Alternative algae fuel still a pipe dream, suggests study

(NaturalNews) Engineers and scientists from around the world have been exploring the possibility of producing “green” fuel using natural algae, and they say that one day it could revolutionize the fuel production industry and lessen or eliminate reliance on petroleum-based fossil fuels. But a study presented by the Rand Corporation, a global policy think tank, suggests that, despite the research efforts, little has been accomplished in actually making algae fuel a reality. Various research facilities around the world have taken up the task of developing a system that converts algae into lipids and oils using natural sunlight and carbon dioxide. The hope is that these algae liquids can be converted into large enough quantities of usable fuel in order to help offset fossil fuel use. “There are probably well over 100 academic efforts to use genetic engineering to optimize biofuel production from algae,” said Matthew C. Posewitz, an assistant professor of chemistry at the Colorado School of Mines, to the New York Times . “There’s just intense interest globally.” While testing and experiments conducted on algae in laboratories have shown some promise, scientists are a long way off from actually producing algae-based liquid fuel in usable quantities. And Rand says that even ten years from now, the technology will still hardly be able to produce significant quantities of the fuel. “We think algae is great, but it’s a research topic,” said Jim Bartis, lead author of the Rand study. “There is no evidence that we can produce it economically any time soon. The less you know about a technology, the better it looks.” According to some, though, the technology is already viable. In 2008, a company called Sapphire Energy claimed to have produced usable quantities of crude oil from algae. The company said that production costs are roughly the same as those associated with petroleum extraction, and the process successfully produces diesel, jet fuel, and premium-grade gasoline (http://www.naturalnews.com/024603_fuel_oil_algae.html). Sources for this story include: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/the-future-of-algae-fuels-is-when/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/energy-environment/26algae.html

