BEACH REPORT:

     THE POLITICAL SEASON BEGINS

  The political season in Margate is heating up even before the March 17th kick off of the official campaign. This week in the Down beach Current the City administration of Margate saw fit to publish an extraordinary full page letter http://shorenewstoday.com/db/index-pdf.html in response to a full page letter published a few weeks earlier by a local Citizens Taxpayer group which detailed some of the salaries and benefits packages being paid down @ City Hall.    Neither of these two groups however are running for anything in Margate this spring, so it's kind of strange. It appears though that  the folks down @ City Hall felt threatened enough  by the release and publication of the information to feel the need to respond. Personally, I felt it somewhat  bothersome to see such a letter with all these powerful local public officials including the Police Chief signing onto such a letter. Why are they so sensitive about the release of this publicly available information?  

PART-TIME TOWN - FULL TIME  GOV'T

   In one of the letters published in the opinion section of the same edition of the Current as the above letter was published, a local  Margate citizen pointed out the startling  fact that since 2000, Margate has lost almost 22% of it's residents! In reality over the course of the last 30 yrs. it's probably more like 40% or higher.  Here's the problem. In that same period of declining population the roster of people employed down at Margate City Hall has steadily been increasing.  This same writer pointed out that if the present trends continue and we have no reason to believe it won't,  in a few more decades there could be as many people living in Margate yr. round as there are working @ City hall.  Isn't it time Margate's administration starts considering paring back it's workforce to better suit the actual needs of an increasingly shrinking year round population? I believe it's this fact that has put what's going on down there in an entirely different light as yrs. gone by.  There are some folks  though that also believe that many of the folks that work down at Margate City hall don't really care how many citizens live here and vote here and are only concerned about the ratables ( the no. of property owners who pay taxes.)  That however, might be a bit harsh. 

Needed: a Rational  Plan to Scale back Services

   Whatever the City administration wants  however shouldn't be the final word.  What's most important is what  the actual residents and voters want. Facts are stubborn things and there is no escaping the fact that Margate is no longer a year round residential community to the extent it was in the 50's  thru the early 80's. That period in our town's history is now over. Today Margate is rapidly becoming a summer time vacation resort for the upper middle class and the wealthy that can afford a vacation home at the beach and a yr. around residence somewhere else. We need then to adjust to this reality.  That means we should be beginning to downsize our  year around City staffs  and we should also be in the process of planning to scale back facilities, such as schools and other public facilities that won't  be needed as much anymore as we go forward in time. To date very little has been done in this light.  This has to change.  I believe it's these realities that are  driving the dissent building among many of the residents to the  way in which things are being managed in town these days. It's as if the people at city hall and many of our leaders simply don't get it or care that the town is now lightly populated 9 mos. of the yr.  To some of them it appears all that counts is that the tax revenues keep rolling in and that they can pretend Margate is somehow a year round community that actually requires a fully staffed year round government, as if it's July every month of the year.  Well, it's not July every month and it's time to start acting and planning and budgeting for our actual reality.

NO MORAL HIGH GROUND HERE

No Moral High Ground Here

Stephen Pizzo

Government

by Stephen Pizzo | February 24, 2011 - 11:01am

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If you're looking for the moral high ground in the Wisconsin mess as it spreads to other states, don't bother. Both sides need -- no, deserve -- blame for the mess they got us all into.

I pissed off more than a few of my liberal friends last week when I wrote that I couldn't take sides in the mess. One outraged reader on Smirking Chimp commented that the site should not post my stuff since I clearly was not one of them.

So, I guess I wasn't clear. We're in an unprecedented fiscal crisis. There will be (figuratively speaking) blood on this slaughterhouse floor. Because, there are no sacred cows in a slaughterhouse.

Let's go.

Sacred Cow One - Labor:

No one (in their right mind, or without malice) would seriously suggest that workers can fairly negotiate with large employers unless they are organized. Corporations and government employers are just too big, too powerful and hold way too many of the cards to make such a match fair.

