A Tsunami of Hunger Looms on the Horizon

The new working poor, as well as more families with young children, are threatening to overwhelm New York City's last hunger safety net.

Entrenched and developing economic powers -- the U.K., China, South Korea, India and more -- have launched land rushes to outsource production of everything from staples like rice, wheat, corn and sugar to finance bubbles like biofuels. The hard numbers are alarming: in the last 6 months over 20 million hectares of arable land have been sold.

A crisis is brewing and Carlos Rodriguez sees it in ever longer lines. "More work boots with plaster or paint on them," he says. "Guys clearly coming in from the work site."

A spokesperson for the Food Bank for New York City, Rodriguez has experienced tough times before, but not like this. "It takes a lot of pride for a New York construction worker to stand on the soup kitchen line. That's something I never saw, even during 9/11, during that recession."

Here, on a quiet, tree-lined section of 116th Street in Manhattan, it's possible to see the financial crisis that has the planet in its grip up close and personal. The new working poor, as well as more families with young children, are threatening to overwhelm New York City's last hunger safety net.

And the hungry lining up on this street today may be only a harbinger of things to come. Behind them, in an increasingly hard-pressed city, a potential tsunami of need threatens to swamp the entire system. The one million-plus needy New Yorkers of today could, according to those experienced in feeding the poor, explode into tomorrow's three million hungry mouths with nowhere else to turn.

Three million -- and right in the heart of the country's financial capital.

If this potential nightmare comes to be, it will be played out, in part, behind the nondescript storefront of the Food Bank's Community Kitchen and Food Pantry of West Harlem and the more than 1,000 allied food pantries, soup kitchens, senior centers, low-income daycare centers, shelters and other partner programs spread across the city's five boroughs.

In Harlem, in the late afternoon, the needy begin to congregate beneath a green awning that reads "Food Change": hungry New Yorkers without other options, men and women, young and old, black, white, Asian, and Hispanic -- a full spectrum of need.

On a recent afternoon, I saw it first hand. By 3 pm, they were beginning to patiently gather. By 4 pm, the line already stretched half a block and was just starting to wrap around the corner of 116th Street onto Frederick Douglass Boulevard. By 5 pm, the tables in the Community Kitchen were already full, yet the queue out on the street was still sizeable. "It's pretty typical," Rodriguez told me. "This is very representative of what we're seeing and hearing throughout our network."

Two Million New Mouths to Feed

In 2007, even before the current financial meltdown hit, approximately 1.3 million New Yorkers depended on soup kitchens and food pantries. A poll by the Food Bank in late 2008, however, revealed something far more startling: one in four New Yorkers said they lacked savings to fall back on and, if they lost their jobs, would be in immediate need of food assistance. This is an especially worrisome figure as the rate of job loss in the city has been quickening over the last year, with an ever-weakening construction industry taking an especially hard hit, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While hard numbers aren't yet available, the Food Bank has already seen double-digit increases in need since it took that poll -- high double digits at some food pantries and soup kitchens.

"That means two million people on the fringe of our network may need to access our services at one point or another," says Rodriguez. "We're barely meeting demand for who we're serving now. What do we do if those two million don't get back on their feet on time, exhaust their savings and any alternatives, and then have to start accessing emergency food? It's a major concern."

Rodriguez outlines this nightmarish scenario in remarkably calm and measured tones, perhaps in part because, today, there's little time or room for panic in the frenzied world of the Food Bank's Vice President of Agency Relations and Programs.

The Harlem Community Kitchen, which relies heavily on volunteers to augment its workers, was distinctly understaffed on the day of my visit. Back-to-back-to-back deliveries had left its dining room, where hundreds of people would soon be fed, packed with cardboard boxes full of food.

Mid-interview, I took a break and pitched in, helping to stack cartons of slightly bruised and aging peppers, apples, and salad greens, along with bread, canned vegetables, toilet paper, and 50-pound bags of onions, on hand trucks and carts that were whisked off, unloaded, and quickly brought back for more. Room had to be made, with no time to spare, for the tables and chairs that would accommodate the people waiting outside, some already asking, even pleading, for the kitchen to begin serving dinner.

An Airplane Hanger Filled With Food

Most of the Community Kitchen's provisions come from a cavernous 90,000-square-foot space located in the Hunts Point Cooperative Market -- a 60-acre food distribution center in the South Bronx.

