Economics – Paul Noël

Cashew nuts, very good for you but …..

Cashew nuts are very good for us unless you are unfortunate to have an allergy. But like many things that we in first world countries take for granted and pick up every day, only stopping probably to reflect on the price, is what and who is involved in getting the cashews to us.

Looking at the side of the packet which I have never done before tells me that they were grown in Vietnam. So the cashews have covered a lot of food miles probably by burning fossil fuels so there’s the aspect of climate change to consider as well.

We should but few do, ask ourselves what sort of life the farmers or the people working in the growing and packaging of these cashew nuts lead. Are they well paid, well housed and do they have clean running water? Do they go on holiday and do their kids go to school? All normal things that the people buying the packet of cashews take for granted and would complain if they had to live without them. We all need to think about our impact on the planet but also the many invisible people that supply us with food.

Then of course there’s that plastic packaging. Where’s that going to end up? Incinerated, polluting the air we breathe or as nano sized plastic particles that may carry toxins or pathogens into our bodies and possibly end up giving us a serious health issue?

A lot to think about as we are going to have to change whether we like it or not.

Below are a few more photos of food miles and plastic pollution to think about.

Inside the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, La Rambla, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Spain

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Fishing is not natural – Environmental loading 18

Why would anyone think that? The ecosystems of the seas and the oceans have functioned normally for 100s of millions of years with the first complex life forms evolving some 560 million years ago and with the first fish appearing 530 million years before present, https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ocean-through-time.

Then along comes a monkey, the human primate, a creature that evolved from the water who then, in very recent history, compared to life in the seas and oceans comes up with the idea for a boat. The concept is copied innumerable times as the monkey finds it likes to eat or use many of the life forms that live in the watery environment but without consideration to what this will do to those ecosystems.

Part of his expansion in numbers is very much down to this exploitation without consideration of this environment. After all, teach a man to fish and not only will he have many children who will also want to fish but he will go to extraordinary lengths to feed his pets and also, to force feed his herbivore farm animals some fish before he eats them.

Then some of those who were fishermen become managers and management consultants who came up with the idea that what is needed is a bigger boat, a factory boat and a huge processing plant to distribute what appears to be seas and oceans that have no bounds. Queue repeating this plunder of the watery environment without consideration as to the consequences.

Meanwhile below the surface where most of the monkeys cannot see or are not looking the ecosystems are trying to adapt to this day in day out onslaught as ecosystems do. On the surface the monkey is now squabbling over who, where and when the fishermen monkeys can fish and all the while the fishermen monkeys have more fishermen children. Think about what we are doing in a non human centric point of view and you will see that it is not going to end well.

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Why do we continue to waste energy? – Environmental loading 16

Posted almost two years ago now and we’re still wasting as much energy now as then. Meanwhile the greedy and possibly stupid but mostly greedy government churn out the total BS about jobs, energy security and blah, blah, blah when it comes to why they grant new licences for extraction in the North Sea.

Here’s the post.

Currently, on the 31st of March 2022 there’s an invasion going on in Ukraine by the evil leaders of Russia. Now’s Europe uses a lot of Russian gas and oil so why are we wasting these fuels to light up buildings at night and in this case unfinished buildings that could remain empty for years even when they are finished due to the changes in the ways we now work? Behind the invasion which many see as most pressing there’s still the need to reduce our fossil fuel emissions by 50% within the next 2900 days or less. So once again why are we wasting energy especially when it is so “expensive” in monetary terms and very much more so in environmental terms.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

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The Gulf Stream and what it might do in the near future

Posted almost three years ago There have been some exceptional extreme weather events since then and it’s set to get far worse. Don’t be the little piggie in the straw house thinking that the big bad wolf of climate change won’t come knocking at your door. Since then more studies and research have been carried out and have confirmed that our systems are changing but that they have not yet reached tipping points.

5th March 2021

This is an excellent piece by the New York Times on what may happen to the Gulf Stream in the near future because of the human primate’s burning of fossil fuels. We have effectively been “playing with fire” as a species and apart from the majority of the several thousand scientists involved in climate change telling us about what will happen if we heat the oceans and atmosphere, have been misled by global corporations centered on profit and wealth creation and their propping up of puppet governments. Humanity is in for a rough ride, how rough it will be will be determined by how quickly we act and it’s not just about buying an electric car, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/02/climate/atlantic-ocean-climate-change.html?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=799160eb16-briefing-dy-20210304&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-799160eb16-43669565.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

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Passata – the costs and who can afford it

A post from January 2021 on the cost of what looks like simple things.

