[onlooker]

"It's two sides of the same tragedy-of-commons coin." Too much consumption by too many people.

What would be the required circumstances to choose not to send food aid to the Sub Sahara?

Okay since this pointed question is being asked. I say the requirement will be for all citizens of first world countries to immediately accept a powerdown to much lower standard of living. If we do that then maybe we can all without too much compunction make a decision on how much food aid to withhold. All theoretically speaking of course.

[Ibon]

"It's two sides of the same tragedy-of-commons coin." Too much consumption by too many people.

What would be the required circumstances to choose not to send food aid to the Sub Sahara?

Barely enough food to feed your own population.

When that happens then the price will go way up so one of the required circumstances would be for grains like corn to become so expensive that aid agencies with limited budgets can only export limited amounts. You have that corn graph Dohboi posted that 90% of the 12 billion bushels of corn produced in the US per year is used for animal feed and fuel and the rest for food most of which is processed.

Industrial agriculture has turned grains into commodities and we still have production levels that exceed demand by many factors when you think of the wasteful ways we consume these grains.

How much drought or crop failures due to temperature rise would be required to cut back severely current production levels?

[Ibon]

"It's two sides of the same tragedy-of-commons coin." Too much consumption by too many people.

What would be the required circumstances to choose not to send food aid to the Sub Sahara?

Okay since this pointed question is being asked. I say the requirement will be for all citizens of first world countries to immediately accept a powerdown to much lower standard of living. If we do that then maybe we can all without too much compunction make a decision on how much food aid to withhold. All theoretically speaking of course.

This is a moral plea Onlooker which is noble but not how the mechanics of our global economy functions. I am trying to identify here though at what point does the economic realities collide with the humanitarian imperative to send food aid. It has to do with production dropping severely as Lore mentioned. But when we look into it has to do with how we use these grains.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

Elsewhere you talked about making regions/states be self sufficient.

Why would that not apply here?

Think about it in terms of highways for a moment. Let's say some state said "We are not going to build anymore damn highways, learn to live with what you have." Would that not be a good thing? Would that not make the state start to look at limiting growth? Push the towards better management?

Then extrapolate to people. Learn to live within the carrying capacity of your land. If not then are we not just turning these areas into incubator states to over populate the rest of the world?

[Lore]

"It's two sides of the same tragedy-of-commons coin." Too much consumption by too many people.

What would be the required circumstances to choose not to send food aid to the Sub Sahara?

Barely enough food to feed your own population.

When that happens then the price will go way up so one of the required circumstances would be for grains like corn to become so expensive that aid agencies with limited budgets can only export limited amounts. You have that corn graph Dohboi posted that 90% of the 12 billion bushels of corn produced in the US per year is used for animal feed and fuel and the rest for food most of which is processed.

Industrial agriculture has turned grains into commodities and we still have production levels that exceed demand by many factors when you think of the wasteful ways we consume these grains.

How much drought or crop failures due to temperature rise would be required to cut back severely current production levels?

Yes, but all the other interests that make our economy go round have use for that corn, as limited as the supply may be. I doubt we will collapse market segments to feed other populations. Especially when there is no profit in it.

We are on the edge now in being able to feed the world's population and by mid century the planet will need to produce nearly 70% more to supply the calories required. Sub Sahara Africa alone will have to triple its production, which is highly unlikely.

World must sustainably produce 70 per cent more food by mid-century – UN report
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?N ... 0I-qpD3arU

[onlooker]

"Yes, but all the other interests that make our economy go round have use for that corn, as limited as the supply may be. I doubt we will collapse market segments to feed other populations. Especially when there is no profit in it. " And that is why you cannot simply remove moral considerations. Even now "Yet the World Health Organization estimates that more than 3 billion people are malnourished (deficient in intake of calories, protein, iron, iodine, and/or vitamins A, B, C, and D). This is the largest number and proportion of malnourished people ever reported." This is a economic and moral choice to not allow all those people to access a better diet simply because they do not have sufficient money. Well, Lore believes we will chose to maintain economic vitality over keeping people alive, that is a moral decision or should I say immoral. And Dohboi for all his dwelling on meat eating is correct to frame it morally. We can do without so much meat and thus feed more people. However, Newfie is also right that feeding more in the long run means more people ultimately dying in grim ways. So, morality cannot be totally removed or at least should not. Even the term lifeboat ethics implies that one can encounter moral conundrums.

