Archive for the 'Trade' Category

The food crisis

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months, 1 week ago
in Developing world, Economics, Environment, Foreign policy, International, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Trade
. 50 Comments

First it was oil. Now it’s food, and the people of the developing world are, as usual, copping the worst of it:

Basic access to food is slipping out of reach for many people in developing countries. The cost of the rice has risen by more than three-quarters in two months and the price of wheat has more than doubled in the same time.

The desperation in dozens of countries has turned deadly of late. In the past week alone there have been violent, food-related riots in Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cameroon.

While there are short term factors pushing up food prices - amongst them, the drought in south-eastern Australia - there are also long-term factors pushing the price up, some not easily fixable, and some that are. Continue reading ‘The food crisis’

Save the Microbee…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Policy, Politics, Trade and Transport
. 71 Comments

Fisher and Paykel have just announced hundreds of job cuts at their plant in Brisbane. Victa mowers are still made in Australia, but, increasingly, they’re powered by less environmentally destructive four-stroke engines built overseas. The last distinctively Australian personal computer was probably the MicroBee. I believe that the last televisions produced in Australia came out of the Sanyo factory in Wodonga in the late 80s or early 1990s. And Australia has never mass-produced jet airliners, bulk oil tankers, or watches. And, in general, this hasn’t seemed to bother governments or the broader public too much. But the conniptions of the Australian automotive industry have always been a special case.

Continue reading ‘Save the Microbee…’

Next, the farm boom

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months, 1 week ago
in China, Climate change, Developing world, Economics, Markets, Trade and Water
. 32 Comments

It’s all doom and gloom throughout Australia’s farms, isn’t it?

Nope. Now that the drought has started to break in parts of eastern Australia, farmers can take advantage of record prices for “soft commodities”, such as grains. Meanwhile, dairy farming’s not doing so bad either - over in New Zealand, dairy farmers can’t get enough people to work on their properties as the industry’s growing too fast to keep up. While the irrigated dairies of the Murray-Darling basin can’t get enough water to produce much, over the other side of the Divide Gippsland dairy farmers are doing quite nicely.

What’s going on? Well, a lot of it’s the same story as mined commodities - increased demand from China and India. As people get themselves out of poverty, one of the first things they tend to buy more of is meat. And the vegetarians are right - it requires a heck of a lot more than one kilogram of grain (that could otherwise be eaten) to produce a kilogram of pork, chicken, or fish. Throw in the United States’ (and to a lesser extent, the EU’s) quixotic attempt to grow its way to “energy independence” through turning its corn crop into alcohol, and you’ve got a big jump in demand for all things agricultural.
Continue reading ‘Next, the farm boom’

Australia 2020 website up

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months, 2 weeks ago
in Australia 2020 summit, Climate change, Economics, Environment, Government, Health, Policy, Politics, Technology and Trade
. 41 Comments

Well, whether it’s an empty talkfest or a serious contribution to our nation’s future, the Australia 2020 conference now has a website.

Nominations need to be in by February 25, and supported by two personal referees. For those that don’t get in, there’s the opportunity to make a 500-word submission; whether these will actually get read is open to question given that all the participants are volunteers attending in their spare time.

Continue reading ‘Australia 2020 website up’

Cheaper natural gas - not for long…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
11 months ago
in Climate change, Energy and Trade
. 8 Comments

Apparently natural gas bills are likely to get cheaper in Victoria in the short term, after the Essential Services Commission proposed a cut in the service charge paid to the monopoly distributors of gas throughout the state.

If natural gas would stay cheap nationwide, this will not only be good for those of us who currently have gas appliances, it will be rather convenient for governments both federal and state. New South Wales is seriously considering building a natural-gas fired baseload power plant instead of the coal-fired ones NSW has relied upon for many decades; federal Labor has proposed phasing out electric water heaters; for most people with gas available, a replacement with a gas system will be the cheapest alternative (and will have greenhouse emissions lower than solar-electric).

However, in the longer term, it’s pretty clear gas prices are going to go up, as explained to Geraldine Doogue in this radio interview with Nigel Wilson of the Oz:

Continue reading ‘Cheaper natural gas - not for long…’

Elements of Globalism: Lithium

Published
by
Gummo Trotsky
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics, Energy, Environment, Technology and Trade
. 31 Comments

Fifteen Gram Lithium IngotLithium is the first of the Group I elements of the periodic table - one of the base metals. It is a highly reactive white metal and less dense than water. Pure, metallic lithium is obtained by electrolysis of lithium salts at high temperature. Because it is so highly reactive it quickly tarnishes when exposed to air, acquiring a dark black coating.

Lithium and lithium compounds have several legitimate commercial uses and and at least one criminal use in the synthesis of methamphetamine. Lithium’s principle commercial use is in the manufacture of long-life and rechargeable batteries.

Non-rechargeable lithium batteries are used extensively in electronic devices such as calculators, cameras, computers, electronic games and watches. The BIOS battery on your PC - the coin-sized metallic disk with “CR2032 3 volts” stamped on one side with the manufacturer’s name - is powered by an electrochemical reaction involving lithium.

