Global Riot Epidemic Due to Demise of Cheap Fossil Fuels | Nafeez Ahmed

From South America to South Asia, a new age of unrest is in full swing as industrial civilization transitions to post-carbon reality.

Local conditions are being exacerbated by global structural realities.  Record high global food prices impinge on these local conditions and push them over the edge.  But the food price hikes, in turn, are symptomatic of a range of overlapping problems.  Global agriculture's excessive dependence on fossil fuel inputs means food prices are invariably linked to oil price spikes.  Naturally, biofuels and food commodity speculation pushes prices up even further - elite financiers alone benefit from this while working people from middle to lower classes bear the brunt.

Of course, the elephant in the room is climate change.  According to Japanese media, a leaked draft of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) second major report warned that while demand for food will rise by 14%, global crop production will drop by 2% per decade due to current levels of global warming, and wreak $1.45 trillion of economic damage by the end of the century.  The scenario is based on a projected rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius.

This is likely to be a very conservative estimate.  Considering that the current trajectory of industrial agriculture is already seeing yield plateaus in major food basket regions, the interaction of environmental, energy, and economic crises suggests that business-as-usual won't work.

The epidemic of global riots is symptomatic of global system failure - a civilisational form that has outlasted its usefulness.  We need a new paradigm.

Unfortunately, simply taking to the streets isn't the answer. What is needed is a meaningful vision for civilisational transition - backed up with people power and ethical consistence.

It's time that governments, corporations and the public alike woke up to the fact that we are fast entering a new post-carbon era, and that the quicker we adapt to it, the far better our chances of successfully redefining a new form of civilisation - a new form of prosperity - that is capable of living in harmony with the Earth system.

Global Riot Epidemic Due to Demise of Cheap Fossil Fuels | Nafeez Ahmed