Think of an airplane hanger filled with food.

In 1997, the New York Times reported the unnerving news that a city-wide rise in hunger had driven the amount of food the warehouse distributed from 2.5 million pounds a month early in the year to over 4 million pounds that October. Now, that massive number looks positively puny. "I distributed 7.2 million pounds last month," Brad Sobel, the director of warehouse operations, tells me.

On the day I dropped in at the Bronx site, so did a special donation of 576,000 eggs -- two tractor-trailers full -- that were offloaded into the warehouse's huge refrigerated room with remarkable speed.

576,000 eggs.

And yet within two weeks, according to Sobel, those eggs would be a distant memory -- every last one distributed to the Community Kitchen and the other 1,000-plus food assistance programs the warehouse does its best to keep supplied in hungry times.

The need is never-ending, the turnover of food almost impossible for an outsider to grasp, and all of it happens in the vast space that lies behind plastic curtains separating the loading dock from a supermarket the likes of which you've never seen before. Instead of shoppers with carts, there are men on self-propelled riding pallet trucks and sit-down forklifts zipping about. On the floor are wooden pallets of produce. Plastic bags of potatoes, piled up to five-and-a-half-feet high. Fifty-pound bags of onions stacked on pallet after pallet. (I counted at least 11 of them.)

All around are huge metal shelves filled with pallets of plastic-wrapped cans, plastic tubs, jars, and boxes of food, some donated by food companies, some provided via federal government dollars through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and some purchased wholesale by the warehouse. Cases of Princella canned sweet potatoes and Hormel cubed beef. Boxes of Parmalat milk. Cases of Peter Pan peanut butter. Cartons of Ralston Bran Flakes and Tasteeos cereal. An endless aisle of metal cans of Popeye-brand spinach, stacked and shrink-wrapped. Innumerable brown cardboard boxes filled with the maple-flavored oatmeal, Maypo.

"Donations are up," says Sobel, echoing voices from food banks across the country that have seen a similar rise in food donations as the economy has worsened. But need is also on the rise -- and at a staggering pace.

Over the din of the warehouse -- the horns, warning signals, and whirring motors of the flitting forklifts -- there is the omnipresent steady hum of the cooling unit that keeps the refrigerated room at a constant 32 degrees, the deeper drone of the much colder freezer room's massive air conditioner, and the thumps and thuds of pallets of peanut butter and enriched long-grain rice being moved into place. Warehouse Manager Paul Rodriguez (no relation to Carlos) takes a moment from his mad day to explain how he and about 40 other workers offload trucks, sort and store the food, take orders from food assistance programs and the agencies they serve, fill the orders as needed -- with the help of volunteers who donate their time to pack boxes -- and ship them out to feed the needy across the five boroughs. "It's very rewarding," he says. "I love what I do."

Rodriguez explains that they try to send the bulk of the fresh produce they receive to sites like the Community Kitchen in Harlem and other soup kitchens, where meals are served for the hungry, as opposed to food pantries where the needy shop for staples. "We'll send them onions, romaine lettuce, a variety of produce. We don't want to just send onions just because we've got 20,000 onions. We'll make sure we send a mixed pallet of produce with, say, six different types of produce -- bananas, apples, cabbage, and other fruits and vegetables."

A former serviceman who still retains his straight-backed military bearing and runs a tight ship in the warehouse, Rodriguez remembers a childhood in which his family sometimes faced food insecurity. "We're in the business of feeding the hungry," he explains, "feeding a lot of families. The way the economy is, it's unfortunate. More and more people are losing their jobs, and more and more people are struggling to make ends meet."

White-Collar Hunger

Even some of those managing to hang onto their jobs are having trouble feeding themselves. Evidence of it is crystal clear in Harlem where white-collar workers, sometimes still clad in dressy clothes, are beginning to join construction workers as the new faces on the soup kitchen line.

Some need the food just to get through their job searches. Jesse Taylor, the Community Kitchen's senior director, recalls a recent morning when a man appeared at the front door. "He was dressed really well. A shirt with a collar," Taylor recalled. The man asked, "Do you have anything for me to eat?" but was told the Kitchen wouldn't be open for dinner until four in the afternoon.

