STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Failure of the Famine Meme
By Staff News & Analysis - September 06, 2010

Scramble for food companies a warning of crisis to come … Much has been said about how BHP Billiton's bid for Potash Corporation and Canadian fertiliser company Agrium's play for AWB fit in with the growing issue of food security and food shortages. … in his chilling book The Coming Famine, journalist and science writer Julian Cribb warns we are headed towards global food shortages in the next 40 years because of scarcities of water, good land, energy, nutrients, technology, fish and, significantly, stable climates. You can add to that population growth, consumer demand and protectionist trade policies. … The world is running out of farmland. Advanced farming depends entirely on fossil fuels likely to become scarce, supplies of nutrients for farming have peaked and fresh water resources are finite. With global warming, up to half the planet faces regular drought by the end of the century. … Cribb has several solutions; none will come easy. It could start with more free trade and diverting just a tenth of the $US1.5 trillion ($A1.7 trillion) global armaments spending to sustaining global food supplies. It will be costly, but not as costly as failing to create food and water security. The choice is clear. In the 21st century, we either eat – or we fight. – Sydney Morning Herald

Dominant Social Theme: Governments must work hard to avoid famine.

Free-Market Analysis: There are plenty of people who don't and never will believe in organized fear-based promotions orchestrated by a shadowy, familial power elite. But it is this publications raison d'etre to discuss these promotions, point them out to those who wish to accept their possibility and analyze them.

Herein, we wish to move beyond fear-based promotions themselves and trace some inter-linkages. Yes, if one is bold (and that is quality that the Bell occasionally aspires to) one can actually trace not only the rise of these fear-based promotions, but also the difficulties that the power elite is having in maintaining current promotions and building on them with promotions that are expanding or in-the-works.

It is the putative failure of the global warming meme – the pivot point of many power elite promotions – that in our view is bollixing up a number of other promotions as well. There are three promotions in particular that it has affected: peak oil, drought and famine. All three of these promotions were in our view to be predicated on the success of the global warming meme. Here is some more from the article:

"The coming famine is also complex, because it is driven not by one or two, or even half a dozen factors but rather by the confluence of many large and profoundly intractable causes that tend to amplify one another,'' Cribb writes. "This means that it cannot be easily remedied by 'silver bullets' in the form of technology, subsidies, or single-country policy changes, because of the synergetic character of the things that power it.'' …

But as Cribb points out, human beings are remarkable. In the 20th century, they developed weapons that could destroy the world but developed systems and agreements not to do it. They damaged the climate but there are strategies, which may or may not be successful, to tackle global warming. The looming food crisis calls for us to better manage water, land, nutrients and other inputs. Green cities that grow food will need to be established and the real costs of food to the environment and society might be passed on consumers.

You see how Cribb assumes global warming? He can't help himself. This was the promotional plan in our estimation. Roll out the global warming meme, generate carbon trading, regulate people's energy use with Smart Grid (which we've written about) and then add famine and drought into the mix to put more pressure on people to alter their behaviors. The upshot would be an ever-escalating call for global government to deal with these "inter-linked" problems. The trouble is that the foundational meme – global warming is failing to lift off. It's a promotion and due in large part to the truth-telling of the Internet, it is increasingly problematic. Here's something from JunkScience.com:

The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere. In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect …

You see? Were there actually a "greenhouse effect" (itself problematic) water would be responsible. The manmade generation of "carbon" is at any rate of little consequence. This is a classic, fear-based power elite promotion. Create a crisis and then propose additional global governance. But it is not working well; there is growing doubt throughout the West and especially in the critical region of North America and the US. People simply are not panicked by it. Here's something from GlobalWarmingHoax regarding a Pew Research study about US perceptions from early 2010:

Global Warming Ranks Dead Last As An American Priority … Barack Obama, are you paying attention? The American people ranked the global warming hoax dead last on its list of concerns, even below "Trade Policy" and "Moral Decline". In a Pew Research study (dated January 25, 2010) only 28% of American's believed that global warming should even be a budget priority. That is 10% points lower than what it was just 4 years ago, and this was before some of the recent fraud and corruption allegations against certain climate change scientists and the scandals at the U.N.

