Wednesday
Dec072011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Oxfam - trying to create famine
Dec 7, 2011 Greens Anthony Watts' story about Oxfam trying to get a global tax on shipping imposed is extraordinary (note Anthony's caveats about the reliability of his source however).
Free trade is what prevents famine. Oxfam's actions will make famines more likely and much worse.
Reader Comments (69)
TheBigYinJames
WRT sea level rise, the concern is a non-linear response to warming sub-surface waters off the West Antarctic. If the major ice shelves continue to break up (google Pine Island Glacier, just for fun), the glacial drainage of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) will speed up. Abrupt increases in sea level would result. This sort of thing has happened before (eg Meltwater Pulse 1a).
During the Eemian interglacial GAT was between 1C - 2C warmer than the present and mean sea level was about 5m higher. It's looking increasingly likely that 1 - 2m came from Greenland and the rest from the WAIS.
There are two things the 'alarmists' have non-dismissable concerns over. The future of the WAIS is one. Clathrate destabilisation in high Northern latitude oceans is the other.
And back on-topic...
Read all about how Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace lobbying against GMOs in Africa led to (and continues to lead to) starvation and hardship.
Book reference.
@RKS If you look closely you'll notice that I wasnt actually making any argument at all. I was just asking how the Bishop arrived at that statement, and I am , once again , disappointed.
@Dreadnought thats an article about tariffs and third world farmers it does not support Bishop Hill's statement.
@Mike Jackson Do you know what a famine is? It's widespread crop failure and ensuing starvation. People in East Africa are suffering a famine now, they're not in a situation to produce anything for you or anyone else.
I've been supporting Amnesty International witha monthly DD for the last ten years or so. This summer I stopped. Why? Because in their biannual mailshot they included a whole lot of guff from Greenpeace with application forms to join, contribute etc..
I immediately cancelled my DD. A couple of weeks later Amnesty phoned me find out why, so I told them not to make assumptions about who is an easy touch for any old "cause". Sadly, their casting the net wide over existing subscribers probably works!
After the revelations about WWF and Greenpeace and their infiltration of the IPCC recently I have become ever more suspicious of all these politically motivated big "charities". I don't know whether Amnesty actually does make a difference, I assumed it did, but they have had more than a grand out of me over the years and when Greenpeace comes begging hanging on their coat tails enough is enough! It's more like big business and marketing than charity. I still contribute to Water Aid and Sight Savers, though. Don't tell me they are corrupt, too, please!
Re Hengist
Visit your local book shop or library and look in the economics section? Or think about how this may impact some economies. Take say, Tuvalu. A poster child for global warming being a small island nation at risk of rising prices. I mean subsidies. Or do I mean costs? Its balance of trade is heavily negative so fuel taxes would increase both its import and export costs. But that will be fine because as an LDN it might qualify for a handout from the fund or a rebate, which might offset the economic harm it will cause.
Or I could be mistaken about who's famine these scheme is supposed to prevent. The graphic at WUWT shows the tax raising $25bn by 2020, then $10bn spent on rebates and $10bn to the Climate Fund. Where does the other $5bn end up? With the likes of Oxfam to administer the fund and top up whatever they're hoping to get from the Climate Fund?
Hengist
You have missed the point. Crop failures only result in famine if there are no food surpluses available to be shipped in (or the local political situation prevents them being distributed). Would you prefer that food to be produced in the same part of the world or produced by subsidised farmers in the developed world?
What do you you think free trade is, if it's not trade without barriers such as tariffs and subsidies? The FAO article points out that the effect of subsidies on third world farmers is that it makes it difficult for them to make a living or drives them out of business altogether. Hardly the basis for regional food security.
The word 'famine' does not appear in the FAO article.
Free trade is not by definition going to help subsistence economies hit by famine.
Hengist
Trade is precisely what raises economies out of subsistence.
Hengist
You haven't answered my question. Would you prefer famine relief supplies to come from regional surpluses or from subsidised farmers in the developed world? If the former, how would you ensure that regional farmers can produce surpluses?
On the question of subsistence farming - and "localism" generally - vs globalism and far-flung trade networks, here's Tim Worstall (in his usual rather forthright style) making the case for trading with people outside one's immediate area. He is writing in the context of the Japanese tsunami earlier this year, but the argument can be extended to African farming and the risk of famine.
It would be a shame if the big charities put people off donating to development projects. There are many excellent smaller development charities which are non-political, run by volunteers and which spend 100% of donations on development work. Because they don't spend money on mailshots or giant roadside posters, you do have to actively go searching for them; for example, if you are in the UK, you can use keyword searches on the Charity Commission web site. The names of countries where they work can make good search terms.
The proposed shipping levy at Durban is beyond comprehension! Is it not obvious that we are discussing an industry that is hugely expert at avoiding rules/regulation and taxes by utilising ports of convenience for registry? Include into that the huge container fleet China has built up, suggests to me that Huhne etc will get the bums rush from the Chinese delegation over this crazy tax scam. Or does Huhne just want to destroy what is left of the UK marine fleet?
Why the need anyway? Modern marine engine have been hugely improved to control emissions. Try pulling into Singapore, for instance, with an Puffing Billy! There are huge fines for pollution and ships will be forbidden to restart or move until an engine fault is corrected. Do they propose different tariffs for engines using heavy crude as opposed to Diesel? Just another way of adding bureaucratic, non producing jobs and higher production/end user costs to a world creaking with economic woes!
Hengist, as usual, you talk about a subject that you have no knowledge of!
The collaboration of big charities in mailshots, etc is probably something to do with this
International Non-Governmental Organisations Accountability Charter 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Non-Governmental_Organisations_Accountability_Charter
Nothing to do with "accountability" in my opinion - more the economies of scale of joint marketing and recruitment, in other words the tendency of large organizations to engage in cartels and monopolies.
Richard Black at the BBC reports that things at Durban appear to be going nowhere - except for the hope that this new shipping tax might be endorsed, at least in principle. As a real Churnalist Richard Black normally peddles any line that Warmist NGOs are pushing - but I don't recall him telling us anything before about the insidious moves by NGOs to promote a shipping tax. It must have been a long time in the baking - but all under the news radar ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16080539
I haven't scrolled through to make sure I'm not repeating another post... but ..
for the record:
OXFAM isn't a real charity
An OXFAM link that works....
OXFAM:
http://fakecharities.org/2011/02/charity-202918/
I think I have a solution courtesy of wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax levied on a market activity that generates negative externalities. The tax is intended to correct the market outcome. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product. A Pigovian tax equal to the negative externality is thought to correct the market outcome back to efficiency.
This seems to describe NGOs, which are often currently not taxed, or very lightly taxed yet seem to be trying to generate massive negative externalities. So in the Oxfam example, $25bn in the red for the social costs. Applying a Pigovian tax to activities like this, lobbying, or other fuel subsidies like ROCs, FITs or carbon credits would correct the outcome and allow money to be applied to solving real problems.. Or am I oversimplifying things?
I see from the DT that they are still flannelling around in Durban trying to come up with something that might save a bit of face and keep the bandwagon rolling for another couple of miles.
All the usual suspects are there: 2 degrees or we all die; EU trying for this, India/China wanting that; "island nations" looking for handouts (not that they phrase it that way). All to be in place by 2013 with a view to starting in 2020.
If it's that bloody desperate why aren't you starting NOW?
Of course there is every chance that by 2020 they will have all gone cold on the idea as the earth goes through its next quite natural downturn but what the hell! who'll remember?