Food bubble collapse threatens survival of human civilization

(NaturalNews) The following article originally ran on NaturalNews in 2008 but was shifted over to Counterthink.com which ultimately got replaced with political cartoons. In light of today’s sudden attention on the food bubble and the possible collapse of human civilization as described by author and environmentalist Lester Brown , it seems highly relevant to bring this article back. After all, we were talking about the coming food bubble five years ago, long before most people were aware any such thing existed. In this article, in fact, you’ll see that in 2008 I wrote, “…humanity is just one crop season away from mass starvation.” Today, in 2011, a news headline about Lester Brown’s book says, “World is ‘one poor harvest’ from chaos, new book warns.” (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.999426eed38d24123132435f3d303867.31&show_article=1) Sound familiar? What Lester Brown’s book is warning about in 2011 is the same thing NaturalNews has been writing about for several years, even before 2008. Here’s the full article I wrote in 2008, with a few edits and updates. It seems like mainstream consciousness if finally ready to accept this idea — an idea that seemed “radical” just three years ago. Suddenly, it now seems obvious . The Biofuels Scam, Food Shortages and the Coming Collapse of the Human Population It was one of the dumbest “green” ideas ever proposed: Convert millions of acres of cropland into fields for growing ethanol from corn, then burn fossil fuels to harvest the ethanol, expending more energy to extract the fuel than you get from the fuel itself! Meanwhile, sit back and proclaim you’ve achieved a monumental green victory all while unleashing a dangerous spike in global food prices that’s causing a ripple effect of food shortages and rationing around the world. I think politicians need to spend less time bragging about their latest greenwashing schemes and more time studying The Law of Unintended Consequences . Because while growing fuel on cropland initially sounds like a great idea, any honest assessment of the total impact leads you to the inescapable conclusion that biofuels are largely a government-sponsored scam . With a few exceptions (see below), biofuels produce no net increase in energy output, and they cause food shortages while creating strong economic incentives for the destruction of the very rainforests we desperately need to stabilize the oxygen content of the atmosphere. And now we’re just starting to see the early signs of the economic and social insanity that has been unleashed by this foolish pursuit of biofuels around the world: Food rationing in Sam’s Club stores in the U.S., rapidly-rising prices on bread, rice and corn, and price spikes at cafeterias and restaurants that depend on these staple ingredients. The price of rice has tripled globally, unleashing riots in Haiti and Bangladesh, and the United Nations has issued warnings that millions of people around the world now face starvation because they can’t afford to buy food. Americans are even starting to hoard food once again, after years of avoiding basic preparedness measures. (One benefit to all this, however, is that farmers are actually getting paid decent prices for their crops now, after years of operating on the verge of bankruptcy…) Most biofuel efforts are a sham Not all of these price spikes are due to the conversion of croplands to biofuel fields, but much of it is. As a result, it’s suddenly becoming obvious to nearly everyone that the pursuit of biofuels, as currently structured, is a grand greenwashing hoax. It doesn’t produce more fuel than it consumes, and it drives up food prices, too. Of course, there are biofuels programs that really do work. The growing and harvesting of sugar cane in Brazil, for example, provides an 8-to-1 return on energy investment. But even that pursuit is tarnished by claims of unsafe work environments and massive environmental pollution (the sugar cane fields are burned before being harvested, a process that releases huge amounts of CO2 into the environment). The only truly promising biofuels technology available today is based on microalgae. Feed CO2 to a vat of algae, and you can produce biofuels cheaply and responsibly, without destroying the environment. But these programs are only experimental. Nobody is producing biofuels on a large scale from algae farms (not yet, anyway). And that leaves the great American breadbasket: The corn and wheat fields. It is here that food is now being displaced by crops grown for biofuels processing. So where a farmer used to grow corn as a food source, he’s now growing it to sell to a biofuel processing facility which turns the corn into ethanol. Obviously, the laws of economics come into play here, meaning that every bushel of corn used for biofuels production is one less bushel of corn available for food. Factor in the laws of supply and demand, and you can see that the more crops we use for biofuels, the higher the prices will rise for food. Politicians, it seems, have no understanding of economics. They need to study the basics as they are presented in Henry Hazlitt’s Book, Economics in One Lesson , which is a Libertarian-oriented guide that explains basic economics to anyone willing to learn. Economics is focused on the study of human behavior… or more precisely, consumer choice. Now, it seems, consumers are about to be faced with a choice they never wanted to have to make: Should I buy fuel, or food? In other words: Do I want to drive my car, or do I want to eat? You can have fuel or food, but not both Under a biofuels-focused agricultural policy, the same limited resources (soil, sunlight and water, essentially) can be used for only one thing at a time. You can’t use the corn twice, obviously (you can’t eat the corn and process it for biofuels at the same time), so you’ve got to make a choice: Will you grow the corn for fuel, or for food? The more you grow for fuel, of course, the less food you have, and that drives up food prices. But if you swing back the other way and grow more corn for food to ease food prices, the fuel prices go up. Trying to solve both problems at once is a bit like trying to pick up a wet watermelon seed with your fingers: It keeps slipping from your grasp. One thing that has become abundantly clear in all this is that the era of cheap food and cheap fuel is over . I’ve written about this on NaturalNews, where I use the term “food bubble” to describe the most recent era of cheap food. As it turns out, cheap food is only made possible by cheap oil, and with oil now approaching $120 a barrel (a price that virtually no one thought possible just two years ago), food prices are simultaneously skyrocketing. (Modern farming practices use a lot of fossil fuel. So does transporting food across the country or around the world. Eat local, folks!) Add to this the fact that global climate change is already underway, altering weather patterns and creating floods, droughts and other agricultural calamities, and you start to get the picture of just how bad things might get. That’s not even to mention the very serious problem of collapsing honeybee populations due to a mysterious condition called colony collapse disorder that’s devastating honeybee populations across North America. Honeybees, in case you didn’t know, pollinate plants that represent about 30% of all the calories consumed by Americans. That’s about one out of every three bites of your dinner, and it all depends on the “free” work performed by honeybees — bees who are apparently going on strike by refusing to keep working for us. Prepare for mass global starvation So, to repeat, the food bubble is now starting to implode . What does it all mean? It means that as these economic and climate realities unfold, our world is facing massive starvation and food shortages. The first place this will be felt is in poor developing nations. It is there that people live on the edge of economic livelihood, where even a 20% rise in the price of basic food staples can put desperately-needed calories out of reach of tens of millions of families. If something is not done to rescue these people from their plight, they will starve to death. Wealthy nations like America, Canada, the U.K., and others will be able to absorb the price increases, so you won’t see mass starvation in North America any time soon (unless, of course, all the honeybees die, in which case prepare to start chewing your shoelaces…), but it will lead to significant increases in the cost of living, annoying consumers and reducing the amount of money