[Newfie]

The ultimate morality is to sustain the species. That is because. Orality os a human construct and without humanity there is no morality.

So run that through the computer and come up with a decision tree that does the most to assure survival of the species.

Where does that lead?

[Ibon]

Ibon,

Elsewhere you talked about making regions/states be self sufficient.

Why would that not apply here?

Of course it applies here. I was not commenting on my opinion about what should done but rather looking from a detached place at the forces at play which will eventually force us to make the right move, as you say, giving priority to sustaining the species over some dubious moral position. Your and my opinion Newfie is not at this time represented in the mainstream.

[Ibon]

This moral dilemma is another reason I so often fall back to external human agency in the form of consequences resolving the issue, or becoming the solution out of this impasse. We can't morally resolve this so we will extend overshoot until external consequences recreate the historical arrangement where nature did this for us.

[careinke]

I believe the US government should not provide any aid to foreign countries. Because if they do, it is by stealing my money, and giving it to someone else, usually another corrupt government.

Now, before all you bleeding heart liberals and SJWs go into coronary arrest, know that I fully support each and everyone of you sending your own money directly to any corrupt government you want to.

If you are a nation, you should be able to take care of your own people. If you can't, the nation ceases to exist, or the population will self correct.

[Newfie]

This moral dilemma is another reason I so often fall back to external human agency in the form of consequences resolving the issue, or becoming the solution out of this impasse. We can't morally resolve this so we will extend overshoot until external consequences recreate the historical arrangement where nature did this for us.

Exactly.

[ROCKMAN]

Care – Some valid points. But remember a certain amount of that aid comes with strings attached. Like so much has to be spent importing US products. I don’t have time to dig it out and there’s probably not a link with it all put together. But I do know a big chunk of that “aid” is used to buy US weapon systems and Ag products.

Granted it’s still your money but probably a fair amount is going to US companies. And perhaps you don’t really care about some of them eventually getting your tax $’s. But that’s a different matter.

[onlooker]

No surprise here, the world is unprepared for the ravages of Consequences and the Overshoot Predator. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- ... sky-future

[Newfie]

Onlooker,

While that is good it looks at a limited set of threats. I find the World Economic Form annual Global Risk Assessment report to be a bit more comprehensive including linkages between risks, yet still pretty optimistic.

Actually I think it has gotten a bit weaker in recent years but still of some value.

https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-glo ... port-2016/

[dohboi]

...the value of economic output built on such a growing carbon debt attributable to the G7 countries was in the region of $13-15 trillion for a typical year in the 1990s. At the same time the conventionally indebted poor countries had a carbon credit that could be valued at three times their orthodox foreign debts.


In the light of global warming and its physical and economic consequences, [these figures] turn the moral authority in all relations between industrialised and non-industrialised countries upside down. T

https://www.srcf.ucam.org/cjdc/ecodebt.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_debt

[onlooker]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_ ... s_20170618

We Can’t Fight Climate Change if We Keep Lying to Ourselves
We must embrace a despair that unflinchingly acknowledges the bleak future that will be created by climate change. We must see in any act of resistance, even if it appears futile, a moral victory. African-Americans understand, in a way perhaps only the oppressed can grasp, that our character and dignity will be measured by our ability to name and resist the malignant forces that seem to hold us in a death grip. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Our technology and science will not save us. The future of humanity is now in peril. At best, we can mitigate the crisis. We cannot avert it. We are fighting for our lives. If we do not rapidly build militant movements of sustained revolt, movements willing to break the law and attack the structures of the corporate state, we will join the 99.9 percent of species that have vanished since life first appeared on earth.

