My friend Franke does it again, riffing on her experience seeing Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Kingwell (don’t know who he is) talking about initiating social change. Her illustrations tell the story much better than I can so I’m just going to add a little of my perspective to her observations.

Franke is Canadian so maybe things are different across the lake but I doubt it.  Simply put, Gladwell argues that awareness is not enough to change behavior and Franke notes that sometimes a threat or pain point must be reached.

I’ve been noticing a lot more Euro-versions of cars appearing on the streets in Rochester- little tiny Hondas, Toyotas, Fords, etc. These cars are literally a fraction of the size of the SUVs they are hopefully replacing. So why are they appearing now? Could it be $4.25/gallon gas? Even a wealthy SUV driver might have issues with paying five bucks for gas to run out to the store or a movie…

A point I’ve belabored here is that change and response to  climate issues will only be driven by economics. Americans don’t want to believe it will affect us so our politicians won’t act. Awareness and acceptance of the issue is there but there isn’t any urgency- until we get hit in our wallets, painfully.

“Skybus Airlines announced it was shutting down Saturday, with the low-cost airline blaming the “insurmountable” pressures of rising jet fuel costs and a slowing economic environment.
Columbus, Ohio-based Skybus became the fourth airline this week to close or announce plans to do so.”

From MarketWatch (emphasis mine)

The others are Aloha, ATA and Champion Air. Fuel surcharges for flights are skyrocketing and the airlines have separated them from their advertised prices. For example I recently saw a one way price of $220 for a NY to London flight. Sounds pretty good right? Except that it did not include a $160 fuel surcharge each way.

The impact of rising energy costs is everywhere. Food, commodities, travel, transportation- you name it. Yet we are, as a nation, doing virtually nothing about it (except for begging OPEC to give us a deal). History is going to look back and wonder how we could ignore the breadth of change that is upon us.

Americans are some of the lowest consumers of rice but for most of the rest of the world it is the staple crop that keeps poorer consumers alive. The doubling of rice prices, coupled with rising prices for virtually all grains, is a major concern. While the US is an exporter of rice, many countries are now restricting exports to try to control prices. In a global economy this won’t work because you cannot have a commodity priced differently in two or more places- sellers in the cheaper country will find a way to sell in the more expensive one (one exception to this is the price of sugar in the US, held artificially high and protected from cheaper exports to the benefit of a few wealthy US sugar producers- a rant for another place!).

Rice, as a crop, is exceptionally sensitive to climate changes. Even a slight warming trend will kill off a crop and this is happening in traditional rice-growing areas worldwide. Because of the unique growing conditions needed for rice (water paddies) you cannot simply replant at a more suitable location. Combined with exploding energy and fuel costs, this forces prices up. It is not a small matter- people will starve.

The climate is a closed system. Changes have wide-reaching and sometimes unpredictable affects. Starvation will be one of them and it could change geo-politics very rapidly as hungry people are angry people.

I’ve been following this story for a few weeks. A 160 square mile ice shelf has begun collapsing in Antarctica due to warming. It is theorized that warming waters melted floating ice that protected the shelf from large wave action, causing its connection to land to be broken.

No word on its affect on ocean levels but it is probably negligible. The real danger is that this is a harbinger of larger collapses to come.

Here is a video of the collapse. A much larger shelf may be in danger of breaking up as a result of this collapse.