available for other purchases (like vacations, cars, fuel, etc.). That, of course, will put downward pressure on the national economy. But what we’re seeing right now, folks, is just a small foreshadowing of events to come in the next couple of decades. Think about it: If these minor climate changes and foolish biofuels policies are already unleashing alarming rises in food prices, just imagine what we’ll see when Peak Oil kicks in and global oil supplies really start to dwindle. When gasoline is $10 a gallon in the U.S., how expensive will food be around the world? The answer, of course, is that it will triple or quadruple the current price. And that means many more people will starve. Fossil fuels, of course, aren’t the only limiting factor threatening future food supplies on our planet: There’s also fossil water . That’s water from underground aquifers that’s being pumped up to the surface to water crops where it’s lost to evaporation. Countries like India and China are depending heavily on fossil water to irrigate their crops, and not surprisingly, the water levels in those aquifers is dropping steadily. In a few more years (as little as five years in some cases), that water will simply run dry, and the crops that were once irrigated to feed a nation will dry up and turn to dust. Mass starvation will only take a few months to kick in. Think North Korea after a season of floods. Perhaps 95% of humanity is just one crop season away from mass starvation. The carrying capacity of planet Earth has reached its apex The truth about all this, folks, is that the resources on our planet can only support a limited population, and I think we’ve over-populated the planet to a point where we’re wiping out non-renewable resources at an alarming rate. This means a population correction is due . When there are too many people consuming too much food, using up too much water and burning too much oil, you can get away with a rapid expansion for a little while (a few decades, perhaps), but eventually reality kicks in and there’s a global population correction that brings the population size back down to levels that can be sustained on the planet. It’s not a pretty picture. We’re talking about the loss of a billion human lives, perhaps more. This is what’s coming. It’s as predictable as the laws of gravity. When you over-populate a planet and use up all the resources, the population eventually finds itself in a resource panic, and mass death ensues. You can observe the same thing with colonies of bacteria on a nutrient-rich petri dish: They will expand at an accelerating rate, multiplying their numbers until there’s no more food left in the petri dish, and then they will experience a massive die-off. You might say that human beings are smarter than bacteria, and that’s true, but as current events are clearly demonstrating, they’re not much wiser! They still doom themselves to the same stupid fate by refusing to look at the long-term implications of their actions. Humans are really good at making babies and eating food, but they’re terrible at thinking even ten years ahead about the implications of their present-day decisions. That’s why the global population control masterminds call people “feeders and breeders,” by the way. Those are the two things human beings do extremely well: Fornicate and clean their plate. (Not necessarily in that order, though…) The throwaway economy The economies of our world have, sadly, been based on economic models that strongly encourage this kind of consumption and growth. We live in a “throwaway economy,” where people are encouraged to consume and expend as much as possible. No corporation makes money teaching people how to use less. And so we’ve pushed for aggressive expansion since the 1950′s: Build more, eat more, consume more. We’ve turned farm lands into housing tracts, and rainforests into biofuel fields. We’ve over-fished the oceans, over-farmed the soils and over-extended ourselves to the point where a population correction is inevitable. We, the human race, have painted ourselves into a desperate corner, and the simple fact of the matter is that unless we quickly discover some new energy technology that provides the world with cheap, plentiful energy, we are headed straight towards a global population implosion that will leave a billion or more people dead. And biofuels, of course, are no answer for this problem. You cannot grow enough corn to solve the problems of an expansionist, imperialistic race of beings (that’s us) who have taken over the planet much like a tumor, wiped out countless species, destroyed huge swaths of natural rainforests, poisoned the oceans and rivers, polluted the skies and, at every opportunity, betrayed the very Earth that has given us a home in the first place. Humans can betray Mother Nature for a while, but in the end, we will pay a dear price for our own arrogance, greed and lack of vision. The human race is being sent back to kindergarten, where it needs to learn some basic lessons about living in harmony with the planet. Lessons like: Don’t use up all the resources in a few generations. Don’t think you’re smarter than nature. And never forget how much Mother Nature does for us all for free! (Like pollinating the crops, producing oxygen, cleaning the air, water, etc. Read the book Mycelium Running to learn more…) In time, we will either learn these lessons, or we will perish. It’s really as simple as that. And all these suddenly-popular “save the planet” efforts we’ve seen by corporations recently are just a joke. We can’t save the planet. What we’re trying to save here is human civilization . The very idea that we think we can “save the planet” is arrogant all by itself. All we can do is respect the planet and find ways to live with it as polite guests living on a generous host. Whether humans survive the next hundred years or not, planet Earth certainly will. And frankly, the planet will do much better without us. With humans gone, the Earth would quickly be restored to a vibrant, pristine state, full of life and abundance. The Earth doesn’t need us, folks. But we, of course, certainly need the Earth. The real question is this: Can we learn to play nice and treat the Earth with respect? If not, we won’t be around much longer to worry about it. Nature needs to be respected and protected One final thought: I am an advocate of the idea that Mother Nature needs to be granted legal standing. I believe that humans do not automatically “own” nature, and that we cannot simply cut down forests, bulldoze mountainsides, fish the oceans, build dams and engage in other highly disruptive activities without first considering the consequences. Nature is not ours to own or destroy. We, as the guests on this planet, have no right to simply assume ownership over other living systems on this planet and exploit them for our own financial gain. The “destroy and consume” model of free market enterprise is simply not sustainable, folks. It does not lead us to a happy future; it leads to our own destruction. Or, put another way, over the last hundred years or so, mankind has committed countless acts of violence against nature. It has pursued a policy of committing atrocities against Mother Nature — a kind of genocide against anything non-human (animals, plants, fish, etc.). Humans have proven themselves to be, by far, the most violent and destructive life forms to ever exist on this planet. And yet paired with that violence, humans are an infant species, with little or no foresight, with virtually no ability to see the future implications of their own actions. We are, in a sense, the dumbest intelligent creatures ever to walk the face of this Earth. We can land a man on the moon, but we can’t even prevent our own rainforests from being clear-cut by soybean farmers and cattle ranchers. We can develop high-tech medicines, but we can’t even recognize the more powerful medicines found in a simple dandelion plant. We can create amazing computers and televisions and internet technologies the beam information across the globe at the speed of light, but we pollute those information pathways with corporate ads for useless stuff and dangerous medicines that only make our fellow humans beings less enlightened. We are capable of so much, and yet we have accomplished so little. We are, by any honest assessment, a race of little children, running around the planet with far too much power and not nearly enough maturity. We’re like a band of infants with flamethrowers . Frankly, we don’t deserve this planet, and Mother Nature is about to take it away from us. It’s time for us to either grow up, or perish.