Having acknowledged that does not, however, relieve labor of responsibility for their actions. Organized they have power of their own, and they must wield it in ways that, while securing the fair needs of their members, also don't threaten a sustainable trajectory for their member's employer. 

It all goes back to what I wrote to begin with; both sides need to be working off the same set of honest, confirmed, audited numbers and projections, rather than the cooked numbers that support their side only.

Too often over the past few decades labor has instead gone for the brass ring. As unions consolidated into a few enormous unions, those running them became virtually indistinguishable from the "fat cat" corporate leaders they said they opposed. As the social and income gap between union leaders and working class members grew, throwing workers fat negotiating gains every cycle became job security for union officials. In short, they became like politicians bringing home the bacon to their constituents in order to reelected. 

It all became about the current bargaining cycle, getting the most they could out of management, without regard to the future, without regard to demographic trends such as the looming Baby Boom bulge or emerging global trade and labor markets competing for the same piece of the labor pie.

Now those chickens have come home to roost -- an event that was not only inevitable but totally predictable. Anyone with a $15 pocket calculator could have figured out that overly generous public employee pensions negotiated three decades ago would eventually swamp the ship of state. But short term gains were the name of the game for union negotiators back then.

Ironically, the corporate lust for short term profits at the expense of sustainable profits, has been one of organized labor's long-held criticisms of how American companies operate.

Side 2: Sacred Cow Two - Employers

Labor was right about that. Short term gains continue to be the carrot at the end of the stick, especially for publicly traded companies.  And we're not even talking annual profits, but quarterly profits. 

Companies will do anything to make sure they meet or exceed stock market expectations for their next quarter's earnings, even if they have to do gut their next quarters earnings to make this quarter's targets. They'l lworry about next quarter, next quarter.

Of course that's a dumb, and ultimately fatal, way to run any business. Look no further than the auto industry, which had to be bailed out in the end. But still, the Wall Street tail wags the corporate dog, quarterly.

When companies find themselves in an earning jam they can't get out of easily, their last refuge is to engineer "productivity gains." Put that way it sounds reasonable, but what it means to workers is layoffs. Remaining workers are then expected to maintain, or even boost, current output. The result is a jump in "productivity," more stuff and services produced or provided by fewer workers. Fewer workers mean a fatter bottom line, and happy shareholders.

I'm not saying that's wrong, in and of itself. No company can survived long paying more workers than they absolutely need. But there's a line, and when companies cross that line they are no longer engaged in prudent staffing but rather the old-fashioned "speed up the line" tactic. Ironically it's just a new version of that old management abuse of the last century that spurred the growth of the labor movement to begin with.

Sacred Cows Three - Public Employers/Employees

If there's any creatures even more careless and craven than private management and labor, it's government and government workers. Here we have the perfect storm of self-interest trumping the public good. In this case management is made up of politicians. Quarterly earnings are not their issue, reelection is. When it comes to doing whatever is necessary to get reelected, earnings-hungry captains of industry can't hold a candle to politicians angling for the next election cycle. In some cases they caved into unreasonable and unsustainable union demands simply because they were looking for union support. In other cases they simply did not want labor unrest, strikes or other public service disruptions that might piss off voters.

But on both sides, neither workers or public officials, took the time or effort to find out how benefit gains/concessions extrapolated out over the decades ahead. For example, here in California, many public employees can retire at 90% of their original salary. Anyone who can count on their fingers can figure out that eventually the state would be paying nearly full salaries to both retirees and their replacements, virtually doubling the number of state workers, even though half of those being paid were producing nothing in return. Duh.

And you wonder why nearly every state in the Union is now swimming in red ink.

I'm not saying that there should be no public or private labor labor unions. I am not saying that employers should be able to treat workers anyway they want. What I am saying is that both sides share blame for the mess that's sweeping the nation today. They made it, and they made it together. It takes two to tango and these guys tangoed their little hearts out. It's a mess that's been in the making for long time, and now it's reached the terminal stage. 

