One of the the founding fathers of the European commercial internet - Peter Dawe, founder of Uniplam Pipex - has been peering into his crystal ball for a long while, trying to warn others of what he was seeing, but ever since the oracle Cassandra created the genre, no one wants to believe bad news.
Peter has recently issued one of his occasional "state of the nation" reports, and coincludes.
"50 years ago, the existential “comet” of the “Limits to Growth” report was spotted by Jorgen Randers and others. The Comet was a long way away, and there was no certainty that it would hit humanity.
In 2008, I took a look at the “Comet” in my book “The New Noah” and concluded that its track needed to be researched and updated. I funded the “Exoshock” world economic model at Anglia Ruskin University.
The Exoshock model demonstrated that the “Comet” was still on track to wipe out civilisation, and that this was likely to happen in the next 20 years.
Working from that model, I concluded that the decline of civilisation would occur in a series of
steps, rather than a steady decline, or indeed a one-off catastrophe. However there were steps
society could make that could delay the crash, or at least mitigate the consequences for some.
Over the last 10 years I have sought to warn society, and to get it to take measures that would help.
Sadly these efforts have been unsuccessful. I’m sure many of you will acknowledge that I tried very
hard, using all the tools at my disposal.
The Covid pandemic might have been the catalyst for a crash. However, the world’s governments mostly managed to control the consequences, or at least delay them. Covid seriously damaged the global industrial supply chains. Damage that is still significantly affecting global industrial productivity.
This brings us to September 2021. The global “dash-to-gas”, in order to disguise the lack of commitment to solving climate change, pushed the demand above available resources. This caused a sharp up-tick in the price. As a consequence, Ammonia production, especially in Europe, was moth-balled, in the expectation that the price of Natural Gas would fall back. However, the fundamentals of the industry meant this was not going to happen. So global fertiliser production reduced significantly. I realised that this was a existential threat to civilisation, and started my final campaign to get the world to understand the consequences of this appalling decision.
And then the Ukraine war. This war did for the global food supply chain, what Covid did for the industrial supply chain. The supply of natural gas for fertiliser in Europe simply stopped. Virtually all ammonia plants across Europe closed. Exports of fertilisers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus also stopped, or at least massively diminished. The consequences of a lack of fertiliser only hit 6 to 18 months later at the next affected harvest. Timing depends on stocks and timing of the harvest.
So today, we have world leaders announcing that there is about to be a World Food Crisis. However, when one looks at what they are actually doing about this crisis, it makes one despair! Only the US and China have prioritised fertiliser production in the allocation of natural gas. This week, the government of Pakistan SHUT its ammonia plant, to redirect gas to electricity to power a/c system of the middle class! The US is still converting crops to bio-fuels, indeed a recent policy relaxed restriction on bio-fuel production!
I use wheat as a proxy for all basic foods, The international price of a tonne of feed wheat has gone from £140 last August to £340 today. This comes on top of the price of energy doubling over the same period. However, currently the headline rate on inflation is below 10%. How can this happen? The answer is stocks. The world is still eating last years harvest, bought at last years prices. However, those stocks are now exhausted.
The next 6 months, will see global food price inflation reflect the underlying price. Global food prices will at least DOUBLE in the next 6 months. The consequences of this on many civilisations across the globe are indeed existential!
The great problem for me up, is I’ve watched milestone after milestone of the descent of civilisations go pass. For me the Comet has hovered over me for years, getting bigger, getting more inevitable. Over the last period, I have been posting evidence of each milestone we pass. I’m now going to stop posting. There is no longer any point, the next 6 months is set, and what happens as a consequence is totally out of my vision.
As in “Don’t Look Up,” the “Mad Entrepreneur” built an escape pod, and to some extent I have too. And maybe the pod can be the basis for rebuilding a better civilisation.
To borrow from another seminal book. “Bye and thanks for all the fish”
And here we go... (21May22)
Africa starves: https://youtu.be/I0kWvBEbtbI
...there is much worse to come...
Don't be distracted by talk of climate, Africa has always been a victim of drought and other climate extremes long before time climate change became a thing.
This present situation is now seriously compounded by Putin's single-handed destruction of Ukraine grain and cooking oil industries, and his part in the energy crisis. His propaganda even taunts the West by suggesting Europe will be overrun by starving refugees.
All of these things should have been seen coming by our politicians and the hopelessly shambolic United Nations... who have barely mentioned the rapidly increasing population in territories where food is always going to become an issue at the first sign of trouble. Elon Musk's insistence that the world is underpopulated is so bizarre, you have to wonder if he is actually all there at times - the world has no buffer capacity or regions left for food surplus growth or population migration. A small crisis quickly grows and spreads.
The big question is "are we going to accept there is currently nothing that we can do about this, and concentrate on putting on our own oxygen mask and life jacket (as per the safety instructions on an aircraft) or are we going to be distracted by the sight of possibly 20% of the earth's population starving, and go down in flames with them?"
The self-sufficiency of the United States and Canada is the envy of the world. Yet both of those countries are under the control of leaders who are demonstrably unfit for the task, and who appear to be manipulated by the Klaus Schwab WEF gang.
And all the BBC and UK media continue to talk about is partygate...
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