27th January 2021

This costs 80p in my local supermarket in the UK, less than a £, maybe a US$ at some point in currency exchange. It’s their essential range but at 80p they are still making a profit from it. Made from Italian tomatoes that have been sieved removing the skins and seeds it is then placed in a glass container and shipped to the UK unless the process is based on the tomatoes being shipped to the UK first in some other container. If so was it reusable? Either way there’s a lot of resources and energy used to get a value product for the consumer to buy. So there are a lot of resources and energy being used to bring this passata into my home but at what cost to the environment? Then there’s the question of the economics. I can afford to buy it but there are millions of people in the UK even who could not and the UK represents <0.1% of the global population. So would this product ever be “affordable” in terms of human labour, resources and environmental costs for all of the 7.8 billion humans who would like to consume it? If we take the Ethiopian clothing workers, earning roughly 80p a day, to fill our high streets and internet with cheap environmentally damaging tat, it is clear that our economic models are completely wrong and that unless the price was a magnitude cheaper that they would never be able to enjoy passata.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Privately owned EVs are not the solution in many cases

I have posted this a couple of times before and so far our economic model of unsustainable consumption on a planet of finite resources is just to replace privately owned fossil fuel powered vehicles with battery powered ones. This is clearly unsustainable.

22nd January 2021

Because of our human centric thinking, of which I am guilty as much as anybody else, switching from a fossil fuel powered car to an EV is not the solution. Private car ownership does not scale up to 7.8 billion people. Ask yourself where the resources come and not whether you find the price too high in terms of money, https://uk.news.yahoo.com/four-five-drivers-electric-cars-000100229.html. If you had to live with the mining and extraction and production on your doorstep you would think twice about it. So as part of our future sustainability where much of humanity will need to live in the 15 minute city concept we will all have to share our transport.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

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It’s easy to save energy – Environmental loading 17

First posted last year but nothing has changed. Politicians etc bleating on as in, “What about China…” and all the while pretending that the country is doing so well, which it clearly isn’t.

So why don’t we? Why do we have leaders, who even after almost three months of the war in Ukraine, can’t even instruct lazy, stupid, ignorant construction companies to turn off lights. This was taken on a Sunday evening. How many times is this repeated not only in this country but around the world? We claim to be an intelligent species but there are many examples where incompetent would be a far better description. The climate crisis gets worse each day but many seem oblivious to it.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Why do we continue to waste energy? – Environmental loading 16

I wrote this back in 2022 and here we are still wasting energy while CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to climb along with all those other issues that seem like they are so far away from most, even if they are aware of them. Ocean acidification, slowing down of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Thwaites and Pine Island glacier destabilisation etc etc. Never mind, it’ll all turn out alright, until is doesn’t.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Make 2024 the year of not buying something

First posted in January 2021.

Part of the problem of climate change, deforestation, species extinction is related to the amount we consume and currently business as usual merchants want us to continue spending and consuming. This isn’t possible on a finite planet and is morally wrong when we know of the exploitation of human labour and the environment. So how about making a list of things that you don’t buy this year, that you do without? If we all didn’t buy something it would make a big difference. I can see the problems for people. A younger me would also spend and spend again but I have become old enough to reject the advertising by what the marketing and advertising people tell me is essential for my life and happiness. So why not try and not go shopping whether it be physically when allowed to do so or on line? Make a note of items that you have decided not to buy and at the end of 2021 count up how much money you have saved. There are those that will say that these people in 3rd world countries need the work and while true they need more than economic slave wages and that needs to change too.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

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The bigger picture – 1 (while the world and the lives of others pass us by – especially those in their corporate hamster wheel lives)

I make all sorts of links that some might say are very tenuous but I see a connection between many issues that are not reported on.

So this phys.org link, https://phys.org/news/2022-05-record-breaking-cold-brazil-threatens-homeless.html is about the record breaking cold that parts of South America is experiencing at this time.

It discusses the effects of this cold period on crops. If you do a search you will find that around the world there are many places where crop production this year is in trouble due to extreme weather conditions, Morocco, Italy, California, Iraq, Canada to name but a few and due to extremes of cold or heat, drought or flooding. Main stream media do not appear to be bundling these individual reports into a, “we may be in trouble” year, in terms of food production. Many in the first world have little idea where their food comes from or that they too could be subject to shortages and rationing like many in the third world are most of the time. This article is part of the many stating that climate change is getting serious.

It also has a personal side for me. The article also states that in Sao Paulo a 66 year old homeless man died while waiting for food in a food distribution line and he had spent the night outside. I visited Sao Paulo in 1999 and am slightly younger than this man. We would both have been in our 40s when I passed through the same city assuming that he was a resident at that time. Was he homeless then or did he have a wife and children? Did he have any idea that his life would be cut short in 2022? How have the intervening 23 years treated each of us? I’ve been lucky and worked for most of that time but how did life treat him? The point is that his untimely death was so unnecessary but it is probably repeated almost countless times every day. Some people seem fixated on bringing almost infinite numbers of babies into the world but why would you want to do that to inflict suffering onto some of them as adults? Our societies need to change drastically or we will never earn the description of being civilised.