We Are Consuming Ourselves?

     Consumption patterns dictate the longevity of a species' survival, and technology has a limit when it comes to extending this longevity as far as homo sapiens are concerned. As our consumption patterns increase by day, we must now face the hard facts. Are we consuming ourselves? Now most people do not want to hear this “blasphemy” as it may be called, but our ignorance of consumption patterns must be relieved.

      An example of this is expressed in our consumption habits from 1949 to 2011, and the affects we can witness on our planet. To begin, based on statistics from the website, World-O-Meters, currently as of now, 10:22a.m. on December 4, 2012, we (as a global species) have consumed 4,821,778 hectares of forest this year. We have also consumed 4,596,633 billion Liters of water this year, and 170,500,248 MWh of energy today (including non-renewable and renewable sources). Just from these numbers we can see that we are consuming too much. In fact, we don’t even need the numbers, remember the Dust Bowl in the U.S. How about the countless crop famines that sweep over Africa, or all the desertification being experienced in Australia. All these visual signs have been accumulating since humans began developing agricultural societies, and they have not subsided. Now our practices have been perfected, decreasing the inevitable collapse, but it is not enough. Between 1949 and 2011 we have most likely increased our consumption habits a hundred fold. I am sorry, but this is pathetic. Who gave us the right to consume so much? I know some possible answers, but these answers have no credibility in today’s world. But that is beside the point, the point of this post is to relieve us of our ignorance towards global consumption habits, which along with the scale of them, the equality of consumption habits on a global scale is at an all-time low. Meaning that global resource allocation is becoming more unequal every day, as corruption and greed continue to ravage our species. Obviously now I hope to have relieved you reading this of any ignorance you may have had towards our species’ consumption habits, and if not, that is too bad.

      As the inequality continues we find terms in the news like “true price”, which brings to mind all kinds of meanings. This term “true price” really only has one meaning though, and this meaning is rooted in most of the economic problems facing our societies poor. An example that clarifies this term is the U.S. agriculture system. The United States government provides subsidies to the agricultural businesses in the country, which in turn allows the agribusiness's to create synthetic prices for the crops they produce. These prices are at lower values than what small non-subsidized farms could sell their products at, which creates an unfair advantage leading to the smaller farms either specializing in crops that do not have subsidized competitors, or eventually going out of business due to competitive costs. So this relates back to the “true price” because as the U.S. agribusinesses provide food all over the world, this allows them to sell their product at a lower price than the local farms of the countries buying from the U.S., which in total creates a global phenomena resulting in the collapse of the foundational diversified small agribusinesses. This subsidized cost that U.S. agribusinesses sell their product at is synthetic. If we wanted to experience the “true price” of food, then the subsidies would be ended, the large agribusinesses would collapse due to their lack of efficiency, small diversified agribusinesses would start back up providing product that has a “true price” with it, and on a global scale the economy of food production would prosper, as more small operations would begin again providing security to families in countries experiencing development.

      Until agricultural subsidies are ended in countries like the U.S., we will continue to see global degradation and inequality. But until then there are many other aspects that we must consider when making decisions regarding the food supply when making and changing policies. One such policy is the production of ethanol, the biofuel developed from corn. This policy towards developing the biofuel comes with a very “true price” in food production. Since the first drop of ethanol was produced food prices have been slowly climbing as more and more acres of producing soil are designated to producing corn for ethanol. Now that corn and other food prices have tripled in other parts of the world, and oh yeah, ethanol has not even had an impact towards reducing emissions, we can now find where we went wrong. Was it when the patent office boxed all the different patents for clean free energy? Was it when the FBI went and confiscated and persecuted hundreds of scientists and their labs that were working on solving the energy crisis? Or maybe it was when Monsanto began patenting seeds for GMO crops, which then led them to destroying any farm that had said seeds from cross-pollination? Or maybe it was all of it?

      I just hope we come to our senses before all is lost, just because I live on the same planet as everyone else, doesn’t mean I am aloud to act irresponsibly.

Thank you for your interest, please comment and subscribe.

Onward,

A concerned inhabitant of planet Earth.