[Ibon]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_cant_fight_climate_change_if_we_keep_lying_to_ourselves_20170618

We Can’t Fight Climate Change if We Keep Lying to Ourselves
We must embrace a despair that unflinchingly acknowledges the bleak future that will be created by climate change. We must see in any act of resistance, even if it appears futile, a moral victory. African-Americans understand, in a way perhaps only the oppressed can grasp, that our character and dignity will be measured by our ability to name and resist the malignant forces that seem to hold us in a death grip. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Our technology and science will not save us. The future of humanity is now in peril. At best, we can mitigate the crisis. We cannot avert it. We are fighting for our lives. If we do not rapidly build militant movements of sustained revolt, movements willing to break the law and attack the structures of the corporate state, we will join the 99.9 percent of species that have vanished since life first appeared on earth.

So while they are attacking the structures of the corporate state where are they going to poop? How much fossil fuels will they consume building a militant movement? How many children will they have during their resistance? Will they go off grid? Will they fly in airplanes? Will they continue to drive vehicles?

They are using climate change as the call to arms when it is the call to arms that they are most interested in, not climate change itself.

Are we still bored?

This is the exact mirror opposite on the left to the futile attempts of the right to hinge their hopes on Trump making America great again.

Stay in polarity land if this gives meaning to your life, I want no part of this crap.

[dohboi]

I don't know, Ibon. Many of the folks I'm acquainted with working on these issues don't fly, don't have cars, have composting toilets, have solar or wind generated electricity...

Yes, we all are the problem. But no one gets up in the morning and says, "Hey, I wanna pollute the hell out of the earth today."

People do get up and want to go to work. But if the whole system has been set up so the only way they can get to work is by driving a fossil-death-fuel burning car, then that's what they will have to do. But most would rather do it some other way if it was available (and not too inconvenient).

Not sure what you mean by 'polarity' here. I don't think Trump followers are wildly enthusiastic about huge corporations and the power they have over everything either. The main thing is that it's possible to do this kind of political resistance work while working on reducing your personal impact at the same time. Or do you see some reason that it is impossible?

[onlooker]

I am trying to see your point of view Ibon as I know Dohboi is also. Yet, the notion that we simply wait for consequences to get worse and worse and then on the other side of the bottleneck we can with what and who remains reconstitute some measure of viable society is becoming difficult to sustain in the face of climate change. The article stated "we are fighting for our lives". My impression is we are NOW fighting for the lives of future generations. I am not a climate scientist but have looked I think sufficiently at what abrupt runaway global warming represents. It is an existential threat to our species and others on this planet. We must be honest and concede that the political-economic structure will not change unless the masses around the world force it too. It simply comes down to how bad do you or I or anyone believe climate change will be going forward. We can abdicate our volition now and simply continue to chat here or we can take a stand against the entire system that while nourishing humanity is also destroying the life support basis of this planet. I have been called a hypocrite. Well, I am now advocating exactly what this article is stating. A mass movement militant if needed to bring down industrial civilization, come what may. We can have industrial civilization a while longer or we can have a living planet. Time to decide.

[Ibon]

Here is my issue. The article frames the problem as a malevolent fossil fuel industry and corrupt governments, the solution being a calling of arms basically to dismantle these institutions that are perceived as evil. Which is why I asked all those questions in my last post.

It is an extremely naive article that wants to reduce the origin of the problems to a couple of evil players. It is almost as stupid as religious dogma that paints a simple narrative of good and evil.

Join the fight against those evil governments and industries, be on the side of good and virtue against those evil doers.

Do you guys really think human overshoot can be reduced to such a silly and dumbed down narrative?

I read recently in a book a reference about the assault our natural ecosystems are suffering and the synopsis in a couple of words which was really poignant;

limitless greed and desperate need.

Yes, limitless greed in all who have the affluence to fulfill an insatiable appetite and desperate need for all those ravaged poor plundering marginal habitats one step away from starvation.

This double depredation of limitless greed and desperate need is the source of the problem and nobody wants to see this as systemic that weaves in a myriad of ways through all of us.

Instead some like those in the article want to set themselves apart by being on the side of the virtuous and demonize an industry or a government as the culprit.

Give me a fxxking break.