Scientists develop fuel cells powered by urine

(NaturalNews) Efforts to develop alternative, renewable forms of energy have taken a whole new direction as researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering and Physical Sciences recently announced a strange, almost humorous, new way to develop energy. Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan, two postdoctoral chemists from the university, have developed fuel cell prototypes that they say run on urine, converting it to both electricity and clean water. According to a Yahoo! India news report, the team’s fuel cells utilize a compound in urine called urea, which is an organic chemical waste product that results when the body metabolizes protein. And unlike current hydrogen gas and methanol fuel cell technologies, both of which can be problematic to the environment, urea is non-toxic, rich in useful nitrogen and readily available for use. Also known as carbamide, urea does not require expensive catalysts like platinum to operate, either. The team was able to develop a simple and relatively inexpensive method with which to convert urea into water, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and electricity — all at the same time. The “Carbamide Power System” prototype, as it is being called, has the potential to reduce waste water treatment costs as well because many municipal water systems already spend big bucks removing urea from waste water. So by integrating the technology into existing water systems for the purpose of extracting urea, the fuel cells are a win-win prospect because they have the potential to generate large amounts of electricity cheaply as well as reduce overall costs for utilities. The project was made possible by a $203,000 grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with the goal of one day utilizing urine fuel cells on remote islands and in deserts and submarines where energy can be difficult to generate. But the potential uses are limitless, if and when such technology is publicly unveiled. Sources for this story include: http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100827/981/tsc-urine-powered-fuel-cells-to-offer-pe_1.html

