Showing posts with label food shortages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food shortages. Show all posts

Monday, 8 February 2021

Food shortages ahead for American consumers under Biden

Joe Biden’s Two-Front Battle Against Covid and Climate Change May Trigger Severe Food Shortages for U.S. Consumers

Robert Bridge




Strategic Culture, 

5 February, 2021

In the United States, the local farmers, it seems, are being squeezed out of business, or paid not to grow food, while Big Agriculture is more concerned with exporting its supplies than keeping domestic food stocks safe and affordable.

In an effort to fight two wars at the same time – against a pandemic as well as purported climate change – the Biden administration risks putting the United States on a crash course with food shortages and soaring prices as early as this year.

Sealed up inside of his White House fortress, surrounded by a ring of steel and thousands of National Guardsmen, U.S. President Joe Biden has been busy signing off on a raft of executive orders without the nuisance of democratic debate and congressional prattling. One of those presidential actions envisions the conservation of 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters over the next decade. Where will all of that protected land come from? Perhaps from Bill Gates, who now owns the deed to most of the farmland in the nation? Doubtful. The answer is from small, independent farmers, whose agricultural activities, the Democrats say, are responsible for 10 percent of the manmade greenhouse emissions purportedly frying up the planet.

While occupying the previously unknown ‘Office of the President-Elect’, the Democratic leader said he would pay U.S. farmers to “put their land in conservation” and live without their ‘cash crops.’ How much the tillers of the soil will receive has not been disclosed, nor if this program will be enforced upon farmers against their will.

Another reason that the future does not bode well for American farming is that Biden’s nominee for Agricultural Secretary is none other than Tom Vilsack, who also served as the USDA chief in the Obama administration. Biden said Vilsack will help American agriculture become “the first in the world to achieve net-zero [greenhouse] emissions.” But is anyone considering what will happen if or when America achieves net-zero food production at a time when the rest of the world is hoarding limited supplies? Equally concerning will be the quality of the food being produced.

Under Obama, Vilsack happily rammed through a number of delectable Dr. Frankenstein technologies, like cloned-farm animals, lab-grown meat and more new genetically modified organisms (GMOs), many from Monsanto. So while there will probably be something to eat in Biden’s new America, it might be a stretch to actually call it ‘food.’ Indeed, for those Americans who prefer a bounty of farm-fresh, organic produce as opposed to some artificial, 3D meat knockoff, the nightmare has just begun.

A Brave New Foodless Future?

Paradoxically, at a time when the United States finds itself smack in the middle of a pandemic, which has caused supply chains to be stretched to the breaking point, it is not saving for a ‘rainy day,’ but rather exporting its farm products like there’s no tomorrow. Consider the corn exports just to China alone, below.

And when it is not buying regular corn supplies, China is buying up massive amounts of U.S. ethanol, the corn-based biofuel. The Asian economic powerhouse has bought “roughly 200 million gallons” of ethanol for the first half of 2021, matching its previous record for annual imports of the corn-based biofuel, Archer Daniels Midland Co Chief Financial Officer Ray Young told Reuters.

At the same time, America’s second leading cash crop, soybean, which is used in many products as well as for livestock, has also experienced something of a rout that looks set to become increasingly worse as the year progresses.

“The scramble for beans comes as record U.S. soybean exports and an historically large domestic crush whittled down supplies and sent prices to the highest since 2014,” the Reuters article continued. “Crop concerns in South America due to dry weather have further stoked worries over supplies and global food security during the coronavirus pandemic.”

The National Oilseed Processors Association (NOPA), which represents 95 percent of the U.S.-based industry, said the 2020 crush was the largest ever, “helped by demand for diesel biofuel and unusually weak production in top soymeal producer Argentina.” Such a rapid pace could continue for only a few more months, analysts were quoting by NOPA as saying, after which soybean supplies “are uncertain.”

The question demands repeating: if the United States understands that it is dealing with a potentially critical situation with regards to food security in the middle of a pandemic, why does it continue to export at breakneck speed? While the major agricultural powerhouses, like Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine, Russia and China are taking steps to protect their domestic food supplies, keeping prices in check, the U.S. seems to be bucking the trend.