The time has come for both sides to come together over a the same set of numbers, numbers provided by fully independent auditors. Because, while figures don't lie, that's only true when they are not compiled by liars. Then each side needs punch their wishes and desires into that spreadsheet and watch as the computer extrapolates them into the future. If the ink turns red going forward, it's a no-go situation for whatever side proposed them.

Repeat this process until the numbers turn black. Then settle the matter for that negotiation cycle and get the hell back to work.

Seriously now folks, is that so radical and unreasonable a request? Those who claim it is are simply not being serious, or honest, or relevant to the future. Busting unions is not the answer, anymore so than bankrupting employers or state governments is the answer.

But there are forces out there who see this moment of crisis as golden opportunity. And if they win the road ahead leads to real trouble. See below.

Koch brothers quietly open lobbying office in downtown Madison

MY TAKE

Ok, so all week I've been presenting the Labor pt. of view. Today, I've thrown in another view, a bit more balanced and I think  realistic.  Steven Pizzo has written what I think is an excellent  balanced view of the ongoing struggle were all witnessing in Wis. and other States.  The truth is as he so aptly pts. out is not on it's face as simple as some on the left and the right are trying to make it appear.  For one thing forget about the comparisons some are making to the struggles for freedom and basic human rights in EGYPT and elsewhere in the ME.  The struggle in Wis. is  NOT such a struggle completely, or  at least it wasn't till Gov. Walker tried to pull away hard fought for rights to collective bargaining ( essentially gutting the Unions right to negotiate.)   He stepped over the line when he and the GOP attempted  to bust the Union. Beyond that as Steven outlines for us it gets a bit more murky. We have a similar situation developing in NJ and our Gov. is IMO going to try and ride it to the White House.  

PLUTOCRACY NOW!!

Click on the title link or this link http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline  and you'll be whisked off to an excellent article on the rapidly evolving state of American politics  and how we got here.  

THE OLIGARCHS OUT TO BUST WHATS LEFT OF THE UNIONS

Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs' Plan to Break Labor's Back

The war on Wisconsin employees isn't just about the budget or Wisconsin: Koch toady Gov. Walker is just one soldier in the billionaire's offensive to kill labor.

February 18, 2011  |  

 

Photo Credit: PR Watch

 

 

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As some 30,000 protesters overwhelmed the state capitol building in Wisconsin today, Democratic state senators hit the road, reportedly with State Police officers in pursuit. The Dems left the state in order to deprive Republicans the necessary quorum for taking a vote on Gov. Scott Walker's bill to strip benefits and collective bargaining rights from state workers. Newsradio 620 WTMJ reported that the Democratic senators were holed up in a Rockford, Illinois, hotel, out of reach of Wisconsin state troopers. Now, it seems, Republican lawmakers are beginning to waver on their support for the union-busting bill.

Last week, Walker threatened to activate the National Guard in the event of any disruption in services from public employees that, he said, could occur as a result of his legislation.

Gov. Walker claims that his war on the public workers in his state is simply about balancing Wisconsin's budget; believe that and there's a collapsed bridge in MInnesota I'd like to sell you. UPDATE: TPM's Brian Beutler reports that half of Wisconsin's budget shortfall results from three of Walker's own business-coddling initiatives.  According to the Capitol Times, as quoted in Beutler's piece, in January, Walker pushed through "$140 million in spending for special interest groups."  Walker claims a budget shortfall of $137 million. You do the math.

The fact is, Walker is carrying out the wishes of his corporate master, David Koch, who calls the tune these days for Wisconsin Republicans. Walker is just one among many Wisconsin Republicans supported by Koch Industries -- run by David Koch and his brother, Charles -- and Americans For Prosperity, the astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch. The Koch brothers are hell-bent on destroying the labor movement once and for all.

During his election campaign, Walker received the maximum $15,000 contribution from Koch Industries, according to Think Progress, and support worth untold hundreds of thousands from the Koch-funded astroturf group, Americans For Prosperity. AlterNet recently reported the role of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Americans For Prosperity in a vote-caging scheme apparently designed to suppress the votes of African-Americans and college students in Milwaukee. In 2008, Walker served as emcee for an awards ceremony held by Americans For Prosperity. There, he conferred the "Defender of the American Dream" award on Rep. Paul Ryan, now chairman of the House Budget Committee. 