As Taylor remembers it, "He said, 'I've only been in town for a couple weeks. I'm from California. I'm living in a shelter right now. I'm homeless and trying to find work. I'd like to come back at four, but I don't know where I'll be. I hope to have a job by then. Can you give me anything? Anything at all?'"

"We made him up a quick sandwich," Taylor adds.

And that early morning job-hunter isn't atypical these days. Taylor points to "a huge increase in the number of children and seniors in the soup kitchen line, as well as quite a few people in business attire. They usually come in one time in their dress clothes." The next day, they're back dressed to better blend in with the others in line who are homeless or, as Taylor puts it, "carrying their whole world on their back."

That night, I saw no dressy clothes in the line for dinner, but I certainly noticed men in work boots and teenagers as well. Behind the small glass counter in the cozy, cream-colored dining room, nine young volunteers -- mostly women -- in hairnets and latex gloves moved briskly to keep the assembly line of food going. They were lining up trays with servings of either ham or meatloaf next to mashed potatoes, cabbage stew, an apple, a piece of bread or a roll, a slice of cake, and a cup of purple fruit juice.

This scene is repeated Monday through Friday (with breakfasts on Tuesday and Thursday mornings), and this night the crowd was eager, moving through the room and then eating with purpose. As the first batch of folks filtered out, those waiting moved forward to take a tray as the volunteers filled plate after plate. The day I was there, staff kept up with demand, but will they be able to keep up if the economic crisis grinds on?

"What Can We Do?"

The line for the soup kitchen is only one of two queues that form in front of the Harlem site. Four days a week, a second line heads in the other direction, toward Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, leading to the food pantry that adjoins the Community Kitchen. On this day, the pantry opened at 1 pm and, three hours later, the line was still there, mostly women, leaning on their own folding metal shopping carts in which they would haul their groceries home.

Via a short stairwell, a few shoppers at a time are allowed into a surprisingly small but well-stocked, supermarket-style room with a checker-board linoleum floor. There, they find metal shelves filled with pasta, hot and cold cereals, canned vegetables and fish or meat (including tuna, salmon and mackerel, chicken chunks, and beef with gravy), as well as fresh vegetables, a freezer of frozen meat, and a refrigerator full of skim milk and ricotta cheese.

After showing proof of New York residency (a piece of current mail will do) and family size (a report card, for example, for each child), one member of a household can shop at the pantry once a month. "In effect, we're a bridge to help folks get through, especially since food stamp benefits generally run out after the second week of the month," says Taylor.

Some of the same items I had seen up at the Bronx warehouse (Maypo and the Princella sweet potatoes, for instance) appeared to be in heavy supply as an older African-American woman and a fragile-looking young Hispanic mother with a shy child filled their miniature metal shopping carts.

The food never stays on the shelves for long. "We're seeing 100-150 families a day. They can easily wipe out everything you see on the shelves here," says Taylor.

Keeping those shelves full isn't easy. Despite Sobel's somewhat rosy assessment, Carlos Rodriguez notes that, even before the recent economic meltdown, a Food Bank survey showed demand increasing 24% and donations, at least by comparison with need, beginning to slide. In the time since, the deleterious effects of the economic meltdown have been abetted by the problems of a globalized food market and the effects of climate change, both creating ripples from Asia to Harlem.

"Over the last year," says Rodriguez, "we had some droughts in different parts of the world that drove up food prices... The price of rice was ridiculous over the last summer, so there was shortage of rice and other grains."

At the same time, increased efficiency by food manufacturers, whose overproduction has always been an important source of food bank and pantry donations, is having a grave impact. Increasingly, they are often making no more than they can sell. Even when they still do overproduce, Rodriguez notes, "we're in a global market environment, so they're finding alternative places to sell their surplus. What does that translate into? Less donations for food banks."

As has been true for food banks all over the country, the global economic crisis has spurred a rise -- whether temporary or not no one knows -- in food donations, which has helped offset some of the pressures the Food Bank for New York City is now experiencing. If, however, charitable foundations continue to buckle under the stresses of the deepening depression and philanthropic foundations cut back on their grants even as businesses shrink their charitable giving, that tsunami of hunger Carlos Rodriguez fears may be heading for New York.

"It's a very difficult time," says Bronx Warehouse Manager Paul Rodriguez. "We do whatever we need to do to make sure people have a little something warm in their bellies. That's what we're in the business of doing. We try to make it happen. But we can't make it happen if we don't have food on the shelves."

As the last safety net for the needy, the Food Bank for New York City is just about all that stands between millions of vulnerable New Yorkers and abject hunger. As of now, the lines on 116th Street keep getting longer, while more construction boots and kids' shoes shuffle into the Community Kitchen each weeknight. If demand spikes by two million or even a significant fraction of that, the result could be a catastrophe. "If we have an empty warehouse," Paul Rodriguez asks, "what can we do?"

Britain heading back to the dark ages

The UK is facing a tipping point over the next few years in its ability to generate enough power to satisfy an ever-increasing demand.


By Rowena Mason


When California was hit with a spate of crippling power cuts eight years ago, it was not simply the fault of an unscrupulous energy supplier called Enron manipulating prices.

The power company was blamed for meddling with the market, but state politicians were also forced to admit that their lack of investment in new electricity plants had contributed to the shortages.

Rupert Soames, the chief executive of Aggreko, the FTSE 250 emergency power generator, says the UK must prepare seriously for the danger of being hit by similar blackouts within the next decade.

"It has happened before in developed countries and we should not kid ourselves that it cannot happen here," he said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.

"The UK has an unacceptably high risk of interrupted power supply and I have enormous doubt about whether new plants are going to be built in time."

Aggreko has already had to provide emergency power to governments in Spain, Greece, Asia, South America and Africa. Mr Soames does not want to see this happen in the UK, but fears that "a slow train crash" of energy shortages is on its way unless more action is taken.

His fears are not unfounded. It was revealed by The Daily Telegraph earlier this week that the Government's own figures suggest that there will be a 3000 megawatt hour shortage of supply by 2017 causing 1970s-style blackouts.

Over the next 10 years, one third of Britain's power-generating capacity needs to be replaced with cleaner fuels, as a result of European laws on pollution.

By 2025 the situation is expected to worsen with the shortfall hitting 7000 megawatt hours per year – the equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain.

Ed Miliband's Department of Energy and Climate Change has swiftly dismissed these ideas as alarmist, arguing that new renewable and gas plants will be able to cope.

Critics point out that the Government is going to have to persuade energy companies or other investors to build thousands of wind turbines, at least three potential new nuclear plants and a raft of cheaper gas stations if demand is to be met.

There are fundamental problems with leaving these decisions purely to the market, according Mr Soames.

The recession has meant that there is little incentive for private companies to start investing in new stations. And there is a growing sense that EdF, E.ON and RWE npower, the backers of new nuclear plants, may find that construction is uneconomic without levies on consumer bills – something ruled out by the Government.

Mr Soames' biggest worry is that existing nuclear stations may be forced to stay running for longer than is safe, with unknown consequences.

Most controversially, the Aggreko boss believes that until the UK makes concrete plans for tackling a shortage of power stations, national energy security ought to take a priority over the targets that say UK emissions must be reduced by 80pc from 1990 levels by 2050.

"I personally believe that meeting climate change goals are not incompatible with national energy security in the long run, but I think keeping the country running is more important," he said.

Some even believe that expecting the power to flow seamlessly until 2017 may be unduly optimistic. Nick Campbell, an analyst at the energy consultants Inenco, has calculated that the energy gap could start in 2012 – just three years away and five years earlier than the Government admits.

The problem lies in the European Union's decree that Britain's dirtiest power stations – the old-style coal and oil generation plants – must be shut down not at a certain date, but after a certain number of hours. These plants, which are used as back-up generators for times of peak demand, are expected to shut in about 2015.

However, a number of outages at nuclear power plants mean these stations have already been burning through their allocated number of hours far more quickly than forecast. In fact, six out of ten may be forced to stop generation long before they are due to be decommissioned in six years' time.

"Alternative forms of generation will need to be online way before these nine coal-fired plants reach their 2015 deadline or the generation gap will occur at some point between 2012 and 2015," said Mr Campbell.

Greg Clark, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, has also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could be three times worse than Government predictions. Some of the modelling assumes little change in electricity demand until to 2020 and takes for granted a rapid increase in wind farm capacity.