Perhaps the closest thing to a siren warning of danger came from a recent report by Bloomberg that carried the headline, ‘China Is So Thirsty for Soy That America Could Soon Be Importing.’ The question, however, that the article never dares to ask is: ‘importing from where?’

“China’s appetite for U.S. soy is draining silos to the point that American processors may need to import the most beans in years this summer,” the article began. “The boom in U.S. shipments to China comes after Brazil and other countries effectively ran out of exportable supplies – prospects traders in North America are now facing.”

Christian Westbrook, the host of Ice Age Farmer who has been warning about a potential “engineered famine” for some time, summed up the situation as “game over.”

“That’s why, to see the Biden administration roll forward these terrible executive orders, it’s insane,” Westbrook commented. “Other countries are frantically taking steps…to protect their domestic food supplies, keep prices low and be able to feed their animals, and then, in turn, be able to feed their people. Not here.”

Indeed, what seems to be happening in the United States is that the local farmers are being squeezed out of business, or paid not to grow food, while Big Agriculture is more concerned with exporting its supplies than keeping domestic food stocks safe and affordable. That seems to be a reckless policy at the best of times; at the peak of a pandemic, however, it is simply a recipe for disaster.

Biden Attacks Farms - Comprehensive War on Global Food Supply - Engineered Famine


Ice Age Farmer

The Biden admin's executive actions in the last 48 hours are attacking farms and implementing the technocratic takeover of food, accelerating a global collapse in food production by paying farmers NOT to grow food, cutting their financial support, tasking Tom Vilsack's USDA with a Net-Zero goal, changing COVID guidance on grocery stores, restaurants, and meatpacking plants. Meanwhile, the media is finally acknowledging the soybean shortage, and the US is now also experiencing a fertilizer shortage, which will further increase costs and cause yields will collapse. As other countries stop exporting to protect domestic supplies, the US has been wholly sold out. This confluence of issues and cascading failures merits our attention urgently -- start growing food today.


https://www.agriculture.com/markets/newswire/us-soybean-crushers-buy-up-extra-beans-as-supply-scramble-looms


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-27/china-is-so-thirsty-for-soy-that-america-could-soon-be-importing


https://twitter.com/ACOMRB/status/1354855100284547075


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-ethanol-idUSKBN29V282


https://twitter.com/NatlFarmers/status/1354172370467090436


https://en.mercopress.com/2021/01/28/argentine-traders-and-millers-discussing-options-to-avoid-a-ban-on-wheat-exports


https://twitter.com/siqueiradaniele/status/1354394750946828289

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/dec/15/food-giants-seek-to-ban-soybeans-from-deforested-b/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/22/shipping-container-shortage-is-causing-shipping-costs-to-rise.html

https://gcaptain.com/sea-ice-slows-ships-in-north-china-ports/

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3116798/chinas-food-security-requires-local-communist-party-members


https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3115004/china-food-security-beijing-calls-biotech-breakthrough


https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-vegetable-prices-hit-record-104350266.html

UK:


https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/farming-news/key-uk-port-warns-importation-of-breeding-livestock-could-halt-unless-essential-funding-provided-40009164.html

Ireland seeds:


https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/ni-gardeners-lose-hundreds-seed-varieties-major-company-suttons-withdraws-fruit
-and-veg-seeds-due-irish-sea-border-3115211


Food shortages ahead for American consumers under Biden



World food prices rose in January for the eighth consecutive month, led by cereals, vegetable oils and sugar, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

The FAO said that its food price index marked a 4.3 percent increase from December, reaching its highest level since July 2014. The index tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly traded food commodities.

The cereal price index showed a sharp 7.1 percent monthly increase led by a global surge in the price of maize, the crop North Americans call corn.

Maize prices spiked 11.2 percent and are now 42.3 percent above their January 2020 level, “reflecting increasingly tight global supply amid substantial purchases by China and lower-than-expected production and stock estimates in the United States of America as well as a temporary suspension of maize export registrations in Argentina.”

The report also said wheat rose 6.8 percent driven by strong global demand and expectations of reduced sales by Russia when its wheat export duty doubles in March 2021. Robust demand for rice from Asian and African buyers underpinned strong price growth for that crop. 