On Monday, AlterNet reported on the gaggle of Koch-sponsored politicians who individually graced the podium at last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference (including several from Wisconsin:  Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Ron Johnson). Rep. Michele Bachmann, also a Koch favorite from next-door Minnesota, kicked off the conference.

Not Just About Wisconsin -- or State Workers

It's said that states are the laboratories of democracy, but the Kochs are determined to make Wisconsin a laboratory of corporate oligarchy. Nationwide, the war on public workers -- and government in general -- is not simply a facet of an ideological notion about the virtues of small government. The war on government is a war against the labor movement, which has much higher rates of union membership in the public sector than it does in the private sector.

Labor is seen by corporate leaders as the last strong line of resistance against the wholesale takeover of government (and your tax dollars) by corporations. So, by this line of thought, labor must die.

But it's even deeper than that. The labor movement holds whatever modicum of workplace fairness standards exist for the rest of workers, be they organized or not. Contracts won by organized workers function as a ceiling for what the rest of the workforce is able to demand. Without the labor movement, there's not a worker anywhere in the nation who has much of a bargaining position with her or his employer. And that's the way David Koch and his brother, Charles, want it.

Midwest Frontier Province of Kochistan

Although headquartered in Kansas, Koch Industries has at least 17 facilities and offices in Wisconsin (by my rough count of facilities and companies noted on the Koch Industries "Wisconsin Facts" page), and operates "nearly 4,000 miles of pipeline" through its Koch Pipeline Company, L.P. Which may account for Wisconsin's evolution into the Midwest Frontier Province of Kochistan.

The conglomerate boasts "four terminals and strategically located pipelines" through its Flint Hills Resources, LLC, which it describes as "a leading refining and chemicals company" that markets "gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, olefins, polymers and intermediate chemicals, as well as base oils and asphalt."

The Kochs' Georgia Pacific paper and wood products division has six facilities in Wisconsin. Its C. Reiss Coal Company "is a leading supplier of coal used to generate power," according to the Koch Web site. "The company has locations in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan."

Is it any wonder that Gov. Walker signed Americans For Prosperity's pledge(PDF) against energy reform legislation?

"I Don't Run a Union Facility"

At the Americans For Prosperity Foundation's RightOnline conference last July, a breakout session for managers and entrepreneurs focused on how to talk to workers about legislative issues -- including the Employee Free Choice Act, which would simplify the process by which workers could elect to join a union. Among the panelists was former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who is currently exploring a presidential bid. (Last month, Mark Block stepped down from his perch as state director of Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin chapter in order to serve as Cain's chief of staff.) The panel also featured Timothy Nerenz of The Oldenburg Group, a mining and defense equipment manufacturer based in Milwaukee. Nerenz illustrated how he talked to his workers about EFCA: "[W]e don't operate a union facility. That's all I have to say."

"Now, you certainly have a right to a union, right?" Nerenz continued. "You got rights, I got rights, all God's children got rights. But you need to know before you make that decision what's involved in that decision." When I pressed him after the panel to clarify whether he was threatening to shut down a factory whose workers chose to unionize, he simply restated his initial point: "We don't operate a union facility."

Stimulus Spending Seen as Too Friendly to Unions

You'd think that a big business like Koch Industries would love the idea of stimulus spending, since it's bound to improve the economy. So, what gives? Why do these guys hate the stimulus funds so much?

Well, it seems that too much of it, in their view, goes to preserve the jobs of unionized workers -- like autoworkers and teachers -- which, in turn, preserves unions as part of the U.S. workforce. So that's why, presumably, Americans For Prosperity President Tim Phillips today sent out a newsletter touting an anti-stimulus bill introduced by a House member from the Midwest Frontier Province of Kochistan:

By the way, newly-elected Congressman Sean Duffy from Wisconsin (emphasis mine)  made one of his first efforts in Congress a bill that returns non-obligated stimulus funding to the taxpayers. Now his bill has been included in the continuing resolution the House is working on this week. It’s great to see our efforts to end government overspending become the core of actual legislation and not just something we all rally for.

