the number of cars, building twice the number of houses and twice the number of runways and growing twice the amount of food to be sold by twice the number of supermarkets.

Those that have, like me, been privileged to live and work in a farming community know one thing for certain; there are limits. The world’s economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment; our world’s economy is limited to what can be produced from our planet.

Christian principles should be focused upon the unavoidable fact that total addictions are wrong, and yet the Western World is addicted to growth. The attempts to outgrow the limits of our planet are now ever obvious, climate change and the disaster with the world’s weather while frantically drilling for oil at the poles as the ice melts. Feeding a seemingly ever growing population while droughts and floods and famines increase. The evidence of the ever larger land raise waste sites, or as most people think of them ‘away’, and so it goes on, and yet most imagine that recycling the odd bottle or sheet of cardboard is all that is needed in order to keep the status quo.

They are wrong; the unavoidable fact is that for the sake of those just born or as yet to be born, there is such a thing as enough.

PROOF THAT GLOBAL WARMING CONTINUES ITS ADVANCE.

You might be amazed at some of the comments people have made about me and my views about Global warming, or, as I prefer to call it 'Climate Chaos'.

It seems that I am an 'Obama loving communist' who should 'go back to Russia'. I pointed out that it is actually impossible to go back to somewhere where one has never been and that I was actually in the UK. I am also, apparently, someone who is a 'bleeding hearted tree hugging anti-capitalist who takes full advantage of all that capitalism has to offer'. Yeah right...

Well over 20 years ago it was pointed out by climate scientists that the increase in global temperature would mean that the moisture in the air due to evaporation would become far greater, and this would lead to increased storms of far greater intensity. Scientists also said that the increase in global temperature would be far greater at the poles and that the melting of the ice caps would mean that the Gulf Stream / Atlantic Conveyor which relies on sea water salinity would become diluted by the fresh water from the melting ice. This, they said, would cause not only a lowering in temperature of that which keeps Europe's coastal areas warm, (Edinburgh is on the same line of latitude as Moscow and Madrid on the same line of latitude as New York) but also cause the Jet Stream to wobble and move.

So, HERE are some of the recent weather problems the US has.

And HERE are some of the recent problems the UK has regarding the Jet Stream.

HERE are some of the weather problems Taiwan has.

And HERE are the weather problems India has.

I could so easily go on... but you get the picture I am sure.

So then; the scientists were right, the proof is now with us... sadly....