17th June 2011

IT JUST DOESN’T STOP….!

The Independent – 3rd June 2011 – Tornadoes hit Massachusetts. Residents were left stunned at the force of nature yesterday after tornadoes roared through the US state of Massachusetts, packing violent winds that ripped off roofs, uprooted trees and left four people dead across the state. The devastation comes less than two weeks after a tornado pummelled Joplin in Missouri, killing at least 134 people.

The Independent – 6th June – Six miles high, the eruption that shook Chile and Argentina. The skies turned black across southern Chile and Argentina as one of the Puyehu-Cordon Caulle volcanoes belched out a heavy blanket of ash, the first eruption in half a century. Nestled in the Andes mountains 540 miles south of the Chilean capital Santiago, the volcano erupted on Saturday, producing a six-mile high tower of gas and causing 3,500 people to flee their homes. …. Authorities were on alert from early Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon. The National Emergency Office said it recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour.

Our comment: We’re beginning to wonder what’s going to happen next!

GROUNDS FOR WAR?

International Herald Tribune – 3rd June -- When the Nile runs dry. A new scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home.

Some of these land acquisitions are enormous. South Korea, which imports 70 per cent of its grain , has acquired 1.7 million acres in Sudan to grow wheat – an area twice the size of Rhode Island. In Ethiopia, a Saudi firm has leased 25,000 acres to grow rice, with the option of expanding. India has leased several hundred thousand acres there to grow corn, rice and other crops. And in countries like Congo and Zambia, China is acquiring land for biofuel production.

These land grabs shrink the food supply in famine-prone African nations and anger local farmers, who see their governments selling their ancestral lands to foreigners. They also pose a grave threat to Africa’s newest democracy: Egypt.

Our comment: The Tribune’s article included the comment that avoiding dangerous conflicts over water will require co-operation by all nations involved first of all by educating the populations in use of water – then all nations must adopt more water-efficient irrigation techniques and plant less water-intensive crops. Finally co-operating in banning land grabs by other nations and companies. The article concluded by saying “None of these initiatives will be easy to implement, but all are essential as competition for the Nile’s water could become deadly.” Given the track record of the nations involved it isn’t likely that the necessary co-operation will be forthcoming.

RECIPE FOR DISASTER

The Guardian – 1st June – Hunger in Guatemala a land of plenty. Domingo Tamupsis works as a harvester on a Guatemalan sugar plantation for a firm that exports bioethanol to fill the fuel tanks of cars in the US. He works 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a country that is a leading producer of food for global markets. His settlement in the fertile Pacific coastal area is surrounded by industrial farms, but he earns so little his family cannot afford to eat every day. Some days he survives his shift of hard physical labour on nothing but the mangoes that drop from trees by the roadside. …. Guatemala is a prime example, according to a report by Oxfam, of how the global food system is failing. The organisation predicts that the average price of staple foods will double by 2030. “Spiralling food prices, climate chaos, rising demand on top of a collapsing resource base, and markets rigged against the many in favour of the few” are, the charity warns, taking us into a new era of crisis in which more and more people are going hungry.

Our comment: It goes without saying that Domingo’s family cannot and do not eat every day. What we are seeing in Guatemala and in many nations of Africa, the Middle East and of the Pacific area are the incredible, cruel, greedy attitudes of so many in government and in the big companies many owned by people of the western nations. We can be sure that God is not pleased with these situations. 1 John 3:17 says this; ‘But whoso has this world’s good (goods), and sees his brother have need, and shuts up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him.” The time is coming and now is not far away when those who so abuse people like Domingo and his family are going to learn some bitter lessons. Here is another example of what is happening.

The Independent – 1st June – World’s food system broken, Oxfam warns. Doubling of prices and 70 per cent rise in demand means millions more will go hungry. Millions more people across the world will be locked into a cycle of hunger and food crisis unless governments tackle a “broken” production system which is being exploited by speculators and will cause a doubling in basic foodstuff prices in the next 20 years, a leading aid agency (Oxfam) has warned.

Research by Oxfam has highlighted a combination of factors, ranging from climate change and population growth to subsidies for biofuels and the actions of commmodities traders, which will throw development in poor countries into reverse unless radical reform of the global food system is undertaken. …. Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, said: “The food system is pretty well bust. All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone.

CLONING OF ANIMALS

The Daily Mail – 26th May – From today, unlabelled clone meat in the shops. Food from the offspring of cloned animals, including meat and milk, has been approved for sale without labels from today. The Food Standards Agency yesterday tore up proposals that would have required it to go through a safety assessment. …. It means unlabelled food produced using the offspring of clones, such as dairy products, meat pies and ready meals, can now go on sale without any threat of legal action.

Our comment: There hasn’t been a lot of information published in the press as to what exactly is proposed. Nor has there been much said by the government that we can recall. It has been said, however, that cloning will produce herds of supersize animals able to produce vast quantities of milk and meat which will do no harm to the profit margins.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Independent – 30th May – Melting of the Arctic ‘will accelerate climate change within 20 years’. An irreversible climate “tipping point” could occur within the next 20 years as a result of the release of huge quantities of organic carbon locked away as frozen plant matter in the vast permafrost region of the Arctic, scientists have found. …. The Arctic has experienced some of the greatest climatic changes in the world over recent decades. Summer sea ice has melted back to record minimums, average temperatures have increased dramatically, and scientists have documented significant melting of the underground permafrost, from Alaska to eastern Siberia. …. Dr Schaefer of the US National Snow and Ice Date Centre in Boulder, Colorado said “There are two important messages from this study. The first is that the melting permafrost can release huge amounts of carbon and, secondly, the process is irreversible on a human timescale and will affect our targets for reducing fossil fuel emissions.”

Our comment: And, as we have pointed out before, these things don’t wait until the 20 years have passed and then suddenly change! The changes are already taking place and we ignore these at our peril!