food crisis – Bruce Llama http://www.brucellama.com That's one crazy Llama Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:22:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4 How’s the environment? http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/08/hows-the-environment/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:12:15 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1026 [SOURCE] The richer you are, the more food you throw out. 1 There are people who have to scrape and save for everything they eat, there are people who just can’t get enough to eat.  We throw it out, the left overs.  There’s lost of reasons for it, but the primary reason seems to be that we don’t plan what we are going to eat.  We go to the supermarket and just buy stuff.  The supermarkets don’t help either, they encourage you to buy by making sure they provide enough bags for you to carry your stuff around in.

I do it, throw out food.  I don’t mean to, but it doesn’t get eaten for whatever reason (probably lack of planning), and it ends up in the big bin, and I have a big one, so I can fill it up, I then have to put the bin out on the street and someone comes and takes it away, leaving me with a big bin that’s empty and needs filling up again.  I don’t even know where it goes.  I do now know that it contributes to the emissions of green house gases, seems there’s a lot of methane in my food scraps.

[SOURCE]  It seems that we also throw out our TV sets.

About 234 million computers, televisions and mobile phones were thrown out last year, an increase of 41 million on the year before.

I’m glad I haven’t upgraded to a plasma!  I did get rid of my old CRT monitors and now have a lovely flat screen.  I recently upgraded my mobile phone, but haven’t thrown the old one out yet.

Here we have politicians talking about emission trading schemes, when what we really want is for people to stop being so wasteful.  The supply and demand system works way too well.

With so many people who don’t have as much as I do, it’s bad that I throw away so much stuff.  I don’t give enough consideration to the imapct of my habits.  The impact that they have on the rest of the world.

While we are worrying about whether or not jesus is coming back, or whether or not the new public transport ticketing system is going to work, or how to save enough to fly into space, people continue to starve.  To death.  And they do it without watching television or sending an SMS.

Sobering thoughts.

  1. SOURCE Australia Institute – What a waste – an analysis of household expenditure on food ↩

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]]> Holiday in Space: hotel on track to open in 2012 http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/03/holiday-in-space-hotel-on-track-to-open-in-2012/ http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/03/holiday-in-space-hotel-on-track-to-open-in-2012/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:30:18 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1021 [SOURCE].

For a mere $5,000,000.00 – that’s five million dollars, you can spend three days in a space resort, 450 km about the Earth. Wow. I’d love to spend 3 days in space, watching the sun rise 15 times a day and spinning around the world 80 times. It sounds really nice.  They even throw in a free training program on a tropical island.  200 people have expressed an interest.  That’s about a billion dollars worth of interest, and 43 people have reserved a spot.  That’s  215 million dollars.  Let that figure settle in a bit while I discuss my personal finances.

With the global financial crisis, my $9,000 investment is worth nothing, my superannuation is worth about $60,000.  It’s taken me about 25 years of working to get to that much.  At this rate, I should be able to purchase a ticket in about 83 years, provided I can keep my job that long.  If I saved every cent I earned currently, then I could get away by 2095.  I’ll be 132.

The average yearly wage in China is about $140 a week1.  It would take them around about 686 years to save up, and then only if they don’t spend one single yuan, compare that to the $170 a year that the average worker in Ethopia2gets and well, they might as well forget it.

Of course, I guess a lot of people don’t really want to fly into space, put on a velcro suit and play around in a small pod for 3 days.  They’re too busy trying to work out how to feed their family.  Trying to work out if they have enough money to get some medial attention.  Trying to survive.

It’s a lot of money.  It’s obscene.  I’m not against people earning vast amounts of money, but really, if you have that much to throw around you really need to take stock of the world and reconsider your priorities.  There are people much worse off than you, the 75 million in Ethiopia for example, and they could probably do with a few million dollars to help them along.

How can you spend so much money on a 3 day trip.  That’s just selfish and I don’t care how much you give to charity, or how hard you’ve worked, its really not fair.  We need to fix the earth, we need to look after each other, and that’s not possible while vast amounts of money are heading skyward.

  1. SOURCE in 2008, the average wage of workers in Beijing was 44,715 yuan. ↩
  2. SOURCE Average income: US$160 ↩

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/03/holiday-in-space-hotel-on-track-to-open-in-2012/feed/ 2 Fancy smancy http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/02/fancy-smancy/ Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:24:20 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1014 mcdonaldsfancy

McDonalds, that big  multi-national hamburger joint, is selling something a little bit fancy in Melbourne, and I guess the rest of Australia.  Guess what you get?  No, no, not a plastic toy.  You get a hamburger.  It’s cow meat, from an Angus cow by the sounds of it.  Apparently it’s fancy meat.  Let me get this right… for all these years, when McDonalds have been talking about only using the best Australian beef in their products they haven’t?

