Organizing for America | Epiphany Blog: Linking Food and Oil: A Bad Marriage Made in the USA

Linking Food and Oil: A Bad Marriage Made in the USA

By Afrothetics - May 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm EDT

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This week, at a news conference for the launch of the ISIS report on food futures, the Rt. Hon Michael Meacher, MP, paid tribute to Food Futures Now as the most authoritative and comprehensive statement of an alternative for a better world agricultural and ecology that he has yet seen. He also supported the findings of the recent International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which are much in line with those of Food Futures Now, and maintained his stance on genetically modified (GM) crops by saying, “GM is not the answer, whatever the question was.” He made an explicit link between the recent food riots in over thirty countries around the world and the reckless investment and subsidies by the US Government and international agencies that have misdirected a further thirty million tons of maize grains to biofuels.

MP Meacher delivered a dire warning that the post peak oil prices that have now reached a record $119 a barrel are set to rise to $200 a barrel in the next few years, and the reserves will not last us until anywhere near the end of this century. The current strikes shutting down the North Sea pipeline and soaring diesel and petrol prices are portents of the future of fossil fuels. The energy crisis has apocalyptic implications for industry, particularly industrial agriculture and transport, he said. This will also affect the capacity for war, which for many would be a positive outcome. Whichever way one sees it, the world is being dragged towards a profound and inevitable transformation of its energy economy that aside from sustainable and local food systems requires the introduction of a high carbon tax, an overhaul of its trading systems, an end to US and EU tariffs and subsidies, and seriously addressing the mal-distribution of land, he said. Reform is only possible when the conditions for those in power becomes untenable, so (like the ancient Athenians) he called upon all of us to be as “revolting” as possible! Consequently, in the USA, we need more Rev. Jeremiah Wrights, not less. Power concedes nothing without confrontation.

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