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Investors add spice to rising food prices
Arthur Sim, asiaone
Global food prices are rising again with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index hitting 168 points in November, the fourth consecutive month of increase and the highest since September 2008.
While this is still about 21 per cent lower than the most recent peak in June 2008 when the index hit 213.5 points, FAO does note that the index has never exceeded 120 points prior to the price spike between 2007/2008.
Several reasons have been highlighted for the rising prices. However, FAO has possibly for the first time highlighted the ‘growing appetite by speculators and index funds for a wider commodity portfolio investments on the back of enormous global excess liquidity’, as exacerbating the situation.
This mirrors the view of World Bank president Robert Zoellick who said recently that with so much liquidity in global markets, ‘you could see additional moves towards the agricultural commodities sector if there were perceptions of market shortages’.
Speculation in agricultural commodities may not have reached fever pitch yet but with food shortages expected in 2010, it could…
(8 Jan 2010)
God, Keynes, and Clean Energy
L J Furman, popular logistics
Mark Fulton, “Climate Change Strategist” Deutsche Bank Asset Management, spoke at Cary Krosinsky’s class in Sustainable Investing at the CERC, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Earth Institute, Columbia University.
Krosinsky described Climate Change and Global Warming in terms of Pascal’s Wager. “We can neither prove nor disprove that God exists. However, if we act as if God exists we will be better off.” So it is with climate change. The science is complex. But we will be better off if we redesign our energy and industrial infrastructures, reduce the level of greenhouse gases, and build a sustainable infrastructure.
Rather than subsidizing coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power, we need to tax carbon. And use the money to build solar arrays, wind turbines, and other new things…
(26 Jan 2010)
Peak Autos: America’s Love Affair with the Automobile May Be Coming to an End
Michael Shedlock, globaleconomicanalysis
Inquiring minds note that there are 4 Million Fewer Cars on the Road. It’s a sign America’s Love Affair with the Automobile May Be Coming to an End.
“The U.S. fleet has apparently peaked and started to decline. In 2009, the 14 million cars scrapped exceeded the 10 million new cars sold, shrinking the U.S. fleet by 4 million, or nearly 2 percent in one year. While this is widely associated with the recession, it is in fact caused by several converging forces.
Future U.S. fleet size will be determined by the relationship between two trends: new car sales and cars scrapped. Cars scrapped exceeded new car sales in 2009 for the first time since World War II, shrinking the U.S. vehicle fleet from the all-time high of 250 million to 246 million.
Market saturation may be the dominant contributor to the peaking of the U.S. fleet. The United States now has 246 million registered motor vehicles and 209 million licensed drivers–nearly 5 vehicles for every 4 drivers. When is enough enough?”…
(24 Jan 2010)
Pavan Sukhdev: you can have progress without GDP-led growth
Tom Levitt, The Ecologist
Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev is heading up the groundbreaking TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) report and doing for nature what Sir Nicholas Stern did for climate change – valuing it
Tom Levitt: Why are we putting a value on nature, why don’t we just close off and protect it?
Pavan Sukhdev: The Ecologist may say that but there are a hundred thousand other people who are social NGOs and politicians looking for votes at the next election who will say, ah ha! that is just an ecologist talking who loves nature and does not care for your well-being because guess what I have built a railroad, built a bridge, given you a job and provided you with an electricity connection.
That is the person the Ecologist needs to answer, by saying ecology – in other words natural capital – used properly can also give you the jobs that you seek.
Forest maintained can also provide the poor with the fresh water that they want and guess what, yes you need to build bridges but you can do that in a way that is more earth-friendly, less carbon intensive in manufacture and creates some local opportunity as opposed to just profits for the builders who built the bridge.
You have to have counter arguments that are being made explicitly or implicitly because sometimes this is not even said and people just go-ahead and destroy and there is no question of listening to the ecologist because he is “just a greenie who loves nature”.
People are not even looking at the economic value of the conservation alternative or the natural capital value of nature…
(22 Jan 2010)
What Can We Learn from Gift Economies?
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
When I sat down to research this post, I thought I would write a post about barter, since it seemed like if our current financial system failed, barter would be one possible form of back-up. But when I started to research barter, the first thing I came across was this statement:
Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence of a society or economy that relied primarily on barter. Instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economics. When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or would-be enemies.
So I decided to step back a bit, and look into gift economies.
It seemed to me that if our current system fails us, we should have at least some idea regarding what options might be available that could perhaps be pieced together into a new system that works. As I looked at gift economies a bit, I realized our current system has a substantial element of gift economics in it. Perhaps if our already functioning gift economy can be expanded, it may play a role in transitioning to a more suitable long-term economy…
(28 Jan 2010)
