2nd Best News of the Week for Environment?

The global auto market faces an “outright collapse” in 2009

General economic stress and credit availability may lead to an “outright collapse” of the auto market in 2009, J.D. Power and Associates, an industry tracking company said.

“J.D. Power and Associates forecast U.S. light vehicle sales would fall to 13.2 million units in 2009 after likely settling at 13.6 million units this year, adding that a pronounced recovery is more than 18 months away.” Reuters reported.

A Chevrolet on display at an auto show in Shanghai – 2005 file photo. [newsphoto] Source: China Daily. Image may be subject to copyright.

“While the global automotive industry is clearly experiencing a slowdown in 2008, the global market in 2009 may experience an outright collapse,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of automotive forecasting for J.D. Power.

“While mature markets are being impacted more severely than emerging markets, no country or region is completely immune to the turmoil,” he said.

Advertisement

Fight For Food!

Could When Will Food Riots Break Out Across the U.S.?

Accelerated land degradation threatens food security of a quarter of the world’s population: FAO

Main entry: Land degradation threatens 1.5 billion people

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop and cracks in the rice terrace soil caused by more than 30 days of no rain in a village near Balqis, northeast of Cairo June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri. Image may be subject to copyright. See MSRB Fair Use Notice!

Related Links:

• Topsoil

• Failing Ecosystems
• The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?
• Schwarzenegger Proclaims Water Emergency in Nine Counties
• 2008: Year of the Fire

• Drought Index

• State of the World
• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• Tipping Point
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World

Background Information:

• Early “Dividends” of Climate Change
• Could Food and Fuel Riots Break Out Across the U.S.?

• We Need Food!
• Fueling Food Shortages
• Buffett the Poor

• Emerging Food Crisis
• Food Riots Grip Egypt, Haiti, El Salvador
• World Poverty Index
• Japan: The land of rising . . . err . . . Prices!

• High food prices seen leading to strikes, protests in Asia
• Now, the world’s problem is food: Here come shortages, rising prices and riots
• Corn for Food, NOT for Fuel
• Riots across Egypt amid rising food prices

• Is a Future Possible?
• 500 Weather-Related Disasters A Year

• Bangladesh police clash with garment workers
• Kenya police disperse food protesters
• Soaring living costs cloud U.N. climate talks
• Deep climate cuts urged; food price a wake-up call
• USDA head downplays calls to cut biofuel mandate

• Food: Worse times ahead
• Food (Index Page)
• But Will It Prevent Food Riots in the US?
• Biofuels

• Soy up, leads corn and wheat recovery
• Midwest flooding spurs record corn prices
• Union Pacific enacts force majeure amid floods

• The Cost of Midwest Flooding Rises

Let Them Eat Bullets!

Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a Climate-Changed World

According to the above-titled report written for Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), governments around the world have hugely underestimated the potential conflicts resulting from climate change. The highlights of the report are:

• If climate change is not slowed and critical environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary driver of conflicts between and within states

• In the next decades, climate change will drive as significant a change in the strategic security environment as the end of the Cold War,” said Mabey.

• If uncontrolled, climate change will have security implications of similar magnitude to the World Wars, but which will last for centuries

• A failure to acknowledge and prepare for the worst case scenario is as dangerous in the case of climate change as it is for managing the risks of terrorism or nuclear weapons proliferation

• Unless achieving climate security is seen as a vital and existential national interest it will be too easy to delay action on the basis of avoiding immediate costs and perceived threats to economic competitiveness

Source

Can the world elite brand the poor and starving masses as “terrorists” in order to eliminate them?

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.” According to a report by New York Sun.

News Reports:

• U.N. Security Council must act preemptively – on climate change – this global threat requires a war-room mentality

• Security risk from climate said underestimated
• Sam’s Club, Costco limit bulk rice purchases
• Sam’s Club, Costco Ration Rice Amid Hoarding Worries
  

Special Links:

• Future in the Making
• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN) March 2008
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix