by Alex Evans | Jul 7, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
Gordon Brown’s blunt call on Brits to stop wasting food marks an interesting moment in the food prices debate.
So far, policymakers have concentrated almost entirely on the supply side – specifically, with the need to increase food production by 50 per cent by 2030, in line with World Bank demand forecasts. (I worry that too much focus on the overall quantum of food produced risks obscuring the equally fundamental issue of who has access to it – but let’s leave that aside for now.)
What Brown’s emphasis on waste does is to give the demand side of the equation equal billing – a position it’s deserved all along, but hasn’t received from policymakers, presumably due to anxieties about implying that consumers may have to change behaviour.
The issue of food waste is a massive issue in its own right – the UK wastes 4 million tonnes of food a year, and the forthcoming Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit report on food says that up to 40 per cent of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it’s consumed. But its long term significance may be as a bridgehead for opening up a broader front on demand reduction: as the food equivalent of energy efficiency, if you like.
Another of the battles in that front will be over biofuels – a major new source of demand for crops. The leak last week of an internal World Bank document showed just how significant biofuels have been: it argued that biofuels have been responsible for as much as 75% of food price increases – way more than the 30% previously estimated by the International Food Policy Research Institute. (The Bank’s 75% figure isn’t new – it’s been kicking around their HQ for at least three months – but its release now will definitely increase pressure on the US to reduce subsidies for corn-based ethanol.)
But what I think’s most significant of all about Brown’s new tack is that it makes him the first head of government to talk clearly about the elephant in the room with food prices: the fact that our diet in developed countries has a direct effect on the food security of poor people in developing countries. Waste may be the first stop – but the train line we’re on leads directly to the question of how much meat and dairy products we can consume without impinging on others’ fair shares.
by Alex Evans | Jun 30, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Global system
So, with a week to go until Japan’s G8 in Hokkaido, how are things looking? If you want the comprehensive answer, you should head straight for Jenilee Geubert’s excellent dossier on the website of the University of Toronto’s G8 research group – but here are a few highlights.
First, climate change. A draft communique seen by Dow Jones suggests there are four options on the table: a 50% emissions reduction by 2050 [from what year’s level isn’t specified]; an unspecified percentage cut by 2050; a 50% cut by 2051 or later; or a more than 50% cut by 2051 or later.
If you’re wondering where the magical figure of 50% comes from, it’s from the IPCC estimate of what it’ll take to limit average temperature rises to between 2.0 and 2.4 Celsius – though note that (a) the IPCC says 50 to 85%, and (b) that this is before the [rapid] rate of sink failure is taken into account. So 50% by 2050 is already too low.
Fukuda has said that the G8 will not aim to set medium term targets. Tony Blair’s big new report says it must. So does Avaaz. The US says a 25-40% cut by 2020 is “frankly not do-able“. The US is meanwhile extolling the benefits of its Major Economies Meeting, but last week’s MEM in South Korea didn’t go so great.
Next: energy. Oil’s just flown past $143 on the back of geopolitical tensions, so all the signs are that the issue will be charged when leaders gather next week. Fukuda wants to see more oil production, but after Saudi Arabia’s pledge of only 200,000 more barrels a day last week, it’s hard to see much sign of it – and even harder to detect any sign of join-up between Fukuda’s calls for OPEC to open the tap up a bit more, and Japan’s stated goal of something called a “Cool Earth“.
Meanwhile, biofuels might conceivably also come up, as Fukuda’s not a fan (“it is a fact that the production of bioethanol in some cases compete with food production”) – though Japan will want to avoid putting its American buddies on the spot. For its part, the US will point to IEA data that shows that biofuels have become crucial for meeting marginal oil demand (want to know how much non-OPEC oil supply growth is from biofuels this year? 63 per cent.)
And then there’s food. Sir John Holmes’s UN task force will be presenting its final report at the Summit. Leaders will probably pledge to do everything they can to increase food production and increase investment in agriculture – which is a good idea, though it does still leave the small fact that enough food is produced for everyone to eat today, but there are still 850-950 million undernourished people. Increasing yields isn’t the whole story.
One thing the G8 leaders could do is issue a strong statement of intent on the Doha trade round – and perhaps, if they want to be really relevant, taking security of supply issues into account at the same time. More generally, World Bank President Bob Zoellick’s ten point plan on food prices will doubtless be referred back to as a good and brief overview of the challenges – worth having another look at that ahead of the summit.
All in all, the three scarcity issues of climate, energy and food will dominate centre stage at Tokayo. It’s welcome that the G8 is focusing on them, but unclear that G8 leaders know what kinds of deal they should be agreeing on them – or how to get there. And G8 leaders also appear not to have figured out yet that scarcity issues are uniquely integrated, while the multilateral response to them is anything but. More on that over the course of this week…
by Alex Evans | Jun 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
First things first: bookmark this link. It points to the Economics and Strategy page at CIBC World Markets, the Canadian investment bank whose research team brought us the superb brief I linked to a few weeks back, entitled Could Soaring Transport Costs Reverse Globalisation? Having checked back a few times since then, it has become clear that (a) a lot of their research is focused on food and energy issues, and (b) all of it is excellent.
Anyway, in their current weekly StrategEcon briefing note, Jeff Rubin has some thoughts about the oil price – which he now forecasts at $150 next year and $200 the year after that (“recent announcements from OPEC and China won’t be sufficient to hold oil prices in check. The additional 200,000 barrels per day pledged from Saudi Arabia is a pittance compared to the four million barrels per day that depletion will hive off world production this year”.)