Let’s face it, there is nothing fancy about eating a burger at McDonalds.  It’s fast food.  Adding an extra sauce and telling me its Angus meat changes nothing.  It’s still a fast-food hamburger.  Oh, and BYO cutlery? It’s a laugh when you add that into the mix.  I’ve used knives and forks at some very unfancy restaurants over the years, I even use them at home, which is hardly ever fancy.   What a crock.

I know, I know, it’s suppose to be a bit of a ‘joke’.  It’s a humours ad, but it fails badly and it just simply annoys the crap out of me.  Now if they were selling alpaca meat….

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]]> The world changes on #BAD09 http://www.brucellama.com/2009/10/15/the-world-changes-on-bad/ http://www.brucellama.com/2009/10/15/the-world-changes-on-bad/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:27:23 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=957 Today is Blog Action Day – it’s where thousands of blogs around the world write about the one topic, and this year it’s about climate change.

With our climate on the brink of collapse, our whole way of life is under threat.  A couple of degrees rise in the global temperature mightn’t sound like too much, but the impact on our climate will be catastrophic.

My understanding is that the climate changes because of the extra gases in the atmosphere.  It causes the heat of the sun to get trapped in, thereby heating things up.  It seems that the humans cause this extra gas, although some people say it’s the cows.  The emissions are the result of our activities.  The things we make and consume.

There’s a lot of chat about ETS – Emissions Trading Schemes.  That’s, roughly, where companies pay a fee to emit fumes, and if they don’t need all their emissions, they can trade their left overs by selling them.  All very nice, the economy grows and hopefully emissions reduce.  I suspect such schemes are set up for two purposes, to either make the government load of money in licensing fees, or make the companies loads of money in trading.  No doubt there will be a whole new industry just for selling smoke.

In all of the discussion about reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, there’s one very important aspect missing.  Us.

The only way to reduce our impact on the environment is to stop consuming.  This is the white elephant in the room.  Nobody wants to even suggest that the real problem in all of this is that we love our shit.  We buy it all the time, companies keep producing it because we want it.

If you want to change the world, here’s what you have to do.  Reduce your consumption.  Drastically.  Stop driving your car, turn off a few lights, don’t leave the computer screen running, don’t buy individual portions, buy in bulk.  It’s the only way.

I like my shit too, I like nice lamps, rugs, computers, computer screens, TV’s shirts, socks and so on.  I’m a consumer.  When something breaks, I just throw it out and buy a new one.  What sort of crap is that.

So, now you know what you have to do, go do it.

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2009/10/15/the-world-changes-on-bad/feed/ 4 How’s your food? http://www.brucellama.com/2009/08/14/hows-your-food/ Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:45:37 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=732 [SOURCE]

Let me pick a few key sentences out of the article for you:

THE United Nations food aid agency says it will be forced to cut programs even as hunger soars amid the global economic crisis because pledged donations have failed to materialise.

we are facing a dangerous and unprecedented shortfall in emergency funding

a reduction in rations and programs throughout the world, including those to the world’s most vulnerable people.

Those living on a dollar a day can only afford to buy about a third of the food they were able to buy a few years ago

for the first time in history, 1.02 billion people are undernourished worldwide, up from 60 million just two years ago

One out of every six today are on the official list of the urgently hungry

Right.

Last night I purchased some grapes.  We grow them here in Australia.  It’s not grape season though.  The grapes I purchased where from the United States, and they cost $11.00 a kilogram.  That’s expensive, however, I’ve been a sick llama and felt like a treat.  I did mention to the love llama how great it is that I can get any food I want any time of the year.

Let that arrogance sink in a bit.

Is it still sinking?

The grapes are here because I have the money to buy them.  I get paid very well to do my work, so well in fact that even when I’m sick (as I was for two days) I still get paid.  With that money I get nice fresh juicy grapes imported from the USA.  Flown over no doubt. (Let’s not get into the whole energy debate on that one)

I made a lamb roast on Friday night.  I purchased a leg of lamb.  (It’s ok, I’m told the lamb didn’t feel a thing) and roasted it with some lovely fresh veggies.  I then planned to make a soup with the bones and other associated leftovers, but alas, I was unwell and had to through the scraps out. (No, I’m not suggesting I should send the bones to Africa)  I didn’t have the energy to boil them up.

What a luxury.

As I’ve said before here and here, oh and here.  I’m a short fat  Australian.  I eat to much.  I have too much food, so much that I can freeze the left overs and buy expensive grapes.  You know I’ve got 4 different types of cheese in the fridge at present.

This isn’t right, and I don’t know what to do.  I’m supporting CARE Australia and Amnesty International, both non-profit, non-religious and not associated with a political party.  I’ll be more mindful about what I purchase and I’ll be writing a few letters to the papers and to my local members.  Really though, there should be no excuse for starving people in today’s world.