January vegetable oil sold for 5.8 percent more than December, hitting its highest price since May 2012. Drivers included lower-than-expected palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia "due to excessive rainfall and ongoing shortages in the migrant labor force, and prolonged strikes in Argentina reducing export availability for soy oil.”

The sugar price index was 8.1 percent higher than in December as robust global import demand spurred concerns about lower availabilities due to worsening crop prospects in the European Union, Russia and Thailand, as well as drier-than-normal weather conditions in South America. The FAO said the dairy price index also jumped by 1.6 percent, underpinned by China's high purchases ahead of the country's upcoming New Year holiday festivities amid seasonally lower exportable supplies in New Zealand. 

The meat price index’s 1.0 percent increase from December was led by “brisk global imports of poultry meat, especially from Brazil, amid avian influenza outbreaks that have constrained output and exports from several European countries,” said the report.

https://www.rt.com/business/514594-global-food-prices-record-high/

Sunday, 13 December 2020

An examination of a global food crisis fuelled by CHINA

On The Brink Of A Major Food

Shortage 


PART ONE - CHINA



China On The Brink Of A Major Food Shortage! Prepare For Worldwide Starvation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfB3zsRtg-I&list=LL&index=20


’China has no food and no money,’ Now, Myanmar is exposing China’s desperation for rice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTfjXOBetWA


How China is slowly KILLING us all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PPP7sRlHEE


On The Brink Of A Major Food

Shortage 


PART TWO – INDIA AND 

AUSTRALASIA



Gravitas: Amid fears of food shortage, Chinese kick off global hunt for grains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgiOJUbfNsc&feature=share


Food Shortage in INDIA due to CORONA Virus - Food Shortage Video – 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8sSRPDgXpQ&feature=share


INDIA Will Survive Worst Locust Plague - Food Shortage India 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XILLHnx8uDw&feature=share


Global Food Crisis -- 2021 will be Catastrophic , Famines of Biblical Proportions are Looming !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o59PYzn-CiM&feature=share

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Hunger in US and skyrocketing prices in Australia

 Fruit and vegetable prices set to skyrocket in Australia due to labour shortage | 7NEWS

Coronavirus is affecting food prices with fears of a 25 per cent hike in fresh fruit and vegetables over summer. The problem is travel restrictions cutting off seasonal harvest crews with the NSW industry alone short some 90,000 workers.



Hunger in US | 'Everybody's 

just worried about their next 

meal'

#Hunger in the #UnitedStates is up markedly this year. Feeding America says the number of people seeking help at its food banks nationwide has increased an average of 60% since the pandemic began. Four out of every 10 people have never set foot in a pantry until now.

Feeding America's own 181 food banks have distributed 1.6 billion pounds of food per quarter in the pandemic, compared with roughly 1 billion before.

The AP's hunger project included a portrait series with pantry patrons across the country — several of them first-timers who've fallen on hard times.



Monday, 7 December 2020

More on food shortages

 Soybean Shortage & Cyberattack on Food Supply Chain: Achilles' Heel


The world is running out of soybeans after drastic crop losses. This has severe implications, which the establishment will use to further their Great Reset. A strategic cyberattack on the food supply chain -- part of the "Cyberpandemic" the WEF has promised is looming -- will be used both as an excuse for food rationing, as well as the motivation for the "Great Reset of Food" for which the WEF/Rockefellers/others have been calling. A recent attack on Americold offers a perfect case study of this achilles heel in our food supply. There is a lot to digest here -- Christian breaks it down.


As local buyers like livestock feed makers vie with importers for a shrinking European cereal surplus, prices could continue rising until demand is dampened or next crops are harvested around the world, traders and analysts said.


China has been on an extended buying spree of global grain, partly due to a rebuilding of its pork industry after a swine disease epidemic.


Europe harvested a smaller cereal crop this year and rival wheat exporter Russia has shipped less than expected, while the EU’s main maize supplier Ukraine has grappled with drought.


“China has really upended the market,” a French trader said. “Everything is expensive and it’s all about exporting rather than importing.”



Tightening grain supply is not expected to be visible in food prices. Key suppliers like millers have advance cover, commodities are diluted by other supply chain costs, and supermarkets compete heavily on food staples.


