First Olive oil. Now chocolate. But I was the one fearmongering apparently. Chocolate looking like the new Bitcoin or gold. It'll come back down eventually but climate change creates insane volatility like this. And it's going to turn some commodities into luxuries.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...lentless-rally

The average Canadian consumes 6 kg of chocolate per year, maybe 3ish kg of cocoa. Even at $7 a kg, the wholesale cost of cocoa for the average Canadian is $21.

Sure. But chocolate is just one commodity. Bit by bit, this is how inflation ticks up. Also, this is by no means the end of these increases. The more climate sensitive, the more volatile. At least we've moved on from saying this kind of volatility can't happen. That's progress I guess.

Yeah there was no volatility at all before climate change kicked in.
Cocoa like many commodities also saw a surge in the 70s. This is normal and will spur planting and a return to equilibrium. I for one wouldn't mind farmers getting a few more dollars and the chocolate conglomerates getting a bit squeezed.

The vast majority of the things we buy are mostly markup from intermediaries, so changes in the international commodity prices are a rounding error that is unlikely to cause inflation. It is more likely to cause an impact in developing countries where food has fewer intermediaries and people spend a huge portion of their income on a limited number of foods (thinking of bread in the Middle East, for example).

You must not know how difficult it is to grow certain commodities like cocoa.

Is that a new or old picture of you?

The Carbon scam continues....If its a neutral tax....why tax us at all? And ohhh btw....How do Canadians know that the carbon tax has any effect whatsoever on the climate, given that the trudeau government has made no effort to measure any such changes? I would like a clear answer to is where has all the money gone and what EXACTLY was it spent on, after all it is our money and we are forced to pay it so you must tell us where and how you spent the money, if not , I wish the provincial governments would have the BALLS to not collect the money period :)

Funny to hear our Premier bray about the carbon tax increase today as though it is all the Liberals' fault when in fact the Federal portion is only $0.03 and her provincial government is slapping $0.14 on gas now that royalties are down. But using cancervative math somehow that equals 100% federal carbon tax. Bullshit.

The Israelis have been working on breeding a cocoa plant capable of growing in semi arid climates to kick-start an Israeli cocoa industry and researchers made a big breakthrough this last month, accidentally discovering a drought resistant variety after the 10/7 massacre forced them to abandon the plants for months without water and one variety survived:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-...-shortage/amp/

It is a little bit early to be hitting the bottle.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions from producing goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the hidden social costs of carbon emissions. They are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by essentially increasing the price of fossil fuels. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive. When a fossil fuel such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas is burned, most or all of its carbon is converted to CO2. Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change. This negative externality can be reduced by taxing carbon content at any point in the product cycle.

You either already know this, or it is just too over your head.

Put this at the top of the list of unintended consequences:

‘Termination shock’: cut in ship pollution sparked global heating spurt
Sudden cut in pollution in 2020 meant less shade from sun and was ‘substantial’ factor in record surface temperatures in 2023, study finds
Damian Carrington Environment editor
Thu 30 May 2024 16.00 BST

The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big “termination shock” that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research.

Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%.

The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth’s surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks....

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-heating-spurt

Does that mean we should... Reverse that change?