The specter of famine and drought can be ginned up in our opinion by various manipulations, unfortunately; but without the appropriate narrative, they lack impact. They are simply occurrences and don't support promotional goals. You will not read this elsewhere – because most of the alternative news on the Internet is focused on the power-elite as implacably powerful and endlessly inventive. We however do not believe that this is so. It is an intergenerational, familial conspiracy and as such is only as good as those future generations that inherit the plan and the power.

But over time, generations dissipate what has been initially created. The conspiracy over centuries has waxed and waned in our view. And this version may be coming to an end even as we write. Surely, the tool-kit itself, elaborated on over centuries or even millennia, is robust. But sometimes the tool-kit is less effective, and this is one of those times. The elite seems to have few answers when it comes mass communication breakthroughs like the Gutenberg Press or the Internet.

Certainly, one can ban the offending information (and rediscovered history) but "censorship" is the worst the way of reducing information flows because it inevitably triggers backlash. The reason that the elite spends so much time and money cultivating dominant social themes is to avoid backlash. There are great deal more non-elite than elite.

Is it a troublesome time? A good deal of the upcoming move toward global governance was to be based on global warming in our view. Since global warming has become devalued, fear-mongers like Cribb fall back on less persuasive analysis. The coming famine is seen as "complex" and the result of "large and profoundly intractable causes."

How satisfying is this? Not very. The opening act (global warming) has been muffed in our view. Scenes two and three have nothing to build on. The drama has been drained. The story is increasingly ineffective. Is there scarcity in the world? Of course; but human ingenuity combined with a viable, free-market system can likely overcome almost any challenge. The upcoming scarcity-based promotions have little real reason for existing. They are dangling in mid-air so-to-speak without justification.

Nonetheless, the promotion(s) will grind on. Think tanks write white papers; doctorial students write theses; prestigious journals accept papers; the mainstream media begins to cover the emergent promotion; NGOs and UN study groups lobby for action; legislators take an interest, etc. etc. The ultimate goal is to create a need for an authoritarian (and preferably global) solution that further deprives people of wealth and freedom. These large, international promotions are very difficult to halt. Changing direction is awkward. It is like turning an ocean liner (to mix metaphors) or a tanker on the high-seas.

This is, in fact, the reason that the Bell so often argues that the power elite is having significant difficulty moving the masses toward a predetermined globalist posture in the 21st century. We can certainly sense an increased urgency from the powers-that-be; at the same time, the very tools that they rely on are becoming less dependable and credible.

There are many who will not share our view, no doubt. But we are modest voice (if that) and our contribution is merely to analyze power-elite memes as best we can. So much depended on the global warming meme and upcoming scarcity-based promotions are bound to be chaotic given that the global warming theme itself seems less than captivating. The difficulties that the elite is having building on promotions that seem to be crumbling is reflected in the larger social and financial order.

From an investment standpoint all of this is important. We write regularly that competent and realistic appraisals of the success or failure of elite memes in the 21st century (as they collide with the truth-telling of the Internet) is a big part of investing. Central banking itself is under attack and the seemingly improvised solution of an IMF SDR/bancor currency to replace the dollar seems similarly challenged. Investing itself and the rules of the game are changing in the 21st century.

After Thoughts

We are in no position to predict the future, but in this article we have tried to show logically how we believe the elite intended to progress from one fear-based theme to another in pursuit of the chimera of global governance and a fully international financial system – and how thanks to the foundering of the global warming meme this progression is in jeopardy. The idea that the powers-that-be are struggling to impose their agenda is perhaps a difficult one for many to accept. But we would argue these are unusual times indeed.

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