Bus Follies

While we're on the topic of e-mail blasts, I received quite the indignant one today from something called the Campaign To Defeat Obama, a.k.a., Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a.k.a., Tea Party Express. The e-mail expresses great consternation at the fact that Organizing For America, the remnant of the Obama campaign's organizing effort (now part of the Democratic National Committee), helped get protesters to Madison to protest at the Wisconsin state capitol. "They sent out 54 messages on Twitter alone!" the e-mail shouts (emphasis theirs). They accused the Obama administration of sending in a "mob" to the state capitol to "bully" state lawmakers to abandon Walker's bill.

In the e-mail, Tea Party Express Our Country Deserves Better Campaign to Defeat Obama screams:

Organizing For America is responsible for most of the chaos, and has been filling bus after bus with protestors and shuttled them to the State Capitol.  This was not a spontaneous uprising - this was an organized effort by Barack Obama to further his radical, leftist agenda.

Tea Party Express worked with Americans For Prosperity during the mid-term election campaign. What did they do? Filled buses with activists to get them to rallies and protests.

Today, however, it seems Americans For Prosperity had a hard time finding takers for their free-bus-trip offer for those wanting to support Gov. Walker's union-busting, worker-bashing bill. As of scheduled departure time, reports the RacineJournal Times, only six people had boarded AFP's Racine bus to Madison. Several key Republican lawmakers, according to recent reports, are beginning to waver in their support for Walker's labor-bashing bill.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Streets

Marty Kaplan

Economic Policy | Republicans | Worker's Rights

by Marty Kaplan | February 22, 2011 - 11:07am

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The power has gone out in a typical American town. Wait -- it's not just the electricity. The phones don't work, either. Portable radios are dead. Cars won't start.
But then lawn mowers and cars and lights inexplicably start and stop on their own. What's going on? A meteor? Sunspots? Or are there, as Tommy's comic book suggests, aliens among us, preparing for a takeover? Suspicion poisons the air. Neighbor turns on neighbor. A scapegoat is blamed. A shot is fired. Panic, madness, riot.
And while the humans behave monstrously, the real monsters watch from a nearby hilltop, working a little gizmo that messes with the power on Maple Street, and marveling how easy it is to manipulate these earthlings into destroying themselves.
In what is arguably the best Twilight Zone episode ever, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," Rod Serling wrote a suburban Lord of the Flies, a parable about the fragility of civilization, paranoia and the susceptibility of nice folks to manipulation.
Watching it when it first aired, in the depths of the nuclear arms race, people thought it was meant to ward off a witch-hunt for Reds under the bed. Today, watching what's been going on in Madison, Wisconsin, as well as in Washington, D.C., I can't help thinking that the real monsters are chortling at their success in pitting neighbor against neighbor, and I can't help marveling at their genius for distraction and unaccountability.
The monsters aren't Wisconsin's public employees whose right to collective bargaining has helped their families lead middle-class lives, and who have repeatedly declared their willingness to return to the table and negotiate a shared sacrifice. The monsters are on Wall Street, where state pension funds were sunk into toxic sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. The monsters are on K Street, where lobbyists are fighting financial industry oversight. The monsters are the politicians who are using Wisconsin's deficit as a pretext to demonize public employees and bust their unions.
If you look at the budget that House Republicans just passed, if you listen to the "so be it" language of their leadership, you'd think that the federal deficit is caused by the very people who who've been suffering the most in this recession.
But the monsters aren't low-income pregnant women and mothers who can't afford adequate nutrition for their families; or sick Americans who can't findhealth insurance to cover them; or blue-collar workers who want to retire at an age when there's still some life left in their bodies; or students who can't afford college without Pell Grants; or people who think their government's job includes preventing their air and water from poisoning them.
Sitting on the hilltop, watching Americans turn one another into bogeymen, evading scrutiny and responsibility, are the real sources of our distress.
They're the bankers who've extorted trillions of public treasure, blowing up the deficit while awarding themselves inconceivably fat bonuses.
They're the billionaires who've benefited from a massive transfer of wealth from the middle to the top, and whose political puppets protect them from paying their fair share of taxes.
They're the corporations whose cash has convinced Congress to deregulate industry after industry, despite all evidence that it is the enforcement of rules -- not the magic of the marketplace -- that protects the public's rights.
They're the defense contractors and pork appropriators who've used the cover of "national security" to shield the Pentagon's budget and its procurement process from the cuts and reforms that even Republicans like the Secretary of Defense are advocating.
They're the front groups and propagandists, like FreedomWorks and Fox, who use class warfare and culture wars in order to turn Americans against their own economic interests.
They're the Supreme Court justices whose Citizens United decision, overthrowing a century of settled law, has made our campaign finance system an open sewer, and whose indifference to conflicts of interest in a coming case promises to throw sick people back onto the tender mercies of insurers and to destroy our best hope to curb Medicare costs - further ballooning the deficit and providing cover for even more draconian cuts.
The game in Washington is to use the deficit as camouflage for destroying government's capacity to promote the general welfare. The game in Wisconsin and other states whose new Republican governors and legislative majorities are feeling their oats is to shelter the income of the wealthiest, and to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class.
At the end of the episode, Rod Serling says this: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record: Prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the twilight zone."
Sometimes it's hard to watch the news and not think that things are surreal. The other day, when what's been happening in Madison reminded me of what happened on "Maple Street," I suddenly realized the theme music that goes with it.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
_______

