alanjjohnstone
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I think this bit of news might be of interest for the ale-swilling members of the Party
The cost of beer could soar due to the effects of global warming. The price of a six-pack of beer could go up by an extra £15 in some parts of the world.
It is likely to lead to a sharp fall in worldwide crop yields of barley – an essential ingredient.
Scientists predict droughts and heatwaves could cause barley declines of up to 17 per cent in parts of Europe, Australia, Asia and the US where the grain is grown most.
Dabo Guan, professor of climate change economics at UEA’s School of International Development, said climate change may undermine the availability of “luxury” goods like beer more than staple foods.
“Although some attention has been paid to the potential impacts of climate change on luxury crops such as wine and coffee, the impacts on beer have not been carefully evaluated,” said Professor Guan.
Another new report to consider.
We Can Feed the World and Halve Emissions—but There’s a Catch
The report says the 10 billion people expected to be living by 2050 could enjoy sustainable food supplies – while emissions of the greenhouse gases that are warming the Earth fall by more than 50%. But what was required was a drastic switch away from meat and dairy products, developed countries cutting their consumption of beef by 90% and eating five times more beans and pulses than they do today to stave off hunger.
They found that climate change can be checked enough only if diets change to include more plant-based food and reductions in meat and dairy products. Adopting more of these plant-based “flexitarian” diets globally could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than half and cut fertiliser application and the use of cropland and freshwater by between a tenth and a quarter.
But dietary changes alone will not be enough, the researchers say. They argue that improved agricultural management and technology will be essential too. Increasing yields from existing cropland, balancing fertiliser application and recycling and improving water management could, with other changes, reduce those impacts by around half.
By one calculation, a third of the world’s arable land has been lost to erosion or pollution over the last 40 years. Restoring lost soil quality helps to increase harvests and slow warming.
The report says the world will have to halve wasted food to keep within environmental limits. If that happened worldwide, it would reduce environmental impacts by up to 16%.
I think we all understand what is meant by climate change denialism but perhaps some of us suffer from another sort of denialism – a refusal to acknowledge just how serious an issue global warming is.
I stand to be corrected on the facts and welcome correction
The scientific opinion suggests that society has little over a decade to take effective action before the shit really hits the fan. Already we can see the first signs of extreme weather events but we are told that if action is not taken to reduce carbon emissions we will reach the stage where we will no longer be able to contain and cope with the effects.
As i said in my other post an optimist could say we might lessen the effects within the limited time-scale scientists give us – a very narrow window of opportunity – before we reach the stage where it will become runaway climate change, beyond remedy.
A very very very optimistic person might even say we will have socialism in that time, but i have still to meet a socialist who thinks it will be achieved in his or her life-time much less in the next couple of decades.
I am pinning my hopes on that i am mistaken and expecting that people very quickly learn what is needed to avert the collapse of civilisation and how it can be accomplished politically.
Can capitalism fix the climate? No. Can socialism fix the problem? Yes. But will we have the time available to bring about socialism before it is too late and the crisis has grown irreversible?
Am i looking at it all pessimistically or accepting the experts’ findings that we have to depend on capitalism changing its economic laws and as socialists, we say it cannot.
“…not just the labour that went to produce the materials used at the last stage but the labour that went into producing those materials and then the labour that went into producing the materials those materials used, and so on….”
Socially necessary labour time as Marx puts it.
And is it one of the reasons why labour time vouchers should be rejected? Far too complicated for an empirical calculation of value added such as suggested by Parecon, even with computers.
Why do some Marxist economists insist on making things hard to understand. Rather than talking to us simple souls of how the world works. They want to gain academic Brownie points tryng to convince bourgeois economist. Even the video’s diagrams were not easy to understand
1×1
That one is easy…my question entailed me not only using my fingers but also taking my shoes and socks off to do the sum.When i was young, rabbit was the poor-man’s chicken until the introduction of myxomatosis and chicken was, for my family, the one-time a year Xmas dinner as we kids squabbled for the wish-bone.
How diets have indeed changed.
Dave, you should appreciate your good fortune but realise that most of us are not in the same circumstances.
Let’ broaden this exchange to give a bit of perspective.