New ‘bio-gas’ car unveiled

(NaturalNews) British engineers have successfully converted the fuel system of a Volkswagen Beetle to run mostly on methane “bio-gas” produced from human waste. And according to reports, the converted vehicle operates just as well as the original version. The new vehicle still starts using regular unleaded gasoline, but then runs on methane gas. And the modified “Bio-Bug” is the first methane-powered vehicle to be released in the U.K. that operates without reduced performance. The new Bio-Bug is capable of running on both conventional fuel and methane fuel. It has two tanks, but runs primarily on methane. If the methane tank runs out, the car will switch over to the conventional fuel tank. According to Mohammed Saddiq of GENeco, the company that developed the original prototype, the car runs so well that people “won’t know the difference.” “If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around,” he went on to say further. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the new Bio-Bug is its efficient use of methane gas. According to a recent Telegraph article, the human waste flushed down 70 toilets is enough to power the car for roughly 10,000 miles, or the distance an average person drives in a year. Anaerobic digestion, or the process by which biodegradable material like human waste is broken down into methane gas, has a lot of potential in sustainable energy projects, many believe. “This is a very exciting and forward-thinking project demonstrating the myriad of benefits of anaerobic digestion,” explained Lord Rupert Redesdale, chairman of The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association. Sources for this story include: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7929191/Bio-Bug-Car-run-on-human-waste-is-launched.html

The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm: How the BP oil catastrophe could destroy a major U.S. city