I’m worried about equality in marriage, I’m concerned with office politics, I get stressed about my children’s education, I don’t buy fuel until Tuesday night (it’s cheaper then).  How lucky I am.

Now, off to save the world.  Will you help?

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]]> High food prices help Afghans drop opium http://www.brucellama.com/2008/11/15/high-food-prices-help-afghans-drop-opium/ Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:37:57 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=259 High food prices help Afghans drop opium – Breaking News – World – Breaking News.

90% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan.  I think we’ve been bombing the wrong areas.  The crops should have been fire bombed, that’d help the farmers grow crops that actually feed the worlds 923 million starving.  I’m eager to find out for what reason farmers have been allowed to continue to grow poppy crops who’s only use is to supply opium to the illegal drug trade.  Only when the food crisis pushes up the cost of food do the Afghan farmers switch across to wheat, because there’s more money in it!

What a crazy world.

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]]> California gay marriage ban http://www.brucellama.com/2008/11/07/california-gay-marriage-ban/ Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:46:53 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=246 AFP: Lawsuits to challenge California gay marriage ban.

You’ve been waiting for me to comment on this, haven’t you?

For those of you who don’t know, Proposition 8 was voted on in the recent elections in the USA’s California.  The intention was to write into the constitution of that State that marriage was between a man and a woman only.  Sounds a bit like the change to the marriage Act here in Australia.

Anyway, I’m not particularly surprised to see that the change has been carried.  52% of the voters said yes.  You know, this is a nation that still has vast parts of their population that think God created the universe in just 6 days.  Fuck he’s good.

The bit that gets me is the amount of money spent on this.  The mormon church has been accused of spending $15,000,000 that’s fifteen million dollars, on the campaign.  How many people could you actually help with that sort of money?

A 10kg bag of rice at the local supermarket costs $21.00, for $15 mil you could get about 714,000 bags of rice, and that’s at retail cost.

Lets say, for a family of 4, two meals a day of rice would be 500 grams of rice, each bag would therefore feed about 20 people.  714,000 bags of rice would therefore feed about 14 million people in one day.

So, my figures are rubbery, and there’s a lot more to distributing food than just me sitting here with my calculator and bright ideas.  But it doesn’t hide the fact that rather than help the world, the church, in this case the mormons, would sooner squander their money on an advertising campaign to prevent two blokes from getting married, an act that doesn’t really hurt anyone else, rather than do something useful with their money.  Marriage is simply a human construct.  Yes, its nice to get married (been there), yes its nice to commit to another human, but whether or not you get married legally does not prevent people from actually living together, in a married like state.

This is clearly mad.  There’s so much good to do in the world, and yet we have the fucking christians (and the mormons) doing stupid things with their money.  This has yet again hardened my attitude of not supporting any organisation that has remote ties to christianity, I want my time, my money and my efforts to go to help people, not be used to force misguided moral and ethical decisions on people.

Other respectable blogs that talk about this:

Alexander the Atheist
Californians Against Hate
Russell Coker

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]]> The price of petrol http://www.brucellama.com/2008/10/27/the-price-of-petrol/ Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:53:07 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=219 OPEC fails to halt price plunge | smh.com.au.

So, in an effort to keep the price inflated, OPEC has cut back on how much oil they produce.

The greedy mother fuckers.

No mention of cutting back production to look after the environment, or to help those in developing nations afford transport for education and food, no, no. They announced a slash in oil production to boost demand and drive the price up again. For what purpose? Greed.

However, it didn’t work, the price of a barrel fell after the announcement. It appears that people don’t care as the high cost has forced them to find other means of transport.

Laugh.

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]]> Bruce Does Pod -3 http://www.brucellama.com/2008/10/26/bruce-does-pod-3/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:51:27 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=215 http://www.brucellama.com/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/brucellamapodcast3.mp3
Download in OGG format (right click and save)

In my 3rd podcast I talk about the current stock market crisis, look at twitter and George entertains us with his view on a couple of websites.

Links:
Twitter
Ugly People
Men who look like old lesbians
Jake Stone

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Bruce Llama Podcasts by Bruce Llama is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

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]]> Food crisis could defeat Millennium Goals http://www.brucellama.com/2008/10/22/food-crisis-could-defeat-millennium-goals/ Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:34:25 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=205 Reuters AlertNet – AU says food crisis could defeat Millennium Goals.

The goal was to reduce by half the number of people living on less that a dollar a day.  $1.00.

Its estimated that there are 100 million people being forced back into poverty by the sharp increase in food prices.  The global credit crisis is also giving grief.

Wouldn’t it be great if we just shared the money around  a little better, instead of propping up a monetary system that encourages to the rich to get richer by selling stuff to the poor.

It doesn’t sound that difficult to me.

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