But upstream, grain processors may have to slow buying if exports keep flowing out of Europe, traders say.


Loss of out-of-home food and beer demand due to coronavirus lockdowns may let them stretch their stocks to some extent, they say.


Yet they may have to limit buying further as the market awaits South American maize crops in the spring and next summer’s European wheat harvest, currently set to rebound.



“At the end of the day, we’re looking at a very strong need to ration wheat demand in Europe in the coming months,” consultancy Agritel said.


NO RELIEF IN MAIZE


Despite harvesting a quarter less wheat and barley this year, France is set to ship even more of those cereals to China than last season’s hefty volumes.


That has left room for Germany, Poland and the Baltic states to export more wheat to Algeria, usually overwhelmingly supplied by France.


The northern EU countries are also shipping wheat to Asian markets like Pakistan, as higher Russian prices and precautionary purchases by importers during the COVID-19 pandemic stoke demand.[GRA/TEND]


Exports of common wheat, or soft wheat, from the EU plus Britain in 2020/21 are running 20% below last season’s record pace. But that compares with a 40% lag two months ago. The gap could narrow further as large recent sales are shipped out.


Traders said several vessels of French feed barley have been sold for shipment to China in summer 2021, unusually early sales for the next crop that sent French barley premiums surging this month.



French barley sales to China have accelerated due to tensions between Beijing and main barley supplier Australia.


Within Europe, grain buyers have not found relief in maize either.


Ukraine’s drought-diminished crop has curbed expected flows to the import-reliant EU livestock industry, raising prices and prompting processors to use more feed wheat or secondary cereals.


Maize imports in 2020/21 so far by the EU and Britain - which remains in the EU’s single market until December - are 17% lower than a year ago.




South Korea has confirmed an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu on a duck farm in the southwestern part of the country, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Monday. The outbreak, which occurred in the town of Girin-ri, killed 19,000 ducks, the OIE said in a website alert, quoting the South Korean agriculture ministry. Some 392,000 chickens and ducks at a total of six farms were killed preventively, the ministry also said.


Meanwhile, bird flu has been detected in a fourth Japanese prefecture, the agriculture ministry said on Tuesday, as a wave of infections at poultry farms sparks the country’s worst outbreak in more than four years. Avian influenza was discovered at a poultry farm in Hyuga city in Miyazaki prefecture in southwestern Japan, the ministry said on its website.

Japan’s worst outbreak since at least 2016 started last month in Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku island, which is adjacent to Kyushu island where Miyazaki is located. The 40,000 chickens at the Miyazaki farm will be slaughtered and buried, while exports in a 3 km (1.8 miles) radius around the farm will be restricted. The new action means more than 1.8 million chickens will have been culled since the latest outbreak began, according to Reuters.

http://www.thebigwobble.org/search?updated-max=2020-12-01T10:49:00%2B01:00&max-results=1&start=1&by-date=false



http://www.thebigwobble.org/search?updated-max=2020-11-30T10:03:00%2B01:00&max-results=1&start=5&by-date=false


Monday, 30 November 2020

Are food shortages back?

My guess, from the other side of the world that if events such as we are seeing in Georgia continue there will be more of this in coming days and weeks.

When stores empty and supply chains break down COMPLETELY someone will have to listen. 

I can think of some people who, despite the realities will put this all down to a single cause - climate change.

REPORTS: Truckers Strike Actually BEGINNING

https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/reports-truckers-strike-actually-beginning


There are as yet UNCONFIRMED reports coming in from several areas around the USA that truckers have BEGUN a STRIKE.   

Initial efforts called for a strike to begin TODAY, 19 November 2020. 

Yet according to widely published reports, the organizers allegedly gave up and called-off their efforts. 

Now, it seems the strike is commencing anyway!

Video below claims  to be of truckers halting in the left lane of an Interstate Highway, today.  Location as yet unconfirmed.


UPDATE

Further reports say specific large US cities are being targetted by the strike: Milwaukee, WI, Detroit, MI, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, PA and Atlanta, GA because those cities are the epicenter of VOTE FRAUD during the November 3, election.

Truckers on CB radio (Trucker channel 19  i.e. 27.185 MHz AM) are saying "They think they can steal a national election?  We'll starve them to death.  No food for the cities."

Those of you who live in cities had better stock-up on food while your supermarkets still have some.  Once the general public starts hearing about this, and realizes the food supply is being cut off, your cities will become war zones within hours as people panic and try to get whatever they can!


I remember, in New Zealand when we had shortages it was all put down to excessive DEMAND and "selfish" shoppers stocking up.


FOOD SHORTAGES AGAIN - 

with Bold-Faced LIES about 

the cause . . .


https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/food-shortages-again-with-bold-faced-lies-about-the-cause

On a recent trip to the local ShopRite supermarket in North Bergen, New Jersey, my son and I encountered the following signs below:


WTF?

"Technology outages????" What kind of utter nonsense is this?

There's no such thing as a technology outage that lasts long enough to cause a food shortage! 

This is a bold-faced lie.

Then, farther down the Frozen Foods aisle at the same ShopRite supermarket, we encountered this sign:



Notice the DATE on the bottom left of the sign? June 16, 2020. 

So the shortages are back. 

But why?

The farmers say they have so much crop, they have to bury it or burn it because it isn't selling.

The food PROCESSORS say they can't get enough trucking to bring the food in . . . . while the TRUCKING industry says there is no demand for trucking . . .

All of which converts to . . . no food at the supermarkets.

Somebody (very big) is playing games with the food supply.

The bottleneck is between the farms and the processing companies. The bottleneck is NOT either the farmers or the processing companies. Some "middle man" is screwing around.

That middle man needs to be identified, personally intercepted, and be dealt with in a way that prevents future interruption of the food supply.

If you know who the bottleneck is - corporate or personal - please reveal that info either via the comments area below (subscribers only) of via email.


On another continent we are seeing the same thing but is it REALLY a statement about pollinators?

Did they replenish them later in the morning?


I'm sure Ice Age Farmer was poo-pooed on this or told he is fanning panic.

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

MEDIA: "We’re facing a new disaster: “famines of biblical proportions in 2021”.

 How are we meant to react when (the usually-lying)-mainstream media is putting out the dire warnings?

World could face ‘hunger pandemic’ in 2021, World Food Program warns

If you thought 2020 was bad, brace yourself for 2021 – experts say things are about to get much worse, with an even more deadly pandemic about to hit.


News.com.au,

18 November  2020


COVID-19. Conflict. Collapsing economies. Drought. Now we’re facing a new disaster: “famines of biblical proportions in 2021”.

That’s according to the 2020 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, David Beasley, who runs the World Food Program and has added its voice to a growing cacophony of alarms, stating “we’re on the brink of a hunger pandemic”.

The world we live in is an immensely complex device. Everything is connected. Everything is balanced. Everything – be it global stock markets or supply chains – is part of an extensive interconnected system.

Which is why the COVID-19 pandemic and a series of environmental disasters have thrown some serious spanners in the works.

Australia’s Royal Commission into recent catastrophic bushfires warns of “compounding disasters” affecting the “economy, critical infrastructure and essential services”.

Defence Force chief Angus Campbell has warned disasters are already “more extreme and more common”.

Now Mr Beasley is using the Nobel Prize to highlight the warning signs his 20,000 staff are seeing worldwide.

Refugee camps are overflowing, their occupants having fled their fields. Farmers are leaving their land fallow due to a lack of labour, seed and feed. And many of those crops that have been planted are wilting under drought or being washed away by storms.

“It’s getting worse out there … (and) our hardest work is yet to come,” he said.

Beasley says world leaders must be alerted to “this tragedy that we are facing – crises that really are going to be extraordinary over the next, who knows, 12 to 18 months”.

And that’s just one of the known unknowns the world faces in 2021.

Worse are the unknown unknowns.

“Ultimately, the longer-term consequences of this pandemic – like all previous pandemics – are simply unknowable to those who must endure them,” says Professor of political science Andrew Latham.

STARVATION, DESTABILISATION, MIGRATION

“2021’s going to be a very bad year,” Beasley says. “You’re not going to have enough money to fund all the projects you historically fund. Right now, we really need to focus on icebergs, and icebergs are famine, starvation, destabilisation and migration.”