Dr Jon Gibbins, an energy technology expert from Imperial College, London, has been warning for years that the country faces an energy crisis, but says the situation is now growing more grave.

"The electricity industry has been sweating assets for a long time and now it's just about at the point of running out," he said.

"Policies at the moment just look like somebody in a Government office making up numbers."

He is particularly worried that Britain has left it late to start approving new nuclear stations, leaving the country with a glut of gas-fired power stations and intermittent renewable sources for some years.

An over-reliance on gas-fired stations also leaves the UK vulnerable to the whims of politically unstable gas-producing regions such as Russia and the Middle East as Britain's North Sea reserves deplete, Dr Gibbins explains. Most will be imported via pipeline from Norway, but extra gas for winter needs to be shipped in expensive liquefied form.

"We could be left with only renewables and gas plants for a while," Dr Gibbins said. "There's a distinct possibility that we won't be able to get enough gas. We have been lulled into a false sense of security by low gas prices during the recession, but the trend is that it will get more expensive."

In the long term, electricity demand is only likely to increase. Gas boilers and the transport system will be expected to go electric if the UK has a chance of hitting emissions targets, piling more pressure on the network.

Chris Bennett, future transmission manager at National Grid – who is not unduly worried about shortages – is responsible for considering how to "flex demand" as the network operator works out how to balance changing consumption patterns.

Smart meters, which monitor how household energy is used, could be used to switch refrigerators on and off, allow washing machines to run at off-peak times and make sure electric cars are charged overnight.

However, sceptics worry that a so-called "intelligent grid" could also be used to ration consumers in the event of insufficient capacity.

The power companies themselves are often wary of talking about future supply problems, but some, such as British Gas's owner Centrica, have been buying up North Sea assets in preparation for the "dash for gas".

However, E.ON points out that the recession has caused a 4pc drop in demand for electricity, as industrial customers close operations.

"We have got an extra five years or so to think about this now," said a spokesman for the power company. "Many manufacturing bases have stopped operating and activity won't return to normal for some time."

Other experts note with a touch of cynicism that it may be in the interests of the big six electricity and gas suppliers to operate with a shortage of electricity.

"Electricity providers can make more profits through their trading desks when prices are high than actually selling the power to homes," says one senior source in the energy trading industry. "There is sometimes a conflict of interest here."

In the last few months, the Government may slowly have been beginning to move in the right direction. Earlier this year, it widened the remit of the regulator, Ofgem, to include national energy security and promised to speed up the planning process that awards access to the national grid.

Reports from the CBI, the business body, and Malcolm Wicks, Gordon Brown's special representative on energy security, also recognised that Britain needs to start building more nuclear power stations.

But while the Government considers these reports and clings to its endless strategy documents, Britain's aged network and power stations lumber towards the end of their lives.

"Big infrastructure changes are not a happy country for politics," Mr Soames says. "But somebody needs to take responsibility and realise that renewable energy sources are not going to be enough in the medium term. We need fewer targets and more concrete plans or risk the lights going out over Britain."

Britain's Year 2000 Fuel Protests Offer Chilling Preview of America's Future

A year before 9/11/2001 happened in the USA, a ‘terrifying incident’ of a different sort happened in Europe that changed how political leaders across the world would forever understand the essential role oil resources played in the ‘developed nations.’ It started with a few angry French fishermen who found it harder and harder to make a living with the price of gas increasing, and blamed government taxation. They were so angry, they protested by blocking the English Channel, an entrance to a port that prevented oil tankers from delivering fuel supplies. The protest quickly and spontaneously spread to farmers and truck drivers, who blocked oil refineries and distribution depots. The situation became so serious, according to one report, “that the government considered using police and troops to force the removal of blockades, but massive public sympathy for the action, estimated at 88 percent in favour, made such an option all but impossible. A Jospin aide told the press, ‘If we can avoid a direct confrontation like that we will. One knows how that kind of thing begins. One doesn’t know how it ends.’”(2).

Oil had reached new heights of $34.50 a barrel and 84p a liter.

