Say what?!
Friends, it's another game of Connect the Dots. If you've noticed your food prices have climbed over 3% recently, you may have wondered why. The price of gas was obvious, all things considered. But goodness, what does anthropocentric Global Warming (aGW from here on) have to do with it? And the War on Drugs (WoD)?
Follow this yellow brick road.
Food crops are for eating, or used to be, whether for human consumption or to feed livestock. Some of that has changed, all due to the spectre of aGW. If one 'state of fear' wasn't enough for you, now in addition to Islamofascists under the bed, you have to contemplate where to buy the next great beachfront property or underground bunker to escape the heat.
Mexican farmers used to grow food crops, but we'll get to that later. Now, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the 'fix' for aGW is corn. Corn for ethanol. Therefore, less food for cows, pigs, chickens -- and people. Less corn export to third world countries, less export dollars. Less humanitarian aid. And this is without even taking into the account of theoretical CO2 savings in the process. If anyone's really looked at that, I have found no data.
What I do know is that I live down the road from the largest sugarcane mill in the Southern Hemisphere. The three stacks there put out a lot of smoke. At least they have scurbbers so the smoke is lovely and white. Most of the time. But obviously it takes a lot of heat to refine the raw cane into sugar. And that uses fuel. We do have something of an ethanol industry in Queensland. But I'm still wondering about the cost-effectiveness ratio. And keep remembering the axiom: Every problem has a solution; every solution creates a problem.
Meanwhile, those poor Mexican farmers, the ones still left down there that haven't crossed the border: they're raising cannabis hemp for the U.S. market. Oh my, mary-ju-wanna! Thirty-some years of a war on a non-existent country and billions of dollars wasted and we haven't conquered it. Not even close.
Maybe it would surprise you, but once upon a time in America, in the 1930s, a billion dollar cannabis sativa industry was mooted. Not for drugs, for legitimate use. Hemp paper is acid free.
Traditionally, products made from industrial hemp fibre included rope and cordage, sailcloth, carpet base, canvas, and clothing: the original Levis were made from hemp denim) ... modern industrial hemp products include reinforcing fibre for paper, fibre-reinforced plastics, polycomposites, fibreboards, geotextiles, textile fabrics both clothing and industrial, animal bedding, kitty litter, absorbent products, and insulation. Oil and seed products are: animal stockfeed, soap, oil, paint, varnish, cosmetics. In some countries, seed and oil from hemp plants are used in food products.
But no, the wowsers played the propaganda game, in text and film and in 1937, marijuana was made illegal and the industry died for a time.
Of course, the hidden hand at the helm on this manuever was William Randolph Hearst, the same who brought American that "splendid little war" based on a false-flag lie, that the Cuban insurgents in 1898 blew up the battleship Maine in Havana harbor.
Why was Hearst against hemp? Not for social reasons, to be sure. No, he had large investments in paper mills based on dead trees. Never mind that woodpulp is highly acid, got to protect those projected dollars in profit. So, sure, kill any competition.
Now, also in 1937, DuPont was just developing synthetics made from ... oil. "Better living through chemistry." Nylon, plastics, etc.
You may have noticed the more trees you cut down, the more carbon sinks you destroy. I've only seen bits and pieces of the IPCC report on climate change, so I don't know if there was any analysis of what effect clearfelling of rainforest had over the past decade or so.
America's prison population has risen in 30 years from 240,000 prisoners to over 2 million. Maybe slightly less since the army discovered 'waivers for enlistment'. Whatever the true total, your tax dollars pay for imprisonment and upkeep of maybe 40%, mostly repeat 'criminals' who persisted in smoking funny cigarettes. Since one study indicated 49% of Americans had at least puffed on one marijuana cigarette (even if they didn't inhale) it seems hypocritical and impractical to continue this expense.
Furthermore, privatization of the prison industry proceeds apace. Benefitting some of the same contractors who are wasting millions if not billions of dollars on Inaq reconstruction projects that fall apart with six months, if they are even ever completed.
The point of this digression is that the solution to 'problems' is a very inefficient use of tax dollars. And let's face it, if you were a DEA professional -- or a politician or police chief on the take -- would you ever want the WoD to end?!
Last year's wasted tax revenue on prosecuting marijuana users was seven billion dollars. Oh, but it IS an illegal drug, some would say. So what? In the vast majority of cases, it's a violation of law in a victimless crime. Meanwhile, 24 thousand deaths per annum due to drunk drivers; now, a legal drug AND a significant number of victims, does any of this seem rational?
Mexico's Calderon is fighting the uphill battle against drug cartels, even bringing in the army to quell domestic violence. This has only compounded the problem as the druggies can offer better pay and fringe benefits to special forces former soldiers, who have deserted in droves. This is the Free Market on steroids!
Remember, too, the WoD began with a racist component. Marijuana was demonised as the drug of choice for Mexicans, blacks ... and jazz musicians. Opium was anathema because of 'the yellow peril'. So under the bed is getting pretty crowded ...
Anyway, this is another war draining your tax dollars for no perceivable benefit to society anywhere.
Now, on the subject of aGW, and Climate Change, you can bet that you will be paying for that consensus of Political Correctness in multiple ways. Even when the 'fixes' have unintended consequences. Some of the suggestions make one wonder what the mad scientists are smokin' ...
Like the notion of bombarding the upper atmosphere [somehow] with SO2. Well, golly gosh, didn't the Pinatubo eruption in June 1991 do that naturally? And yes, the result was allegedly a one degree drop in global temperature for a year. But! (it's been too many decades since my high school chemistry class) doesn't this also create an acid rain problem?
Then there's the approach of enhancing natural processes for increasing carbon sequesteration. Even oil companies are keen on the idea of binding CO2 and dumping it in deep shafts well away from the atmosphere. Or the experiments with dumping iron oxide into the oceans, this has been done more than once, 50,000 lb. of red dust to feed the phytoplankton. And yes,within two days, a ginormous green patch in the Pacific, those phytos gorged themselves, snagging a lot of that narsty carbon too. They died, and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Problem solved.
Or was it? Not long after that, I saw one news story of a noxious algae infestation off the California coast. Alas, that report came and went within a day and even Google had no comment on the matter.
Now, I grew up in the state of Florida. I remember the 'red tides' of the 1950s. These were phytoplankton blooms and yes, may well have swallowed lots of carbon. They also produced a neurotoxin thayt marine life could absorb in copious quantites -- and not very pleasant eating for humankind.
Close enough to the shoreline, the red tide airborne pollution can affect those with asthma and other medical problems.
Even if a red tide is not the result of the Planktos approach, or some other company hoping to cash in on this new growth industry, there is one other problem with 'safe' phytoplankton: allegedly, free oxygen in the water of the test is significantly diminished. Resulting in a zone devoid of marine life ...
So, is the answer, do nothing? Not necessarily, it just seems wise to apply the precautionary principle even TO the precautionary principle!
In any case, there are plenty of environmental concerns to attend to. Clean water in this century will not be only a problem in Third World countries. Putting all your eggs in the aGW basket will be a bad investment if the consensus cause-and-effect turns out to be overstated.