ABOUT AUTHORMartin Kaplan, research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, holds the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society. He has been a White House speechwriter; a Washington journalist; a deputy presidential campaign manager; a Disney studio executive; a motion picture and television producer and screenwriter; and a radio host.

RECIPE FOR REVOLUTION

Published on Monday, February 21, 2011 by The Toronto Star

Drought, Depleted Food, a Recipe for Revolution

by Antonia Zerbisias

The world is just one poor grain harvest away from chaos, warns renowned environmentalist and agricultural economist Lester Brown.

That’s the bad news.

The even worse news is that a lot of the world’s farmland is already looking very dusty, and heavy rains threaten crops elsewhere.

What’s more, grain reserves are down, largely thanks to last year’s heat wave in Russia, floods in Pakistan and the recent cyclones in Australia.

“There’s no assurance that we’re going to have a really good global grain harvest this year,” says Brown, on the phone from his Washington-based Earth Policy Institute. “If we don’t, we won’t be able to dig our way out of the hole we’re in. Food prices will rise to previously unimaginable levels and food riots will multiply, political unrest will spread and governments will fall.

“We haven’t gone over the edge, but we’re much closer than most people think.”

Certainly, there’s widespread agreement that soaring food costs in Tunisia and Egypt contributed to the uprisings in those countries.

Meanwhile, food prices — and demand — are soaring around the world.

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that its global food price index is at a record high, above even the crisis levels of 2008. That’s when there were food riots in dozens of countries — including Egypt, the world’s largest importer of grain.

Just this week, the World Bank reported that prices had hit “dangerous levels,” sinking 44 million more people into the dire poverty already experienced by nearly a billion. And, as Brown points out, every year there are “80 million more people (born) that the world’s farmers have to feed, good weather or bad.”

As if all this wasn’t ominous enough, there’s increasing evidence that investment bankers are speculating on food, sending prices even higher.

It’s a recipe for revolution, all over the world.

Rumblings, the UN said this week, are already being felt in Mozambique, Uganda, Mali, Niger and Somalia in Africa, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Asia and Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti in Latin America.

The Bloomberg business news service reported that “governments from Beijing to Belgrade are raising imports, limiting exports or releasing supply from stockpiles to curb inflation.”

Hunger, hoarding and profiteering have brought violent upheaval before, as France’s Marie “Let them eat cake” Antoinette painfully discovered.