It was a fuel protest that caused fuel shortages affecting millions of Europeans, yet, if you lived in the USA, you probably never heard about or knew the extent of those two weeks. There were no flashy newspaper headlines. No ‘breaking stories’ in T.V. news. Nevertheless, we should remember the 5th of September, and if you agree after reading this article, send in your suggestions. What might be the most appropriate name to commemorate the events of those ten days. The ‘Petrol Tea Party,” “Petrol 9/11” or maybe “Petrol Days of Peril.” I’ll refer to it hear as the Petrol Sedition. Especially if you took part, tell us how it should be commemorated.

One writer thought that French government’s “concessions” to its people actually ‘fueled’ the protests in other countries.(4) If people heard about the petrol protests, they enthusiastically started their own, even when government flattery urged them to do otherwise. For example, speaking for the Blair government, Scottish Secretary John Reid reassured the press that Britain would not experience mass disruption because “the people of this country do not resort to the French way of doing things”. They contrasted the “anarchic” Gaul with the “law-abiding” Briton. But flattery wasn’t enough. It was a protest that struck the hearts of many citizens worldwide, and they took to the streets to announce their frustration and rage. While the French Government was able to appease the striking fisherman, farmers and truck drivers with gasoline tax concessions, the anger at high gas prices ignited or threatened similar protests in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and the UK.

In the Belgian capital, they played tennis on the empty streets. (3) In Munich, a couple of dozen tractors and trucks stopped traffic while demonstrators waved banners demanding that the government “Stop the Rip Off.”

When the demonstrations spread to the UK, protesters blockaded fuel refineries and distribution depots. Within days, the protests created a fuel crisis that brought the United Kingdom to a halt, and nearly destroyed large sections of its economy.

What happened from September 5th-14th, 2000 was a wake-up call to those entrusted with protecting the functioning of civilization. While protest started on September 5th, the Channel Tunnel was blockaded on September 6. The next day, the first oil refinery, at Stanlow, Chesire, was blockaded. Protests spread rapidly with more refineries blockaded on September 8th. On Sunday, September 10, the protests had closed Britain’s largest oil terminal at Kingsbury, West Midlands, and huge queues (lines) at gas stations were reported. By Tuesday, September 12, protesters had blocked six of the UK’s eight refineries.

On September 9th, a nation-wide panic buying of fuel began. A few days later, over half of Britain’s gas stations were shut down. When the first deliveries of gas began again on September 15th, 90 percent of gas stations were without fuel. Still, even though all protest had stopped, motorists were warned that they could still face a wait of up to two weeks for gas and delivering that gas posed a “massive logistical problem.” (4)

The impact on critical infrastructure was devastating. Food didn’t get delivered to supermarket shelves. Ambulance services stopped as did blood supplies to hospitals. One hospital ran out of stitches and many more complained about being unable to move hazardous materials from their facilities, creating health risk. Medicines were not delivered to pharmacies. ATM machines weren’t loaded with money. The financial impact of the week-long fuel drought was estimated to top £1 billion. (5)

Despite a five percent increase in rider-ship on public transportation (causing overcrowding), trains and buses were required to reduce frequency or stop service on many lines because of lack of gasoline or drivers who couldn’t get to work. Hospital personnel shortages also caused all but emergency hospital care to be cancelled. The ambulances that did run were told to keep their speed below 34.2 km/ to conserve fuel. (6)

Food sales increased 300 percent, and as the sight of empty shelves became common, panic buying increased. By September 13th, having no bread or milk, a number of supermarkets began rationing food purchases.(7)

Postal services were gradually reduced and “seriously threatened.” Guaranteed next day delivery was suspended, and plans had to be put in place to insure that social security checks were delivered to those dependent on them. (8)

Other businesses were equally troubled:

“Industry leaders noted that large parts of the economy, including steel and motor manufacturers, faced the threat of shutdowns, cutbacks and closures had the fuel crisis lasted any longer. Car manufacturers were within a week of shutdown by the time supplies started flowing again. Defense and aerospace industries were also within a week of “serious problems,” and steel makers had been on the brink of a 40 percent reduction in output (9). Some companies started reducing the size and scope of their operations.” (4)

Seeing the havoc their actions caused, demonstrators abandoned their protests and gave the government a 60-day deadline to reduce the fuel duty. But in contrast to the actions of the French government, the British government vowed that no concessions would be made. Instead, they directed efforts toward actions that would assure that no disruption of fuel supplies would happen again. Together with oil company executives, government ministers and police, they outlined a Memorandum of Understanding. Among its provisions, “Essential Users” would be provided with fuel, should such a crisis reoccur. These include:

