THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN GLOBALIZATION IS ITS ABSENCE.

Predictably, women and minorities are hardest hit.  "Global South Reeling From High Cost of Basic Goods Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine."  You mean local self-sufficiency isn't such a good idea?

"This pioneering research shows that since the onset of the war in Ukraine, the most vulnerable people around the world are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing food, fuel, and fertilizer prices, with women and girls the hardest hit," ActionAid global policy analyst Alberta Guerra said in a statement. "They are disproportionally affected by multiple crises that impact their food intake, education, their right to live free from child marriage, and their mental health and well-being."

Joy Mabenge, ActionAid's country director for Zimbabwe—a particularly hard-hit country where reported gasoline prices skyrocketed by more than 900%, the cost of pasta soared by as much as 750%, fertilizer was 700% dearer, and feminine hygiene pads increased sixfold in price—said that "food and fuel prices in Zimbabwe have been increasing on a near-daily basis, hitting the country's many families who live below the poverty line the hardest."

Russia and Ukraine might be sellers of grains and fertilizer (in part because the social democratic countries limit grain production and subject fertilizer production to all manner of environmentalist ukases?) and yet their absence shows up, bigly, in the developing world.

It's not just globalization gone missing, it's those colonialist attitudes.  "Community leaders in almost all of the surveyed countries also reported an increase in child marriages, a sign of growing desperation among the world's poor."  Cultural norms are relative to the situation, aren't they?

Let the story also remind you, dear reader, that child labor, which the Anointed claim to be an evil of unfettered capitalism, whatever that means, is a survival strategy of long standing for making ends meet.

"Children's education prospects are also being threatened," the group added. "Community leaders... surveyed said that the increased cost of living had led to higher school dropout rates for boys as parents struggle to afford school fees or are forced to rely on child labor to support their livelihoods, while leaders in eight... countries said the same had happened for girls."

Roster Nkhonjera, a 40-year-old mother of five from Rumphi district in Malawi, said she had to take her children out of school due to untenable living costs.

"I have failed to pay school fees for my two children due to price hikes," she told ActionAid. "What I earn from my small business barely covers one meal a day for my children."

Even what the Common Dreams types see as good news is not good news.

"The survey also revealed that many communities have shown resilience in tackling the impacts of the crisis, identifying and practicing sustainable coping mechanisms," the group said. "Community members in 12 of the 14 countries surveyed said that using agroecology was helping them to make savings on crop production. Agroecology means adopting farming practices that work with nature, such as using local manure to build soil fertility and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers."

Guerra asserted that "social protection measures need to be urgently introduced, including free education services and free school meals, to assist the families who are most at risk."

"In the longer term, governments dependent on food imports must also invest in national and regional food reserves to act as buffers and reduce countries' vulnerability to food shortages and price rises," she continued.

Great. Let's live like it's 1618 but call those seventeenth-century farming practices "agroecology," and let's have the welfare state of a prosperous country without the sort of productive private sector the prosperous countries collect taxes from.

"The catastrophic impacts we are seeing make it clear why a just transition to renewable energy and agroecological farming practices is needed now more than ever, both to protect communities from shocks but also to offer resilience against the climate crisis," added Guerra. "There is no time to waste."

Wait, am I seeing self-styled progressives affirming the idea of turning back the clock and calling it "sustainability?"  That's not going to turn out well.

Now, if the Anointed would understand the reality check coming from Africa and stop the foolishness in the developed world.

Net Zero is best seen as the policy expression of the self-loathing of the elites, of late capitalism’s turn against itself. The neo-aristocratic disdain for the gains and wonders of industrial society might enlarge the sense of virtue of those who rule us, who get to pose as saviours of the planet, but it violently shrinks the prospects of working people and the global poor. Alongside the valiant scaffolders ejecting eco-zealots from the roads, we need more people willing to demand the ejection of Net Zero in its entirety from government policymaking. Growth and freedom are what will deliver us from the current crisis, not fear, hysteria and cruel reversals in the fortunes of working people.

That's Spiked poobah Brendan O'Neill reminding readers of the success sequence that leads to prosperity.  What looks like conservation to the children of privilege he sees as being the environmentalist vanguards is more like deprivation in the global south.