Continue reading ‘Elements of Globalism: Lithium’

The true cost of ethanol from corn

Published
by
Brian
1 year, 4 months ago
in Technology and Trade
. 31 Comments

The ancient Mayans believed they were created by gods who mixed their blood with ground corn. They called themselves “Children of the Corn,” a phrase Mexicans still sometimes use to describe themselves.

Corn, it seems, is not just a staple food for 107 million Mexicans, it is part of their culture. You might say it is part of the fabric of their being. Poor Mexicans (40% were below the poverty line in 2003) get 40 % of their protein from tortillas. Recently the price of tortillas went out of control:

The typical Mexican family of four consumes about one kilo — 2.2 pounds — of tortillas each day. In some areas of Mexico, the price per kilo has risen from 63 cents a year ago to between $1.36 and $1.81 earlier this month.

With a minimum wage of $4.60 a day, Mexican families with one wage earner have been faced in recent months with the choice of having to spend as much as a third of their income on tortillas — or eating less or switching to cheaper alternatives.

So now they are switching to cheaper and far less nutritious alternatives, such as instant noodles.

Continue reading ‘The true cost of ethanol from corn’

“Local food” and the environment

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 4 months ago
in Climate change, Environment, Policy, Trade, Transport and Water
. 49 Comments

Al Gore includes it as one of his top tips for reducing your carbon emissions. The Australian Conservation Foundation calls for it? What is it? Cutting back on “food miles” - or, put simply, eating food grown close to where you live rather than shipped across the oceans.

However, there seems to be a bit of a paucity of hard quantitative analysis on how much difference this actually makes - and I’ve been rather skeptical in the past because bulk freight, particularly shipping, is incredibly fuel-efficient compared to cars.

Courtesy of the British government, we now have some economists on the case on a whole variety of issues relating to the environmental impact of agriculture. Their very large report (note: big PDF file) is too big to consume in the one sitting, but the executive summary is interesting enough on its own. While they can’t reach definite conclusions on many things (for instance, comparing organic to conventional agriculture), one observation they do make is as follows:

Significance of transport in the lifecycle: whilst the data are not clear-cut, what there is suggests the environmental impacts of car-based shopping (and subsequent home-cooking for some foods) are greater than those of transport within the distribution system itself.

So why are “food miles” given so much attention by various environmental groups when they seem to be very much a second-order issue?

Captain Ahab sends round the grog and nails his coin to the mast

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year, 5 months ago
in Climate change, Environment, Federal election 2007, Policy, Politics and Trade
. 6 Comments

Today’s Age carries a report on internal Labor divisions over its climate change policy.

I have sent a letter to the editor which encapsulates a number of points I and others have made at LP. The text is as follows:

Some comments are in order regarding internal Labor divisions over its climate change policy.

Firstly, there will be no repeat of the 2004 Tasmanian forests situation because Rudd is not Latham, and because the Mining and Energy Division of the CFMEU, unlike that union’s Forestry Division, is not dealing under the table with Howard government ministers to campaign against the ALP’s environment policy. Visit the Mining and Energy Division’s website and you will find endorsement of the ALP’s greenhouse policy, support for the Kyoto Protocol and an electoral enrolment campaign under the slogan “Kick Out Howard”.

Secondly, Peter Garrett was simply being honest with his comments about the long-term future of Australia’s coal industry. Most of our coal is mined for export, so it is nonsense to pretend that the industry can keep expanding if our major customers move to a carbon-constrained economy.

One suspects the unnamed MPs quoted in your report are either greenhouse denialists or people who have the same mindset towards environmentalists as Captain Ahab had towards Moby Dick. Both such character types are known to exist in the ALP.

Update: This morning on ABC News Radio, Christian Kerr commented that some Federal Labor MPs are very keen, albeit anonymously and off the record, to condemn the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division over its greenhouse policy discussion paper which I have previously commented on and linked to. He also asserted, without offering any evidence, that a gap has opened up between the union and mining workers over the issue.

On the first point I have no doubt that Kerr is correct. Such sentiment would be coming from the denialists and the Captain Ahabs, and probably also from MPs linked to unions with which the CFMEU is competing for coverage in the mining and energy sector.

On the second point I have to be sceptical. There is nothing in the discussion paper which can be construed as making any concessions in terms of accepting reduced activity or employment in the coal industry. In any case the union’s structure - which is arguably as democratic as any union’s in Australia - should ensure that any such gap which arises will be quickly filled.

Finally, a further indication of the role the Mining & Energy Division is likely to play in this year’s Federal election can be found here.

Yes, we will have bananas

Published
by
Brian
1 year, 10 months ago
in Politics and Trade
. 60 Comments

There are two things that would strike terror into the souls of banana growers. One would be a repeat of Cyclone Larry this summer. The second would be if Australia started importing bananas from the Philippines, or any cheap labour country.

But Howard, if he is doing his job, knows that Australian consumers would be better off if we had no banana industry, better off if we imported all our bananas and �paid all the banana growers to sit on the beach for the rest of their lives.�

That is what we are told by Digby Gascoine, now retired, formerly the first head of Biosecurity Australia, and the man who represented Australia in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations which established the World Trade Organisation. The WTO at some time in the medium-term future will decide whether we retain a banana industry, irrespective of what our politicians want, unless Biosecurity Australia meanwhile decides to allow it to be devastated by cheap imported disease-bearing bananas.

Continue reading ‘Yes, we will have bananas’