Joe Rants About Impending Armageddon and Trash Media

Did anyone happen to notice that dramatically increased food prices around the world are inciting riots?

I don't blame you if you haven't noticed. The American news media seems much more concerned with fractal patterns of Barack Obama's nose hairs and the endangered Indiana bat that has apparently found some much needed habitat in Hilary Clinton's vagina.

Now, I certainly believe that this primary race is important and worthy of substantial coverage. I do not believe that the voting patterns of left-handed gay black jews who make less than 50k per year is newsworthy enough to supplant some of the first twinges of Peak-Oil Armageddon.

Apparently, here's what's going on.

First, lots of people are poor. I'm not talking poor like me, or even poor like those folks who smelled like kerosene you went to elementary school with. I'm talking a couple bowls of rice and some beans poor. I'm talking skinny but not on purpose poor. But, as long as you don't live in a war zone, most really poor folks get by alright.

Ok, now second, there are lots of people who are less poor than they used to be. Those people generally live in China, India, and a few other countries in Southeast Asia. Not a lot of countries, but they're countries with lots of people. They found out that they could make a lot of money by making stuff and selling it to people in the United States, who generally have lots of money, or more precisely, lots of credit cards.

So, those people started buying more food. That increased "demand." There was no corresponding increase in food "supply." That made food prices "increase."

Ok, number three. A long time ago things died, and eventually, they turned into oil. Oil is the go juice that has been fueling what we might call "the middle class." That's because oil was very good at burning, which made it good at making things go, and it did all this very inexpensively. But, we aren't making any new oil, cause we can't kill things and make them rot for thousands and thousands of years. As people use more oil, there is more "demand" and since there isn't any new oil, there is less "supply," so the "price" of "oil" will "increase."

It turns out that oil is a pretty important part of making food. It's used for fertilizers and it's used in the big trucks and planes and boats that take it around the world. If oil prices go up, food prices go up.

Ok, number four. Turns out that burning oil makes the planet get hot. AND, everyone is scared what will happen when the cheap go-juice that has created the Western-style middle class is no longer cheap. Some people think the world will be like Mad Max and there's gonna be tons and tons of shit hitting some huge ass industrial fans, by which I mean, everyone's gonna start killing the fuck out of each other.

So, in light of the hot planet and Mad Max, people want to find something other than oil to make shit go. It turns out that we can make shit go from plants! That's cool!
So, lots of governments, including that of the United States, said, "ok, we'll pay you to make go-juice out of plants!"

Farmers said, "fuck yeah! Instead of selling corn to feed lots, I'll sell it to this biofuel company and make more money!"

Well, that means there is less food being grown. We already discussed rising global "demand," so, there is more "demand," and less "supply," so the prices "go up."

It also means that more rainforests are being cut down to make up for the gap in arable land being used for food production, and that is, like, the very worst thing to do in terms of the hot planet issue.

But Barack Obama said poor people are mad about being poor! What an elitist fuck he is! What with being raised by a single mom and being black and everything! Fucking panty waist snob!

On the biofuels issue...it's not that they're bad per se. They just need to be made from stuff we can't eat and on land that we can't use for growing food. The best options are to use algae (either in the ocean or in big tanks) or trash. Waste biofuel is good, cause it's trash, which is not helpful to the world, cause it's trash.