-Armed forces

-Prison staff

-Coastguards and lifeboat crews

-Fuel and energy suppliers

-Essential financial services staff including those involved in the
delivery of cash and cheques

-Essential workers at nuclear sites

-Water, sewerage and drainage

-Central and local government workers

-Refuse collection and industrial waste

-Health and social workers

-Funeral services

-Emergency services

-Food industry

-Public transport

-Licensed taxis

-Airport and airline workers

-Postal, media, telecommunications

-Special schools and colleges for the disabled

-Essential foreign diplomatic workers

-Agriculture, veterinary and animal welfare (10)

For security reasons, details of how these plans, and others like them, were to be implemented, would not be made public. (4) While the British Government blamed the protesters, polls taken after the 5th of September overwhelmingly blamed the government in general (75%) and Tony Blair in particular (78%) for the situation. (11) All over Europe, citizens express sympathy for workers whose livelihoods are being threatened by increasing gas prices. (12)

The first lesson learned from these British “Petrol in Peril’ days was that no one could have imagined the tremendous disruption a brief pause in fossil fuels could cause. Oil is so fundamental to the economy that it strained the imagination of those empowered to manage the crisis. The entire structure of Western Civilization rests on fossil fuel. The second lesson is that when costs of fossil fuels rise, it angers people, and to quote a popular movie “The people shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, the government should be afraid of their people,” and afraid of the people they are.

I would like to stress that this disruption occurred when common British subjects engaged in public protest, not as a result of a “terrorist attack.” It became clear to the British Government–and to those leaders in many other developed countries who heeded the warning–that a robust and collaborative mechanism had to be put into place to protect the functioning of its economy and critical infrastructures. A powerful commitment to the normal supply of oil fuels became a national priority as it was an economic imperative. No public protest could or would be allowed if it impacted oil supplies.

When these protests crippled one of the world’s most powerful nations, when in nine days, London Bridge came tumbling down, those entrusted with the power to act quickly came up with a Plan B.

Will this plan be successful as the price of oil and the temper of its citizens, continue to climb? Will we be content to have decisions be made by the same industries that supply us with the energy we find so essential? How ‘independent’ can oil and gas companies really be when they are so well aware of their dwindling resources and how essential it is to the functioning of our infrastructure? Are we entitled to a say on how the last remaining drops of oil are spread around the globe or even to know that fossil fuels are running out?

How “free” can our citizens be to “protest” in ways that create such a dramatic infrastructure impact? Angry American colonists started a revolution when they destroyed the commodity that symbolized a financial burden on them by a governmental body that no longer represented their interests. It ended in a bloody battle no one expected and an independence from a government they had no interest in separating from. The government responded in a repressive way that further enraged the people. Will oil be the new tea party?

What compromises will our governments make on our behalf to energy companies in order to assure a steady supply?

We are facing a life or death situation that creates both an intellectual and emotional strain. Even this brief look into the British Petrol Sedition tells an interlocking and devastating tale of what an oil shortage looks like. It tells a frightening tale of the power held in the hands of a small number of emotional, angry people who feel that their very livelihoods are being challenged by high oil prices and want their governments to do something about it.

It tells an equally chilling tale of a British Government response of stepping behind closed doors and, to quote UK Home Secretary, Jack Straw, assuring the British people, “public order, public safety and, above all, ensuring a free flow of petrol into our economy and our society” (13). Instead of assuring a way of managing an increasingly costly fuel supply, the government instead wants to protect the oil supply from the effects of its own angry citizens. Instead of engaging in frank discussions about how dependent our civilization is on oil for its very existence, and how it is becoming increasingly scarce, it decided instead to sit with the power elite, police and oil company executives and decide how to protect the oil. But if, in the words of Mr. Straw, there can be no public order or safety without petrol, can there also be no discussion that our petrol is in peril?

