The Walls Move In

Gold is at a 28 year high. Oil prices are in constant flux; nudging all time records. The JSE has blasted through the 30 000 level, food prices are on the march - some of them doubling since last year. Car sales in South Africa have shrunk year on year for the sixth consecutive month. Banks are issuing alerts. Did you ever stop to think: could something be awry*?


Remember the clamour of voices a long time ago about oil prices? Now we're seeing oil remain comfortably in the $70 range. It's a matter of time before that mad dog goes yelping beyond $100. Some of us thought it would be last year or this year. Every month this doesn't happen, means an even sharper crash. People who say this sort of thing are typically called 'doomsayers'.


Unfortunately, the message has been lost in noise and hysteria. The message (once again) is this: We are at a Peak, a global peak, the likes of which we will never see again. Never before and never again will so many people - so many individuals - enjoy so much lavish and luxurious wealth and power as they are now. This exceptional period of surplus and abundance has been unleashed courtesy of the legacy of fossil fuels. These fuels take millions of years of sunlight bathed forests to shore up. We've pissed half of it into the atmosphere in less than 100 years.


Until now, this fantastic We should say cheap and abundant, because from here on out, with the human population of this planet having absorbed all the capacity that such artificial energy abundance created - we are now moving towards scarcity.


The implications of this are scary. Try not to panic. I spoke recently to a wealthy private game farm owner, an intelligent doctor. He was saying that ecosystems that are out of balance don't correct themselves neatly and seamlessly. They do so in chronic and destabilising crashes. So if a certain species breaches capacity, it doesn't just slowly reduce itself until it fits into a newer and better and more balanced efficiency. Instead, it crashes.


Logic indicates that the same fate awaits us. By us I mean you and all the human beings around you, and every human being you have ever met. I know it sounds dramatic. In fact, it's impossible to overdrammatize. In our lifetimes we are going to see Big Shit. We'll see the human population crash from over 6 billion, and if we're lucky, we'll have 1 billion left over. The doctor I spoke to reckoned on less - a few hundred million perhaps.


I'm sorry if that sounds pessimistic. It's really just a logical and realistic assessment. Meanwhile, the newspapers are starting to notice that something - they're not sure what - is awry. Meanwhile, while the stock exchanges celebrate and crash through new records, so too does worldwide weather, reducing crops to debris and dust. The walls move in on a world that thinks it can continue moving on towards happily ever after. I wish it was a happy ending folks, but unfortunately, it isn't.


The major challenge in the future will be agriculture. Translation: the jobs of the future will be farming, as we attempt to feed ourselves. It's a grim and austere future that right now seems impossible. That is the extent of our common delusion.


Awry: Adj. 1. awry - turned or twisted toward one side; "a...youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry"- G.K.Chesterton; "his wig was, as the British say, skew-whiff"
askew, cockeyed, skew-whiff, wonky, lopsided
crooked - having or marked by bends or angles; not straight or aligned; "crooked country roads"; "crooked teeth"
2. awry - not functioning properly; "something is amiss"; "has gone completely haywire"; "something is wrong with the engine"
amiss, haywire, wrong
malfunctioning, nonfunctional - not performing or able to perform its regular function; "a malfunctioning valve"
Adv. 1. awry - away from the correct or expected course; "something has gone awry in our plans"; "something went badly amiss in the preparations"
amiss
2. awry - turned or twisted to one side; "rugs lying askew"; "with his necktie twisted awry"
askew, skew-whiff

Best Food Book

From Publishers WeeklyWhat can we do to help stop global warming, feed the hungry, prevent cruelty to animals, avoid genetically modified foods, be healthier and live longer? Eat vegetarian, Robbins (Diet for a New America) argues.

Noting the massive changes in the environment, food-production methods, and technology over the last two decades, he lambastes (in a manner less tough-mindedly restrained than Frances Moore Lapp‚'s classic Diet for a Small Planet) contemporary factory-farming methods and demonstrates that individual dietary choices can be both empowering and have a broader impact.

Robbins, heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire (he rejected it to live according to his values), takes on fad diets, the meat industry, food irradiation, hormone and antibiotic use in animals, cruel animal husbandry practices, the economics of meat consumption, biotechnology and the prevalence of salmonella and E. Coli. Some details are downright revolting (euthanized dogs and cats often are made into cattle feed), horrific (some 90% of cows, pigs and poultry are still conscious when butchered) and mind-boggling (it takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef). Despite all this and more distressing information, Robbins ends on a hopeful note, detailing growth in organic farming, public awareness and consumer activism worldwide, as well as policy changes, especially in Europe.

Well researched and lucidly written, if sometimes overly sentimental and burdened by cliched rhetoric, this book is sure to spark discussion and incite readers to examine their food choices. (July 2)Forecast: Diet for a New America was both controversial and influential; Robbins's name (and that of Dr. Dean Ornish, who provides a foreword) should draw readers, particularly to the author's six-city western U.S. tour.

Global warming, animal rights, meat safety and genetically modified food are being recognized as important issues, but the kind of sea change the book calls for is unlikely to find a mass audience.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.