Jeannie wrote about peanut butter becoming more scarce a couple months ago. As she noted at the time, incredible U.S. drought was the cause of this. These are just some of the effects of global warming that we have been warned about for decades, of course.
Now, with scarcity, prices rise. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that several major peanut butter brands are raising prices, considerably:
Wholesale prices for big-selling Jif are going up 30% starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24% in a couple weeks.Unilever would not comment on its pricing plans, but a spokesman for Wegmans Food Markets said wholesale prices for all brands it carries, including Skippy, are 30 percent to 35 percent higher than a year ago.
Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40 percent on Oct. 31, a spokeswoman said.
Sounds good, eh?
The great misconception is that environmental issues only effect us in some ways, or only effect the birds and the bees. But, the truth of the matter is, global warming and other environmental issues effect nearly every aspect of our lives.
Some of the clear effects of global warming and climate change are: more and stronger droughts, more and stronger floods, more and stronger storms, more and new diseases, and more a larger fires. How do you think these things will affect our food? How do you think they will affect our water supply? How do you think they will affect our health?
Yes, humans are causing global warming and climate change. And yes, we can change course! As I emphasized in a CNBC interview on the topic of “Energy Opportunities” recently, we have the solutions today! We just have to implement them. We just have to put our politicians’ feet to the fire and get them to do something! We just have to use our wallet (or not) in choosing greener transportation options, greener food choices, and clean energy options like solar and wind energy (which are actually already cheap as heck and good investments from a strictly selfish, financial point of view).
Or, we can pay increasingly more for all of our food, increasingly more for clean water, and increasing more to stay healthy in a less livable climate.
Simple choice? I think so.
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