” We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance…We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial.” Sylvia Pankhurst. We endorse her view and decline to associate the party with any abstinence or puritanical spartanism. (global corporations may disappear but micro-breweries will remain)
If my reading is correct the latest update from the IPCC, an august but relatively conservative body, we can mitigate (not reverse, mind you) the effects of climate change by keeping global warming below 1.5% but to do so requires governments to implement regulatory legislation , elimination of waste and industries including the food industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It needs political will from capitalist governments.
There may be optimists who believe that such measure will succeed and that when socialism is eventually established, we will inherit a healthier planet. The Party, however, has produced an effective case why we should not expect such a positive result.
Pessimists like myself view the future as one where if socialism arrives it will because the world is such a shithole that people finally seek a social revolution in a final act of desperation.
As Luxemburg said “socialism or barbarism” but as another added “and that is if we are lucky”.
We have to remember that although our ultimate aim is a steady state society of zero growth, we acknowledge that in its early years socialism will require to devote much of our resources to improving the conditions of the majority of people in the world, for example, building decent housing and infrastructure. That means a rise of production so to tackle and reduce the effects of climate change there has to be a trade-off of sorts.
We can either continue devoting the same level of energy and resources to the developed world as the optimists expect to happen and still increase the energy and resources to the developing and undeveloped regions and thus produce worsening climate change effects that may well be exceeding tipping points.
Or we have a strategy of re-aligning our allocation of energy and resources so that the rapid upgrading of the poor and vulnerable is quickly resolved and then we can reach our economic system of “simple reproduction”.
Can we expect a future socialist society not to initiate changes in consumption, commencing with what we eat? Maybe the optimists believe that the disappearance of the armament industry will suffice? Perhaps the ending of all the auxiliary businesses to the buying and selling will be enough. I don’t know for sure. Nobody does until it is studied and researched but we should be honest and not exclude the possibility that we will have to adapt our everyday lives and adopt a change of diet.
There are now cases of forced adoptions of children that have been separated.
The Threat of International Adoption for Migrant Children Separated From Their Families
Phew….i always say soon as algebraic formulae are introduced my mind goes to a blur. This is no exception
“…the article is theoretical, and it requires knowledge of linear algebra and production theory. However, the underlying ideas are easy to understand. I created a video that I hope delivers the main insights in a more visual form…”
Nope, it is just as mind-numbing
I wish i can have a translation in very simple terms.
Self-determination, as you appear to be using it, is a bit of mistaken interpretation, imho
Socially-determined is perhaps the better word because it will be society and communities which will decide what will be available. This is not an issue of deciding the quantity that an individual might wish to avail themselves of when we say self-determination, but of what will actually be on the menu, so to speak, and that is a collective, not an individual decision. But you are fully aware of that when you added the caveat “within the democratic wishes of society.”
The discussion is centred on the current scientific consensus that to effectively counter global warming – and we will still have to even when socialism is established – our farming methods will require adjusting and that will affect our current eating habits. Just as our approaches to energy will have to re-align. ( I have always enjoyed sitting in front a roaring coal-fire but alas that pleasure has disappeared but I stopped grumbling about a long time ago.)
Will this require some sort of allocation or “rationing” system for the consumption of various choices of meats and types of fishes that are too demanding on resources and eco-systems? Perhaps so. Rather than insist that “business as usual” can continue, i prefer to leave the question open for future socialist generation to answer and not exclude the possibility of the many life-style changes which may be incumbent upon us.
If anyone is interested i once had an exchange with national anarchists some years back on my personal blog.
Do we get a guarantee and warranty that we will not suffer something similar in the future and that they have indeed offered full protection and, in your words, sanitised our website, Neil? Or does their contract have a “get-out” clause
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45820640
Merely a correction of a bull market ….. or the beginnings of the crash?
Bill Gates at one time suggested chicken is the panacea for poverty
But would socialists keep pigs penned up in industrial factory farms?
We still have an issue with pig-shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_pig_farming
But i note that the side-benefit of pig rearing is fertiliser — something the organic folk might appreciate and a source of energy as bio-gas — and as been mentioned – waste disposal for ourselves, although i imagine that much of the food waste will be curtailed in a socialist society.
So we can suggest that there will definitely be a change in diets with socialism – to paraphrase Lenin – less but better
A defence of meat-eating
