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 have a three year-old Honda Accord that is about to come off of a lease. I have three options: Turn the car in, lease another on very favorable terms or buy the car, again on favorable terms (it’s very low mileage). All three probably cost me a similar amount. I either continue making a payment for a new car or for the existing one. Most leasees would go for the new car.

In the Marcc 2008 issue of Metropolis magazine (sorry no link that I can find) Roberta Gratz has an essay on the environmental impact of historical renovation as opposed to tearing down and building a new ‘greener’ building. She notes that:

” The greenest building is one that’s already built”

The struck me as being very relevant to two themes of this blog and my life these days: The hidden carbon cost of apparently environmentally-friendly products like organic produce (shipped how far to reach a wintry city like Rochester?) and the fact that when I buy something used I’m keeping its materials out of landfills and eliminating the need to make something new.

So I decide to buy the car I have already rather than buy a new one and thus add a carbon-intensive new motorized object to our collective environment. And while I have a dream to build a contemporary urban living space, I think I have to find a building and reuse it rather than build new. The ‘cost’ of tearing down and recycling or landfilling the building would far outweigh the advantages of ‘green’ new construction.

We cannot think about environmental issues the way we did in the past. Food that is grown without pesticides and fertilizers is great until you ship it a thousand miles to the consumer. That shipment just wiped out any advantages from an environmental perspective (the health advantages are also offset by the emissions associated with the travel). There is no free lunch for those who believe that they do right by buying this stuff.

Economically, with a recession upon us, the current administration’s solution is to hand out money and tell people to go forth and consume. This will allegedly stimulate the economy by increasing demand which in turn increases manufacturing. There’s only one problem with this: We live in a world that has fundamentally changed. If we all keep consuming at some point we turn all the raw materials of the planet into manmade objects. Not a pretty picture.

I saw a headline today that there are worldwide grain and food shortages because of American farmers growing corn for ethanol, a fuel most of us cannot use or afford if not subsidized by the government. The complexity of the idiocy behind this is mind-boggling.

The point here is that you cannot take a short term, simplistic approach to any purchasing decision these days. Do I buy a Prius to get an extra 20 MPG when that decision pushes a car somewhere into a landfill and adds another, albeit efficient, car into our global inventory? That’s the kind of question we have to ask ourselves in an environmentally damaged world.

Guy Kawasaki offers a great photo tour of this new building funded by Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and his wife. The tour gives a great overview of the current state of green building technology.

Thanks to Franke James:

Severe pollution causing disease outbreaks, cancer, birth defects and decreasing male births in Great Lakes Communities according to a suppressed CDC report:

MONTREAL GAZETTE

Leaked report on the Great Lakes is a wake-up call

High levels of pollution pose a health threat. U.S., Canadian
decision-makers keep public in the dark for fear of lawsuits, expensive
cleanups, scientist says
WILLIAM MARSDEN The Gazette
Thursday, February 14, 2008

At least 9 million people living on the United States side of the Great
Lakes basin may be in danger from high levels of chemical pollution,
according to a secret study that has been withheld from the public.
The study was kept secret from the public for seven months until this week
when it was leaked to the Centre for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.

The 400-page study was done by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention on behalf of the International Joint Commission, which oversees
issues relating to the joint management of the Great Lakes.
The study shows there are 26 “areas of concern (AOC),” where there are
elevated levels of illnesses that can be traced to pollution.

These areas of concern are spread out through all five of the Great Lakes
with particular intensity in Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo. More than 9
million people live inside the boundaries of these AOCs.
The report states that illness in the populations “compares unfavourably …
with the U.S. population.”
For instance, the report identifies elevated levels of infant mortality in
26 AOCs, and of premature births in four AOCs.
The study also identified 108 hazardous waste sites, of which 71 are or
could be public health hazards.
Powerful lake currents can distribute the chemical and hydrocarbon
pollutants including dioxins throughout the Great Lakes system and down the
St. Lawrence River. Migratory marine life such as eels, which swim from Lake
Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, also distribute the pollutants.

The study mirrors a series of reports previously done by Health Canada in
the 1990s that revealed 17 Canadian AOCs, where there were elevated levels
of illnesses that could be traced to pollution.
When the Canadian reports were printed in 1998 they also were kept from the
public. In this case, Health Canada circulated them only to public health
officials in the 17 AOCs.

One study was leaked to a reporter in Windsor, Ont., in 2000, forcing Health
Canada to release the rest.
The Americans have claimed that their study was suppressed because the
science was substandard.
Michael Gilbertson, a former International Joint Commission scientist who
was one of three scientists to peer review the U.S. study, said the reasons
behind the suppression were political.

“Their real reason is that in the States and also in Canada at the moment
there is really a reluctance within the governments to acknowledge that
there are any effects of these chemicals on fish or wildlife or on human
health,” he said.
Gilbertson said the governments are afraid of lawsuits and expensive
cleanups.
“I mean you can find sources of chemicals in the environment,” he said. “But
if you actually find effects, this has a connotation of liability.
Governments are extremely reluctant to allow their scientists to start
making statements about the effects of chemicals on fish, wildlife or on
humans. Particularly on humans.”

The Canadian study, for example, found a series of outbreaks of Minamata
disease in Thunder Bay, Collingwood, Sarnia and Cornwall. Minamata disease,
which includes cerebral palsy among its symptoms, is caused by mercury
poisoning.
Each of the affected areas had large chlor-alkali plants that used mercury
for making chlorine. At various times between 1948 and 1995, these plants
released 742 tonnes of mercury into the Great Lakes. Mercury dumped in
Sarnia went down the St. Claire River to Lake St. Claire and then down the
Detroit River to Lake Erie.

Canadian research has also found an inexplicable drop in the male-female
ratio on the Aamjiwnaang Reserve near Sarnia. The number of male babies had
dropped 40 per cent in the mid-1990s. The reserve is surrounded by 46 large
chemical plants and refineries.

Furthermore, Health Canada studies showed, the Windsor area suffered from
much higher mortality and morbidity rates than in the rest of Ontario.

The federal government and the province of Ontario launched a program in
2000 to reduce pollution in the Great Lakes.
So far, two areas - Collingwood and nearby Severn Sound - have been removed
from the AOC list.
wmarsden@thegazette.canwest.com

- To see the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention report go to
www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx
C The Gazette (Montreal) 2008