A week of food riots has seen the Haitian Prime Minister fired by the Senate. Food is right up there on the National Security watch list along with climate change, peak oil and water. This has been simmering for a while now but is starting to loom as a serious global problem.

It’s not a problem that can be considered in isolation. Speculation in land (financial asset bubble), population growth, the bio-fuel issue and climate change have all contributed to a serious problem with the food chain.

Rising oil prices have just been the icing on this unpalatable cake. Is this likely to be contained to developing or poorer nations? Not so say some. In developed nations just-in-time delivery and stocking systems work on very tight margins. Food banks are under serious strain with a whole new layer of users appearing in recent times.

There’s no simple solution to this situation but governments need to take it very seriously.

With all the doom and gloom in the US right now it would be easy to fall back on the old maxim “when the us sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold”. Not so anymore. There is good reason to see a rebalancing of economic fortune and the shift is potentially seismic.

The BRIC crew are doing very well compared to their older relatives, the U.S, U.K and Europe. Yes they have all experienced a similar asset bubble in equities but for different reasons. They have huge upside potential. They also have a less developed banking system which may have saved them from the sub-prime fall out.

There is also the interesting move by the Iranian Oil Bourse to price in Iranian Rials rather than US $ and then to state that the Rouble may be the preferred currency. Sorry?

The Rouble…..surely some mistake. Once a fashionable wallpaper accessory and now a petro-currency. Politics aside it does make sense to have a range of currencies available at the global level. This will create tensions but also prevents one country having power over all others.

This is a real wake up call for the US. With their military stretched across the Middle East and their financial system in disarray, the US is in a precarious position. Like the playground bully who finally loses his power it is suddenly looking very frail.

Thanks for Celsias for this post on the updating of the Montreal Protocol. It seems obvious that this successful treaty should be the starting point for any treaty on greenhouse gases but many of the lessons derived from those intense negotiations haven’t fully be absorbed into the Kyoto process.

It’s not too late to have another look. Many Kyoto advocates have told me there is too much time and money invested in it to change tack now. Well that’s not good enough. If Kyoto is not going to work then it should be set aside. It doesn’t mean a step back but a step forward.

So i’m dusting off my proposal based around Montreal. I think it’s time to realise that major reductions can only come from the supply side.

See Climate Control and also have a look at Oliver Tickell’s proposal Kyoto 2.

The recent financial crisis has made me think more about how important money is in our lives. Without the liquidity (cash) pumped into the system by the Federal Reserve the whole financial system could, and probably would, have siezed up.

By that i mean the flow of money would have dried up and banks would have stopped lending and peopl would have run out of money and been queueing at the banks to get cash out. Of course there isn’t any but you knew that already

It shows us two important facets of our society: one is that we depend on the financial system for our daily lives; two is that we are living on the verge of a serious breakdown. It’s a bit like trying to stay on top of the bills.

I don;t know if there are any readers who remember the Depression but they will understand what i am talking about.

I believe we are all systems within systems, whether at the atomic level, individual being or universe. Systems depend on flow and feedback in order to keep stable. We need energy through food or sunlight to survive.

The parellels of the financial crisis and oil crisis are interesting. I remember back towards the turn of the millenium when we had a mini crisis in the UK when oil deliveries were delayed . The supermarkets were within 24 hours of running out of food since they used just in time delivery. The crucial importance of energy (in the form of oil) was highlighted but more than that it showed how close to the edge we were living.

We depend on a continual flow of energy to survive. This brings me to love. Yes that old favourite. We can’t do without that either. The great thing about love is that it is free and easy to give. But as we know, when love is lacking and not flowing our system breaks down: into war, violence, depression and death. Without a flow of love nothing is worth living for. We can see the effects all around us.

Surely love is something we can never run out of

We’ve had Web 3.0 so why not Climate Change 3.0? I believe it’s time to move forward on this issue and start thinking smarter.

Let’s start with the basic problem. Governments are controlling the issue and yet governments do not create greenhouse gases. Who does? People and organisations do (ok and so do some animals) and they need to deal with it. Then we need to ask who provides the polluting items? Fossil fuel companies in the main (ok farmers and cement manufacturers as well) are the providers of the feedstock.

Added to that we have the other side of the equation which is the sequestration system, our rainforests, soils, other vegetation, oceans and whatever else sucks up greenhouse gases.

So we have a certain volume of fossil fuel feedstock coming into the system to be combusted in various forms to provide energy in the main (as well as a multitude of petrochemical based products) and we know where the major changes in land use occur so we know the net volume of greenhouse gases added in any given period.

What we don’t know is the tolerable limit of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It could be 400ppm, 500 or 600 (using carbon dioxide equivalents). No one knows and quite frankly the models we have are really best guesses. We do know that there is likely to be a tipping point over which we will have some severe and irreversible impacts. Hopefully our science will get better and allow us to forecast accurately but we are still learning about our systems and as yet cannot be certain as to where this level is.

So at some point we have to pick a number. Let’s say 500ppm. We are now at 380ppm so we can plot out a course for getting there. We must have a global cap on emissions or we are wasting our time. Forget about national limits..they are a complete red herring and unworkable unless governments want to control the sale and use of all fossil fuels within their own region. Given global trade that is simply not possible.

Once we have a global cap we can work out an annual quota for fossil fuel production. Then the fossil fuel companies can compete for the right to produce. One suggestion is that rights are grandfathered in but a better one is that the rights are auctioned off annually and the receipts put into a global environmental contingency fund. This has been suggested by Oliver Tickell through his proposal Kyoto2. You can read about that here www.kyoto2.org.

Once annual quotas are put into place the market will adjust prices to meet demand at the appropriate supply level. I have proposed a complete reorganisation of the global energy market to increase efficiencies and therefore lower prices.

Then we can forget about all the attempts to somehow finesse this problem. We just have to work out how much we can use and then carry on as normal. If prices go up then renewable and alternative energy will be sought out. Either way we need to adjust our behaviour.

This is the most likely way of achieving that. Governments can help negotiate the process like they did with Montreal but ultimately this problem can be solved easily by the fossil fuel companies taking charge like the CFC producers did before them.

Give people the freedom and the incentive to change and they will.

Research from the UK into people’s “green” behaviour demonstrates that people respond poorly to price signals and very rarely make the changes required without strong arm tactics. Recent fuel surcharges on air travel have made little difference to people’s travel plans. As our recent experiences with credit show us, people are always happy to go into debt to have what they want right now. Ecological credit is no different.

We must stop offering unlimited ecological credit if we really want to cap greenhouse gas emissions at any chosen level. Like our money supply it is currently in an acceleration phase upwards with little or no control.