Jandau said:
I know this is a symptom of the climate change and the herald of the ever-increasing resource shortage our planet is facing. I know more things like this will continue to occur and that producing meat (at least as we do now) will eventually become unsustainable as the demand for food increases. I know many farmers might lose a ton of money, maybe even all they have. And I know that all of the above is depressing, sad and worrying.
But I can't help but start laughing whenever I read "Global Bacon Shortage"...
Climate change less so than a general population increase and resource shortage. I anticipate it will be a self correcting problem though.
Right now a lot of the problems simply come about due to pie in the sky liberals and humanitarians labouring under the impression that there is enough on the planet for everyone to have a decent standard of living. All these developing nations that compete for more resources put an increased demand on supplies, and of course a lot of these same people who are all about peaceful co-existance and so on are the same ones who cry about how we're strip mining and deforesting the planet to death.
In the end the bottom line is that there will be pressure on enough resources where we're going to wake up and see World War III fought largely over economics and materials. The big countries more or less acting to deplete second and third world populations and keep the nations down, much like we were falsely accused of doing in previous generations. I also think it's inevitable that we're going to see an east vs. west war largely over resources and economics, as the situation is already a mess of debt, patent violations, and robber economies (which caused a lot of that debt) that is beyond any peaceful resolution.
It won't be a "bacon war", but I imagine it's yet another thing that is piling up on top of things like competition over oil, wood, and similar materials. It will come down to the bottom line of people in the US having to decide if they are going to be willing to go without bacon for breakfast every day, so people in developing nations who never had the abillity to push for it before, can eat some.... an example based on the subject of this article. Except in this case it's probabyl going to also involve gas, wood, and everything else.
In the end there won't be any right or wrong involved, just "us or them". I just hope when it happens an unprecedented number of people die, but the US at least remains intact and functional to maintain some degree of order. The big challenge from that point on will be to prevent another global baby boom, and keep the population down so as not to put as much strain on resources while the planet replentishes itself.
Not a nice way to view it things, but I've been saying that Dark Days are coming for a long time (and before The Secret World started using it as a catch phrase). It would be funny if it was a baconpocolypse and this was the straw that started it, but to be honest I think it won't be about any resource in paticular, but rather the money/economic power with which such things are obtained. I think things will really start off when the US and China go at it, China tries to call in it's debt, and the US laughs at them and demands China pay repairations for it's robber economy in terms of it's patent violations and such, which actually exceed the amount the US actually owes China (some pie in the sky idealists have hoped that China would eventually join the rest of the world's trade policies, and deal with the side issues by simply negotiating debt forgiveness in exchange for not being held accountable for it's excesses when it starts participating fairly). In the end I imagine it will amount to western powers with a lot of dependency on patents and IPs and issues with China over it siding with the US, while a lot of eastern powers side with China, the US declaring martial law and a draft, and the oceans filling with blood. If any of us are alive to see this (and depressingly I think we will be) we're all likely to die just by the numbers.... but it will give the globe a chance to avoid creating this kind of resource crunch again when it's over, assuming enough people die to lower the overall demand. A nice round 95-99% of all humans dying (sort of like Zombie Apocolypse numbers without the zombies) is an ideal eestimate, with humanity re-establishing itself to no more than 10% of the current numbers so everyone will have plenty of space and potential resources would be ideal.
Okay, well enough gloom and doom.... the point is I agree with the resource shortage problem, and think this is just another minor 'tick' on the real doomsday clock.