The Cost of Pollution
Food prices are rising in the world. More than once in recent months I have read in the newspaper about a “food crisis” afoot in the world . It is partly due to the rising cost of fuel that facilitates everything in our civilization, partly due to environmental conditions aggravated by global warming, partly fueled by coincidental agricultural blights (also aggravated by global warming conditions), partly due to human corruption, partly due to politics, and much, much more. The drive towards rendering biofuels from crops is a further mistake because it diminishes the acreage devoted to human consumption. How stupid can we get? To subvert our basic instinct for survival (food is one of the three Fs of our basic instincts) for the sake of a social fad - environmentalism. Environmentalism will be the death of us all!
In other recent news I have read about European countries considering increasing levies on food to incorporate the environmental cost into food prices of the pollution or environmental damage incurred in the food’s production. I disagree. I think it’s impossible and will only lead to or contribute to the end of civilization as we know it: good-bye middle class affluence; good-bye democracy; good-bye most of humanity. I have had this conversation before with one of my sister-in-law who in the past has very articulately and passionately advocated such a pricing scheme. My objection is that if you factor into the cost of goods and services the true cost of the environmental damage they entail then the average North American home will cost about a billion dollars. The average North American car will cost between five and ten million dollars. A bag of potatoes will cost about a hundred thousand dollars. A university education for your children? Forget it. Environmentally speaking it is not feasible. Do you think these cost estimates are fantastically wrong and that I am purposely exaggerating just to make my point which might be wrong to begin with? I am not.