[Reader-list] Climateprogress.org: Egyptian and Tunisian riots were driven in part by the spike in global food prices

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo nettime-l (but plain-texted ;-)
original at:
http://climateprogress.org/2011/01/30/egyptian-tunisian-riots-food-prices-extreme-weather-and-high-oil-prices/
(http://bit.ly/g9RMy1)


Reports: Egyptian and Tunisian riots were driven in part by the spike in
global food prices
Food prices were driven up by extreme weather and high oil prices
January 30, 2011

UPDATE: See “Expert consensus grows on contribution of record high food
prices to Middle East unrest” and my ongoing series on “food insecurity.” 
Get daily updates on climate and energy by clicking here.
Political unrest has broken out in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other Arab
countries. Social media and governmental policies are getting most of the
credit for spurring the turmoil, but there’s another factor at play.
Many of the people protesting are also angry about dramatic price hikes
for basic foodstuffs, such as rice, cereals, cooking oil and sugar.
This summer’s extreme global weather raised fears of a “Coming Food
Crisis,” as CAP’s John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell warned in Foreign
Policy:  “Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and
Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.” 
Earlier this month I discussed how, in fact, “Extreme weather events
helped drive food prices to record highs.”  Back then, experts were
worried about food riots.  Now they are happening.

UPDATE:  The anti-science, pro-pollution crowd are going flat-earth over
this post because I point out that leading political experts say the
Middle East rioting is driven in part by the dramatic rise in food prices,
which the agricultural experts say is driven in large part by oil prices
and the extreme weather we’ve seen in the last few months.  Of course, the
climate science experts have been saying for a while now that the extreme
weather is driven in large part by human emissions — see Terrific ABC News
story: “Raging Waters In Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming”
and Munich Re: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in
weather-related catastrophes is climate change.”  See also Russian
President Medvedev: “What is happening now in our central regions is
evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our
history faced such weather conditions in the past.” — NYT: “Russia Bans
Grain Exports After Drought Shrivels Crop”  I have some more comments on
this at the end, but the analysis as written here stands.

The Washington Post reported on the connection between food prices and
Tunisian  violence in mid-January, in a piece headlined, “Spike in global
food prices contributes to Tunisian violence”:
The state of emergency in Tunisia has economists worried that we may be
seeing the beginnings of a second wave of global food riots. Battered by
bad weather and increasing demand from the developing world, the global
food supply system is buckling under the strain.

This month, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported
that its food price index jumped 32 percent in the second half of 2010 —
surpassing the previous record, set in the early summer of 2008, when
deadly clashes over food broke out around the world, from Haiti to
Somalia
.

The price of grains began to rise last fall after fires in Russia wiped
out hundreds of thousands of acres of grains and heavy rain destroyed much
of Canada’s wheat crop. The problems were followed by hot, dry weather in
Argentina that devastated the soybean crop of the key exporter. This
month, floods in Australia destroyed much of the country’s wheat crop.

Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on Thursday vowed to reduce the
price of staples such as sugar, milk and bread ,but the pledge wasn’t
enough to placate the thousands of protesters who mobbed the capital,
Tunis, on Friday to demand his ouster. The country’s prime minister,
Mohammed Ghannouchi, has appeared on state TV to announce he is assuming
power.

See also the 1-15-11 Guardian story, “Jordanians protest against soaring
food prices:  Protesters angry over high food costs and unemployment call
for the prime minister to step down, in an echo of Tunisian
demonstrations.”

And then we have Egypt.

Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House, was interviewed at Davos
(click here) and said the Egyptian riots “were driven partly of course by
the rise of food prices.”

NPR had a long story on the subject today, “Rising Food Prices Can Topple
Governments, Too” (quoted at the top), which notes:
Rising prices are “leading to riots, demonstrations and political
instability,” New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini said
during a panel discussion. “It’s really something that can topple regimes,
as we have seen in the Middle East.”

And, the Davos experts warn, higher prices could hurt consumers and derail
the economic recoveries under way in wealthier countries.

In large part, the food-price crisis reflects the simple law of supply and
demand. The supply of food has been diminished by bad weather in many
crucial crop-growing areas of the world. Russia, Ukraine and Argentina
have had severe droughts, while Pakistan and Australia have had massive
flooding.At the same time, demand for food has been rising as people in
fast-developing countries, such as India and China, have been buying more
groceries.

In addition, production and transportation costs have been driven up by
the rising price of oil.

Energy insecurity and climate instability have now become key factors in
food insecurity, which in turn has become a key factor in toppling
governments.  And that’s without even considering the impact of the nation
and the world’s wildly counterproductive strategy of growing crop-based
biofuels (see “Are biofuels a core climate solution?” and “Let them eat
biofuels!” and ““The Fuel on the Hill — The Corn Supremacy“).

It’s hard to see how oil prices won’t keep rising, absent another deep
global economic downturn (see World’s top energy economist warns: “We have
to leave oil before oil leaves us and  German military study warns of peak
oil crisis and Peak oil production coming sooner than expected).
And the extreme weather we are seeing is only going to get worse.  The
country’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, recently explained:
Given the association of extreme weather and climate events with rising
global temperature, the expectation of new record high temperatures in
2012 also suggests that the frequency and magnitude of extreme events
could reach a high level in 2012. Extreme events include not only high
temperatures, but also indirect effects of a warming atmosphere including
the impact of higher temperature on extreme rainfall and droughts. The
greater water vapor content of a warmer atmosphere allows larger rainfall
anomalies and provides the fuel for stronger storms driven by latent heat.

It’s likely half the years this decade will be hotter and more extreme
than 2010 — and most of the years in the next decade.

“Bread and Circuses” (panem et circenses) is the Roman phrase denoting the
superficial effort of maintaining public approval through cheap food and
entertainment.  When the food isn’t cheap, though, the strategy collapses,
perhaps along with the entire global Ponzi scheme.

Those who think that the serious impacts of climate change — and our inane
energy policies — on the world economy and U.S. national security are
decades away are simply not paying attention.

UPDATE:  The climate ostriches at NewsBusters — and anti-science extremist
Michelle Malkin — have actually attacked this post for daring to suggest
that climate change plays any role whatsoever in the higher food prices
that numerous experts say are contributing to the unrest.  The point, of
course, is not that global warming is causing the unrest or that there
aren’t major underlying causes.

The question is why specifically now have the Egyptians and Tunisians
rioted after decades of anti-democratic rule?  Certainly one can ignore
the experts and say that it is a complete coincidence that the rioting
occurred as food prices hit record levels — in spite of the fact that the
last time there was this kind of rioting globally food prices were at
record levels, which is precisely why experts were predicting that record
hide food prices would lead to riots.  Now the question is, why are food
prices are at record levels?  Again, reality pretty much speaks for itself
here.  Extreme weather is a major contributing factor — and our top
climate scientists say global warming has contributed.