International efforts to stimulate the global economy have only delayed the onset, he says.

“We were able to avert it in 2020 … because the world leaders responded with money, stimulus packages, deferral of debt,” he told the Associated Press.

But that money is evaporating. And Beasley believes most governments don’t have enough reserves for a second shot.

For 2021, that leaves much of the world noticing increased food prices and empty shelves – and about 270 million people facing crisis levels of hunger.

“There’s about three dozen countries that could possibly enter famine conditions,” Beasley said.

RELATED: The day our world changed forever

The COVID-19 death toll is rapidly accelerating around the world. Picture: Justin HAMEL / AFP

The COVID-19 death toll is rapidly accelerating around the world. Picture: Justin HAMEL / AFPSource:AFP


The World Food Program believes Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Burkina Faso have already tipped into famine. Afghanistan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somali, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe aren’t far behind.

Beasley says his “great hope” is that those billionaires who have profited from disrupted supply chains would step forward with donations for the likes of global school lunch programs.

Their own wealth is at risk.

COVID-19 remains rampant. Climate disasters continue apace. Civil unrest is surging.

It’s all acting as a feedback loop on the global economy. And it’s not that this is unexpected. History clearly defines the flow-on effect plagues have on national security, food security and civil unrest. Throw in a natural disaster or two and you get a real crisis.

A dog sits on the back of a ute as residents leave a flooded area following the passage of Hurricane Eta in Honduras. Picture: Orlando SIERRA / AFP

A dog sits on the back of a ute as residents leave a flooded area following the passage of Hurricane Eta in Honduras. Picture: Orlando SIERRA / AFPSource:AFP


THE PANDEMIC PARADOX

History is full of pandemics. Their catastrophic economic and cultural symptoms are well defined.

We’re not immune.

“People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life,” says political science researcher Professor Andrew Latham.

Pandemics alter society’s views of the world. Pandemics up-end fundamental economic systems. Pandemics sway the balance of power between nations.

Plague ravaged the Roman Empire in its dying days. Out of its ashes rose Christianity, feudalism and the concept of personal freedoms.

The Black Death of the Middle Ages created the concept of labour rights, a middle class and an attitude that technology could solve a multitude of ills.

COVID-19, while not as fatal as these pandemics, could still be equally as earth shattering.

“Will the bumbling efforts of the open societies of the West to come to grips with the virus shattering already-wavering faith in liberal democracy, creating a space for other ideologies to evolve and metastasise?” Professor Latham asks.

“COVID-19 may be accelerating an already ongoing geopolitical shift in the balance of power between the US and China … (and) COVID-19 seems to be accelerating the unravelling of long-established patterns and practices of work, with repercussions that could affect the future of office towers, big cities and mass transit, to name just a few.”

NED-743-World War Zero map infographic - 0

BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Australia’s Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements warns: “We are likely to see more compounding disasters on a national scale with far-reaching consequences.”

“Compound disasters may be caused by multiple disasters happening simultaneously, or one after another. Some may involve multiple hazards — fires, floods and storms. Some have cascading effects — threatening not only lives and homes, but also the nation’s economy, critical infrastructure and essential services, such as our electricity, telecommunications and water supply, and our roads, railways and airports,” the report reads.

https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/

Princeton University international affairs analyst Professor Michael Oppenheimer agrees we are entering an era of disasters. And warns we’re not ready for it.

“Each disaster could compound the damage of the next, with less and less time for people to recover in between,” he writes in Foreign Affairs.

Professor Oppenheimer says the Paris Climate Accord is not proving to be the vaccine our climate systems need. And that means compounding, and overlapping, weather disasters are becoming much more likely.

A hurricane or cyclone strike does much more than up-end trees, flatten houses and flood fields. The wheels of industry stop turning. Distribution networks crawl to a halt. Supplies – be they industrial, medical or food – are strained. Insurance claims, lost tax, lost consumption – all have global reverberations.

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 caused $US80 billion in damage. Two or three such superstorms will create a crisis.

Add one to pandemic, drought and civil unrest and you get: “The interaction of extreme events creates risks of an entirely new type and magnitude,” Professor Oppenheimer writes. “The bottom line is that few if any countries are sufficiently prepared to deal with what is in store.”