(NaturalNews) It’s hurricane season in the Atlantic, and that means Mother Nature could be whipping up fierce storms and sending them charging into the Gulf Coast any day now. In a normal hurricane season, that’s bad enough all by itself… remember Katrina? But now there’s something even more worrisome in the recipe: There’s oil in the water . So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans? Now, before we pursue this line of thinking any further, let’s dismiss the skeptics out there who think oil can’t drop from the sky because oil doesn’t evaporate. Actually, if you look at the history of hurricanes and storms, you’ll find thousands of accounts of lots of things that don’t evaporate nonetheless falling out of the sky. The phrase “raining cats and dogs” it’s entirely metaphor, you know: There are documented accounts of all sorts of things raining down from the sky: Fish, frogs, large balls of ice, and so on. If rain storms can pick up fish out of the ocean, then drop them on land, then they certainly have the capacity to pick up oil, too. Besides, as any chemist will tell you, the various petrochemicals found in crude oil evaporate even without a storm picking them up! Oil, in other words, does evaporate into the air. Or, more accurately, some of the lighter chemicals in crude oil evaporate even at temperatures of around 100 degrees (F). Those are Gulf Coast temperatures. These chemicals burn Now, these lighter chemicals that more easily evaporate also happen to have lower flash points, meaning they catch on fire more easily and at lower temperatures than other elements in the oil. The flash point for gasoline, for example, is much lower than diesel fuel. That’s because gasoline is “more flammable” and is a lighter fuel than diesel. The EPA classifies oils into Classes A – D. Class A is the lightest kind of oil, which the EPA describes as follows (http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/learning/crude.htm) “These oils are highly fluid, often clear, spread rapidly on solid or water surfaces, have a strong odor, a high evaporation rate, and are usually flammable. They penetrate porous surfaces such as dirt and sand, and may be persistent in such a matrix.” That same EPA document makes it quite clear that the more volatile oils can evaporate from crude oil, rendering the remaining oil heavier and more “tar-like.” And we already know these oils can catch on fire. That’s the whole point of tapping crude oil, of course: To pump it into engines then catch it on fire in order to turn the energy of that mini-explosion into force (to drive the eight pistons in your gas-guzzling SUV, for example). How the fire happens So let’s say the oil blowout continues, and the Gulf of Mexico is carrying millions of gallons of crude oil as a massive hurricane approaches. It’s a hot July day in the Gulf of Mexico, with temperatures soaring towards 110 degrees, accelerating the evaporation of volatile oils which get mixed in with hurricane-force winds. The hurricane makes landfall in New Orleans, let’s say, dumping potentially hundreds of thousands of gallons of what is essentially “volatile fuel” on the city of New Orleans. Now, at first it’s just a wet, slippery toxic mess that kills trees and grass. But what happens after the storm when the sun dries out the city? All the dead trees killed by the oil turn into kindling. The sun evaporates off the rain water, leaving behind fuel. A few days of sun baking and you have a city doused in fuel, ready to burst into flames . It’s every fireman’s worst nightmare. The whole city is essentially turned into a giant match. Now, sure, the more volatile fuels might evaporate, but as they do, they’d fill the city with explosive fumes . One spark, one fire, one lightning strike and your whole city literally goes up in flames. The BP oil spill, in other words, provides the fuel that could turn an ordinary hurricane into Mother Nature’s arson attack on an entire city. Like a nuclear bomb This would not be an ordinary city on fire, either: It would be a city doused with volatile fuels that soaked it to the core. The sewers would explode like massive terrorist bombs, ripping to shred any underground infrastructure (fiber optics, water delivery, electrical infrastructure, etc.). The pavement itself would be on fire, as would parks, grasslands and forests. The city would burn from top to bottom, and there would be no point even trying to put out the flames. All we could do is evacuate and watch it all burn to the ground. And in the aftermath, you’d still have oil covering the beaches, oil in the ocean, and the threat of more firestorms yet to come. It could be just the first of many such incidents striking the Gulf Coast. Think this couldn’t happen? Sure, and BP said the oil was a “tiny” little leak that didn’t matter, either. They said the oil rigs would never explode. They said they would cap the blowout. They said they would protect the shores. And all along the problem just got worse and worse until even the press noticed that these corporate criminals just couldn’t stop lying. Now, BP is at least $20 billion in the hole in an effort to compensate some of the Gulf Coast businesses for the damage they’ve caused. But how will they compensate people if an entire city burns to the ground? The answer? They won’t. That would be the end of BP. Immediately bankruptcy. B.P. = “Bankruptcy Protection,” after all. No more payments go out to anyone. BP goes belly up just like all the fish being murdered by CorExit dispersant chemicals in the Gulf right now. The company goes down in flames just like New Orleans (or some other major city on the coast). Of course, the scenario I’m describing here is theoretical, and I hope it’s a worst-case scenario, too. But it is possible. Catastrophe is what happens at the intersection of poor planning and bad luck. BP has given us poor planning, and now Mother Nature may be about to deliver a heavy-handed dose of bad luck in the form of a seasonal hurricane that takes oil from the Gulf and dumps it on land. We can only hope that these two elements do not collide on our shores. For if they do, we may witness loss on a scale our world hasn’t seen since the dropping of atomic weapons on civilian populations in World War II. If a hurricane drops oil on New Orleans (or any other Gulf Coast city) and it goes up in flames a few days later, the aftermath will, indeed, resemble the effects of a nuclear bomb explosion. You probably don’t want to be anywhere near that. Needless to say, if it starts raining oil in your neighborhood, that might be a good time to grab whatever you value and get outta Dodge.

Nine meals from anarchy: What the coming food collapse means for civilization

(NaturalNews) A growing reliance on imported food and other necessities is making First World nations such as the United Kingdom increasingly vulnerable to social collapse, warns Andrew Simms, policy director of the “think-and-do tank” of the New Economic Foundation, writing in The Guardian . “Events are revealing that many of the things we take for granted, like bank accounts, fuel and food, are vulnerable,” he writes. “If we value civilization, the litmus test for economic success should not be short-term profitability, but resilience in the face of climatic extremes and resource shortages.” Simms notes that the assumptions of the free market have led to an economic system focused on producing the greatest cost savings rather than the greatest sustainability. This has led many First World countries to turn away from producing food domestically in favor of cheaper (and more profitable) imports. “The result is easily disrupted just-in-time supermarket food supply lines, and a risky assumption that anything we need can easily be bought on global markets,” he writes. Yet recent worldwide food shortages — such as the 2008 food crisis that affected at least 37 countries and produced riots around the globe — have shown that when faced with a crisis, countries prioritize feeding their own populations over exporting food to other nations. Some First World governments and corporations have responded by trying to seize control of up to 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of arable land in poor countries. Anger over such practices led to the toppling of Madascar’s government. Simms notes that Britain has no food reserves to speak of and that its domestic food production continues to decline. Similar patterns are at play for other essentials, such as fuel. Meanwhile, declining worldwide fuel reserves and global climate destabilization are increasing the odds of a new food crisis. “This year is the 10th anniversary of the fuel protests, when supermarket bosses sat with ministers and civil servants in Whitehall warning that there were just three days of food left,” Simms writes. “We were, in effect, nine meals from anarchy. Civilization’s veneer may be much thinner than we like to think.” Sources for this story include: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/11/nine-meals-anarchy-sustainable-system.