It is unfortunate that this story is not discussed in more detail in public forums throughout the world. It was very difficult for me to find the information again, even with a Google search, after I initially misplaced the link. A protest that happened in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK and a fuel shortage that affected millions of Europeans and deadening silence particularly in the US press? Maybe the writers for V for Vendetta were right when they talked about symbols:

Oil is a symbol, as is the act of blocking access to it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, the symbolic act of stopping access to it can change the world. I believe it has. The question now becomes whether, as people of the world, dependent on that symbol for our very notion of “culture” and “civilization,” can recognize begin to own it and modify it. It is clear that delivering fossil fuels to those who can afford it, is of utmost importance to the keepers of our culture. They have learned the painful lessons about what happens when the flow of oil stops. All of you in the Peak Oil community realize that it will stop, but before it does, it will become wildly expensive. The events of September 5th, 2000, tell us that we will be cut out of who will still have access to dwindling resources, and who will not. If we pay attention to the actions of our leaders, we will learn that they will protect the flow of oil first, our safety second, and our freedoms last.

Future protests resulting from a rising price of oil are a given. Rising oil prices makes it increasingly difficult to live, as the price of everything from transportation, food, medicine, and keeping warmskyrockets. Now, more than ever, we need to voice our opposition to being excluded from the closed door sessions of decision-makers. We need to see the Petrol Sedition as a preview of coming attractions, because that’s how the governments of the world see it.

While it is easy to fear a government who covertly puts into place “security” action plans to protect their structures from the people who empower those structures, it is harder to see how increasingly powerless government agents are to control public discourse and human actions. Angry citizens now network by mobile phones, faxes, CB radios and internet. Instead of joining “organized groups” who can be easily infiltrated and monitored, citizens become spontaneously a part of a network of like-minded people. Governments who used to tap “seditious organizations” now have to buy telephone records of an entire country. The Petrol Sedition was a peaceful protest by 2000 British citizens who decided to stand up and voice their opinions, not hard-line radicals intent on overthrowing a government.

While we may complain about having no steady employer or benefits, being an “independent contractor” or “working from home” means you can do as you please and join an action that enhance your values, life and livelihood. Many trucking companies began to “subcontract” petrol trucking jobs to independent agents, some of whom had been fired and rehired for the same position without benefits and at lower pay. While the British press talked about the “intimidation” of truck drivers, to secure their cooperation during the protests, sympathetic cooperation of people with similar self-interest was a more likely story. And what was the nature of the “intimidation?” The driver’s face would be listed on the internet and other people would become aware of the truck driver’s values as reflected in their actions.

Yes, I believe that the 5th of September caused great worry for our elected officials, but instead of boldly telling us the truth about what’s coming, they built detention centers. Instead of giving massive subsidies for alternative energy production, they give tax breaks to oil companies who willingly pump out the last trickles from the ground.

Ultimately, however, we, the people of the world, are the only ones who can hold our governments responsible. For human nature is such that government and elected officials can do no better than to secure their own continuity in office and maintain the power structures that currently exist. We can’t expect these institutions to offer us a way out of the evaporating oil supply. They will not do it, and instead will work swiftly to assure that things continue as they are.

Like frogs in increasingly warmer and warmer waters, we can wait to be boiled to death if we stay immobile and don’t start asking “Why are these things happening?” If 84p was too great a price to pay for petrol, why is 96p acceptable? We need to see things as they really are, to speak up and to discuss what is happening among ourselves. Ultimately, we need to continue to share ideas, see things in alternative ways, remain seditious. We need to look to those in our own communities to ask “How can we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels? How can we feed ourselves? Provide for our basic needs?”

While the solutions are to be implemented locally, however, discussion is paradoxically most lively on an international level. Our problems are the same, as global trade has impacted us all in similar ways. Corporate reach is global. Therefore, our conversations will be most effective when we know what others around the globe are doing to search for solutions. We gain power by refusing to accept what a corporate media calls “History-making events.” We break the silence and share thoughts and ideas.

To quote again that comic book turned movie V for Vendetta:

”There are of course those who do not want us to speak. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the annunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance, and depression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.(14)

A twist on a a popular British rhyme is often quoted on Guy Fawkes Night, in memory of the Gunpowder Plot and used in a recent movie V for Vendetta “Remember, remember, the fifth of November,/gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

(1) A twist on a a popular British rhyme is often quoted on Guy Fawkes Night, in memory of the Gunpowder Plot and used in a recent movie V for Vendetta “Remember, remember, the fifth of November,/gunpowder treason and plot./I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason /should ever be forgot.”