What’s really interesting, though, is this little observation:
As gasoline prices climb inexorably, American driving habits are going to have to undergo a massive change, mimicking the driving habits long adopted by Europeans who have faced much higher gas prices. Average miles driven will likely fall by as much as 15%, while the market share of light trucks, SUVs and vans will be literally halved, reversing the trend of the last fifteen years. But the most fundamental, and unprecedented change will be in the number of vehicles on the road.
Over the next four years, we are likely to witness the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history. By 2012, there should be some 10 million fewer vehicles on American roadways than there are today—a decline that dwarfs all previous adjustments including those during the two OPEC oil shocks. Many of those in the exit lane will be low income Americans from households earning less than $25,000 per year. Incredibly, over 10 million of those American households own more than one car.
Soon they won’t own any.
And the New York Times last week gave some corroboration on the ground:
Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the distant edges of metropolitan areas.
Just off Singing Hills Road, in one of hundreds of two-story homes dotting a former cattle ranch beyond the southern fringes of Denver, Phil Boyle and his family openly wonder if they will have to move close to town to get some relief.
They still revel in the space and quiet that has drawn a steady exodus from American cities toward places like this for more than half a century. Their living room ceiling soars two stories high. A swing-set sways in the breeze in their backyard. Their wrap-around porch looks out over the flat scrub of the high plains to the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
But life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of 5 years ago.
Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.
Here’s James Howard Kunstler, prophet of suburbia’s demise, at TED last year:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ]
by Alex Evans | Jun 26, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system, Influence and networks
A few weeks back, I wrote a post about Abengoa – a biofuels company which has been taking out full page ads in the FT and elsewhere, arguing that biofuels are nothing to do with rising food prices (an argument that calls to mind the image of Lt. Frank Drebbin in The Naked Gun, standing before an exploding fireworks factory and calling through a loudhailer “Move on! There is nothing to see here!”). As I said at the time, Abengoa’s ad campaign was pure cornwash.
So it’s with great satisfaction that I pass on news of the following letter in the Financial Times today:
Sir, in an advertisement in the FT on June 18, Abengoa Bioenergy stated that “Bioethanol is currently the only real alternative for eliminating our addiction to oil”, citing our report “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transport in the EU25 (2004)” as one of two sources to justify that claim.
It is impossible for a reader of our report to reach the conclusion Abengoa draws. It does not even mention biofuels or bioethanol. If the company is genuinely interested in “supported evidence”, as it claims, it must know that T&E’s view on biofuels bears no resemblance to its own. T&E has consistently warned against volume targets for biofuels at European Union level since at least 2004, when we published our report “Sense and Sustainability”. We believe Europe should set an environmental target to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the production of all transport fuels, not a biofuels quantity target that gives a boost to the fuels Abengoa produces regardless of their environmental performance.
Running Europe’s fleet of heavy, gas-guzzling cars on biofuels rather than petrol is no cure. If Europe truly wants to end its addiction to oil, it should start by making cars twice as fuel-efficient as they are today.
Abengoa has misused our name and research in an advertisement claiming to separate “manipulation” from “evidence”. That is reprehensible. As an environmental group, our main capital is our reputation and credibility, which we will defend.
Jos Dings,
Director,
European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E),
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
Wow. What a truly monumental PR cock-up by Abengoa. They probably retain the same PR firm as the PRC.
by Alex Evans | Jun 22, 2008 | Influence and networks, UK
An interesting signal in the ether today from Sky News’s political editor Adam Boulton, who has this to say:
It could be said that Tony Blair’s domestic achievements were overshadowed by international misadventures. It may be said that Gordon Brown’s premiership is working in reverse.
For all the travails at home, GB is beginning to cut a substantial (if unshowy) figure on the world stage. He may tour the world in aircraft more suited to rock-star has-beens than international statesman, but supported by a strong foreign affairs team, GB is developing a credible foreign policy.
Despite a wobbly start with the Americans, relations with the White House are back on track. The PM has taken an admirable lead on Zimbabwe and was the lead voice at last weeks EU crisis summit in Brussels. The sceptics are having a field day with the PM’s Jeddah proposals, but he’s taken a risk by being the only head of government to travel here and the ideas put forward are interesting, if untested.
Blair (and Thatcher for that matter) retained a unstinting belief in the UK’s place in the world. I’d argue that Brown is more realistic and, possibly, constructive.
Boulton’s line is worth noting, given that it’s at odds with the prevailing view among the commentariat (c.f. Jonathan Freedland’s verdict earlier this week – “A year in, it’s clear: we got Brown wrong. He is simply not up to the job”).
Still more interesting is the fact that it’s foreign policy that Boulton sees as Brown’s strong suit. In the early days of Brown’s tenure as PM, the general assumption was that Brown was far less interested in matters international than his predecessor (international development being the one exception); for many, his early unwillingness to go to Brussels seemed to confirm the fact.
But Boulton may well be right that things are changing. Brown did indeed show deftness with Bush and Brussels alike last week (notwithstanding an unlucky hat-trick of comms mess-ups: see here, here and here). The PIPA global polling data on trust in world leaders puts him in second place behind Ban Ki-moon. And on top of that, there’s been a definite pick-up of momentum within Whitehall on the PM’s foreign policy agenda, especially on reforming international institutions and on food, energy and climate change. A lot of serious thinking is underway – both on the content of the agenda, and ways to deliver it – and departments seem to be pulling together more than usual.
As David and I noted last year (and I recalled in a post earlier this week), leaders can become statesmen quickly during a period of flux in international affairs like the current global interregnum. It may be too soon to talk about tides turning just yet – but Brown is asking the right questions on the most fundamental global issues, and putting real resources behind the process.
