Most people I talk economics with don't know what elasticity means, and it's more conducive to the understanding of my points to preemptively provide sufficient context than to answer questions afterward. If it came off as condescending, it wasn't meant to, and I apologize. I will in return assume that your suggestion that I don't know what it's like to go hungry was also not intended to come off that way, and we'll call it a draw, okay?
Having seen butter prices double over a couple of weeks a couple of years ago with a relatively small decrease in the supply of butterfat, and having seen the effects of a late, hard frost in California on produce prices this spring, I don't think I *am* particularly incorrect about the elasticity of food demand. I will grant that the experience in America is likely different than that in the third world, but I am primarily concerned with the reaction in the States to the climate change problem, for a couple of reasons. First, because I live here and I selfishly don't want to have to pay significantly more for my dinner. Second, because the third world doesn't really have the resources to *do* anything about the problem right now, and the US does. That makes us morally responsible, in my opinion, to be developing solutions. And yes, I am aware of the stupidity of expecting anything like moral responsibility out of our government.
Also, it's not the average person in the States who will be particularly affected by significant price increases--it's the folks on the cusp of poverty, the ones who didn't used to have to choose between food and rent, but might have to in the event.
The problem of production is not exclusively one of the raw acreage of arable land--one also needs the people and equipment in place to farm it, and as you point out, the infrastructure to extract and distribute the produce. Land in permafrost doesn't have any of those things today, and given the way politics work in the world today, I don't see any reason to think that the transition period between the emergence of the need and the development of the infrastructure (and then the relocation of the people) will be swift.
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Date: 2007-08-13 03:16 am (UTC)Having seen butter prices double over a couple of weeks a couple of years ago with a relatively small decrease in the supply of butterfat, and having seen the effects of a late, hard frost in California on produce prices this spring, I don't think I *am* particularly incorrect about the elasticity of food demand. I will grant that the experience in America is likely different than that in the third world, but I am primarily concerned with the reaction in the States to the climate change problem, for a couple of reasons. First, because I live here and I selfishly don't want to have to pay significantly more for my dinner. Second, because the third world doesn't really have the resources to *do* anything about the problem right now, and the US does. That makes us morally responsible, in my opinion, to be developing solutions. And yes, I am aware of the stupidity of expecting anything like moral responsibility out of our government.
Also, it's not the average person in the States who will be particularly affected by significant price increases--it's the folks on the cusp of poverty, the ones who didn't used to have to choose between food and rent, but might have to in the event.
The problem of production is not exclusively one of the raw acreage of arable land--one also needs the people and equipment in place to farm it, and as you point out, the infrastructure to extract and distribute the produce. Land in permafrost doesn't have any of those things today, and given the way politics work in the world today, I don't see any reason to think that the transition period between the emergence of the need and the development of the infrastructure (and then the relocation of the people) will be swift.