NaturalNews, CWC pledge $5000 in financial aid to Haiti earthquake victims

(NaturalNews) As the editor of NaturalNews, I was heartbroken to learn of the devastation caused by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti two nights ago. News of the terrible loss of life was slow to circulate due to the near-complete destruction of the communications infrastructure in Haiti. Even now, the body count numbers are only an estimate, but by any measure the estimates are alarmingly high. When such events occur somewhere around the world, it’s always difficult to know what’s the appropriate response. Should we go there? And if so, how do we get there? What do we do when we arrive? What should we bring to do the most good? I’ve learned that the best way most people can help in such emergencies is to financially support the organizations that know what to do . Give these people the funds they need to get on the ground and help as many people as possible. One of those organizations is the International Rescue Committee (www.TheIRC.org), a world-class rescue organization that spends 90% of its funds on programs and services (only 6% is spent on administration and 4% on fundraising). Over the last seventy-five years, they’ve helped respond to human crises all around the world, including Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Taiwan, Indonesia, Afghanistan and more. Watch videos of some of their rescue mission work here: http://www.theirc.org/video The IRC needs your help … and ours. This is a humanitarian mission, and in the spirit of helping the IRC get people on the ground in Haiti who can help reduce human suffering, NaturalNews has joined with the Consumer Wellness Center (www.ConsumerWellness.com) to donate $5,000 to the IRC to aid victims in Haiti. Please join NaturalNews in helping earthquake victims in Haiti Just as importantly as this donation, the IRC needs your donation — even if it’s just $10 or $20. Here’s your chance to make a real difference in Haiti, saving lives and reducing human suffering. Make your own tax-deductible contribution at https://www.theirc.org/donate/donate-now I know it’s difficult to realize that you can make a difference from where you are right now, anywhere in the world… but you can! Your donation translates into actionable help through the IRC — an organization that knows how to best put these funds to use. Think about what you’re going to spend on your next meal at a restaurant with family or friends: seventy-five dollars? A hundred dollars? And now I invite you to make a commitment to call your family or friends and agree to skip your next restaurant meal and instead donate that money to help the people of Haiti . Your hundred bucks doesn’t really go very far in a fancy restaurant, but on the streets of Haiti, it can mean the difference between a wounded child receiving critical medical supplies or dying. It can put a shelter over someone’s head or bring them clean water. It can provide a cooked meal or replace simple but desperately needed items like a pair of shoes or a bar of soap. That’s why I’m pledging $5,000 right now to the people of Haiti — people I don’t even know and will probably never meet. NaturalNews isn’t a wealthy organization, and giving this much money away puts a dent in our operational budget. But the people of Haiti need this money more than we do right now. Never forget that here on this planet, we are all brothers and sisters . We may be of different colors, languages, races or religious backgrounds, but we are all 99.8% genetically identical. We all share many of the same aspirations and dreams. We all seek happiness and connection, and when crisis comes, we owe it to each other to help our brothers and sisters by lending a helping hand. It’s part of what makes us human. Prayers and positive intentions are also desperately needed. If you don’t send money, please send prayers at the very least. But remember that in a crisis situation money gets practical things done . Money buys blankets, water filters, buckets, socks, medical supplies and temporary lodging. Money buys the fuel for machines to clean up rubble, free trapped victims and begin to rebuild. Haiti needs your prayers right now, and at the same time, the IRC needs your donations, too. If you can, send both prayers and donations. Here’s the donation page once again: https://www.theirc.org/donate/donate-now Thank you, – Mike Adams, the Health Ranger and editor of NaturalNews

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