In the mid-19th century, when blight hit the potato crops that fed much of Europe, starving peasants rioted in the streets. The so-called “Springtime of the Peoples” was a continent-wide revolution which ultimately brought about the overhaul of Europe’s long-entrenched class system.

This year, we saw Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, sparked in part by food prices and high unemployment. That, in turn, precipitated the uprising in Egypt, where, as the World Food Program reports, some 17 million — more than one-fifth of the 80.5-million population — can barely feed themselves.

It’s not going to get any better now that Russia has cancelled its grain exports there.

“As we entered 2010 the global larder was pretty good, but it was a crappy year, largely thanks to Russia’s drought,” says Guelph University food security expert Evan Fraser, co-author of Empires of Food. “Now we face the question of what the 2011 harvest will be, and certainly there are some preliminary, medium-range weather forecasts that suggest that China could be considerably down, Australia could be down and even Canada could be down.

“That could mean a very rocky road for the food system. All this could cause significant hardship for the most poor, and political volatility in areas that aren’t the most poor but are politically restless.”

And that includes China, the world’s largest wheat producer, now facing its worst drought in six decades.

“I think China is the place to watch,” says Fraser. “It’s stockpiling food. I think it’s watching Tunisia and Egypt’s food-related unrest cascading into major political protest.”

On the other hand, China could simply call its huge loans to the U.S. — in the form of grain.

“For American consumers, this could be a nightmare scenario,” cautions Brown. “We have never had a food security crisis in this country.

“There would be a lot of political pressure to restrict exports to China in order to keep our food prices down. But China is our banker. The bottom line is there are limits to what you can say to your banker.”

Especially a banker with 1.4 billion people boasting rapidly rising incomes, and thus in a position to send prices sky-high.

“The critical thing relating to food riots is that, as people perceive merchants, politicos, warehouse owners as profiteering from the situation, it’s moral outrage that is particularly explosive,” says Fraser. “Which means that it’s more complicated than just hunger equals collapse and poverty equals suffering. Rising food prices and a sense of moral outrage at profiteering, that’s what equal collapse.”

But good crop or not, we were already heading down the road to disaster, insists Brown.

In his just published World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, he sounds the alarm: on the diversion of grain into ethanol to fuel cars, the growing taste for grain-fed meat in developing countries, the over-pumping of the world’s fossil aquifers to irrigate crops, spreading soil erosion, the burgeoning population and, of course, climate change and extreme weather.

“The rule of thumb that crop ecologists use in assessing the effect of rising temperature is that, for each one degree Celsius rise in temperature, we can expect a 10 per cent decline in grain yields — and we saw that borne out quite dramatically last year in Russia,” says Brown.

“But what if that heat wave had hit Chicago? The U.S. would have lost at least 40 per cent of its 400 million ton harvest. Canada would have been affected as well.

“We would have seen grain prices literally going off the top of charts. We would have seen many grain-exporting countries restricting exports in order to keep their food prices down. In all probability we would have seen oil-exporting countries that import grain trying to barter oil for grain to ensure they got what they needed. And then the rest of the world would have scrambled for whatever is left.”

“Yes, I am worried about it,” says Fraser. “I think the critical thing for us in the next year will be what the rains are like over the next three or four months. This will have a huge impact on global harvests.”

Not to mention global stability.

“The bottom line is, we need to redefine security,” says Brown. “We have inherited a definition of security from the last century, one dominated by two world wars and the Cold war. So, when you mention national security in this country, and I think it’s largely true in Canada as well, people think in military terms.

“But if you were to sit down today and start listing the principal threats to our future security — and indeed to civilization itself — it would be climate change, it would be population growth, it would be soil erosion, and it would be rising food prices, growing political instability, and the number of failing states in the world. And then, maybe, military security. But all these other threats are much more real and imminent.

“We’ve got some basic rethinking to do.”

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2011

Antonia Zerbisias is a columnist for the Toronto Star. In addition to her Star columns, you can read Antonia - and talk back to her - on her blogBroadsides.