More demand shaping global reality
Many people are looking for someone or something to blame for rising prices in food and fuel. Commentator Robert Reich says a rapidly growing middle class is demanding these things faster than they can be produced.
Robert Reich (APM)
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Scott Jagow: Gas and food prices are a stressful problem in this country. But elsewhere, things have turned pretty ugly. In Spain, truckers are on strike over fuel costs. And so gas stations and grocery stores and car repair shops can't get their shipments. Commentator Robert Reich says this is the new reality.
Robert Reich: The cost of food and fuel are soaring, not just in the U.S. but all over the globe. The world's poor are suffering the most -- culminating in riots and starvation -- but price hikes are eroding living standards in advanced nations as well.
Everyone, it seems, is looking for scapegoats -- international conspiracies, speculators, hoarders. But the main reason food and fuel prices are skyrocketing is demand for both is rapidly exceeding supply.
You see, hundreds of millions of people in China and India and the former Soviet republics are ascending into the middle class at a rate never before seen in history. And the two items this huge, rapidly-growing middle class want most are cars and meat.
That's the problem. Cars use enormous amounts of fuel. And meat uses up enormous amounts of agricultural land, because animals that provide it require lots of feed grains. And supplies of both are limited.
This means global prices for fuel and food will continue to increase in the foreseeable future. And these increases are likely to generate the biggest threats to global peace.
Political pressures will mount on governments to protect their own nation's sources of energy and food for their own citizens. Conflict will intensify over whether land should be used for biofuels or food production. Farm subsidies in advanced nations will come under increasing attack from developing nations.
Meanwhile, superpowers China, Europe, and America will compete ever more intensely for access to global supplies. And as more cars are used and more forests are cleared for agriculture, greenhouse gases will further shrink arable land.
The answer to all this lies mainly in increasing the supply of food and fuels. And both will depend on two kinds of green research -- into more productive and sustainable agriculture, and into more efficient and sustainable fuels.
in other words, we're in a race between a new generation of biotechnology and non-carbon-based energy technology, on the one hand, and rising political and economic conflict on the other. And the global clock is ticking ominously fast.
Jagow: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California Berkeley.
Comments
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From Dallas, TX, 06/11/2008
We’ve all laughed at cartoons of men carrying sandwich boards proclaiming the end of the world. But they are not entirely wrong!
Any animal population will increase exponentially, absent any event to limit the population explosion. In past millenniums pestilence, famine, predators, war, local or world catastrophe served to limit populations.
But Man is smarter than other animals; he has been able to cure the pestilences that have ravaged human populations in past. His food production skills have provided food for constantly expanding human populations.
But the burden of overpopulation will bring problems that man’s ingenuity cannot solve. As with other animal populations, human population will be reduced to a sustainable level – by starvation? Aids? A bird virus? Global warming? Other unforeseeable events?
Man has never solved the problem of Wars; perhaps he will solve the overpopulation problem by nuclear weapons. Competition for the world’s dwindling resources make it likely.
From Santa Monica, CA, 06/11/2008
Mr. Reish: Congratulations! It seems you successfully found scapegoat! Meat eating rapidly growing middle class! That’s a problem! I won’t be surprise to hear this kind of stuff on Fox News.
During Bush administration price of oil jumped from about $30 rep gallon to $135. The Bush administration invaded Iraq, distracted stability in entire Middle East region, spent billons of dollars on war, and brought US economy to the long lasting recession, which brought down value on US dollar, which pushed oil prices even higher. And you are blaming growing middle class?
Please, do not underestimate your listeners...
From Ketchikan, AK, 06/11/2008
Mr. Reish: Increasing the supply of food and fuel is the short-term answer. Education and reducing meat consumption make sense. But would not the single most energy and cost-efficient effective and intelligent solution would be population control in the first place?
From Pittsburgh, PA, 06/11/2008
I am pleased to see that my response was shared by the previous commenter. I would add that these comments by Robert Reich, whose commentary I general enjoy, assume that demand for cars and meats (obviously an over-simplified vision) will remain constant (or grow). They may, but we can use education to curb that demand. Demand is not immutable and I believe that it should be our goal to present different models of how to live within our means ecologically. Best.
From Washington, DC, 06/11/2008
I enjoyed your commentary on how the rising demand for meat in Asia is leading to grains being diverted for animal feed. The answer, though, is not to try to increase production. That would only aggravate the problems of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity that have already begun to emerge in Asia. It would also accelerate global climate change, given that farmed animals are among the biggest producers of greenhouse gasses. The answer has to be to work to reduce meat consumption, in favor of traditional diets based mainly on grains, vegetables, beans, and fruits. A meat-based economy is as unsustainable as an economy based on tobacco or narcotics.
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