John Michael: Increasing Climate Change, Rising Food Prices
Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 07:35PM 
UN-sponsored climate talks are in their final days in Durban, South Africa. Among issues discussed there is how to address the “gigatonne gap.” Currently, the Earth is set to exceed 44 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020, which will cause global temperatures to rise by at least 2 degrees centigrade. Though it doesn’t seem like much, an Earth two degrees warmer will suffer from more heat waves and droughts, along with more rainfall and flooding; and, as a changing climate alters the environment, the extinction of plant and animal species will follow. "We are going to get 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) warming,’ [admitted an expert interviewed by the CSM]. ‘I think the big question is whether we are going to get ultimately 5 or 6 degrees C (9 to 10.8 degrees F), which would be an unmitigated catastrophe."
But the world is already facing the effects of climate change. During my stay in Taganga, a resort town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, scuba divers were describing the whole-scale bleaching of coral reefs that only a year before had been major tourist attractions. Farmers outside of Otavalo, an Ecuadorian city in the Andes, often complained to me this summer of shifting weather patterns that were ruining crops before they could be harvested.
The effects of climate change on agriculture have become a worldwide concern, appearing frequently in the media. “Price spikes have been driven by extreme weather events such as last year's drought, heat wave and fires in Russia which sent world grain prices soaring by up to 85 per cent, and this year's monsoon floods in South East Asia which pushed up the price of rice by between 19 per cent and 30 per cent in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.”
While the surge in food prices is often attributed to various factors, like expanding cultivation of bio-fuels, or the manipulation of market prices, always included in the list is the extreme weather caused by climate change. The effects can seem small, like the local extinction of mussel beds, brought on by warming waters, which expose them to starfish, their natural predators. Others can seem heart-breakingly out of our control, like the droughts that motivated African farmers to protest in Durban last week. "We are getting a lot of difficulty and suffering with water,’ said 75-year-old Betty Nagodi, from an arid region of northern South Africa. ‘Now we don't know when it will rain. And then when it does, the hail knocks down all the tomatoes, butternut and other things,’ she said, fanning herself under the shade of a towering acacia.”
Nowadays, most experts see a warming world as inevitable. And as weather patterns change, so will environments, leading to volatility in food markets worldwide. So, barring any great technological breakthroughs, food insecurity could become a common feature of life in the future. (Incidentally, already 14.5% of the US population deals with food insecurity; to find out how you can help stop this, check out Feeding America.)
What can we do to offset this trend? Well, the first step appears to be the easiest: stop wasting food. According to some figures, as Americans we waste 40% of the food we harvest. I like to think that our wastefulness stems in large part from ignorance: we’re accustomed to food just appearing in a grocery store, and so we purchase it without thinking of how it’s produced. A Huffington Post blog has a great graphic by Resource Media that displays information on how typical Thanksgiving foods “battled the elements in 2011.” (From the graphic: “This year is going to be a total loss… All that effort, all that money, the labor to weed it, fertilize it, irrigate it, and then to get nothing from it, that’s what kills you.”)
An interesting glance at what the future might look like is found on FAO’s Washington blog. Window farming, which employs hydroponics to turn your standard urban apartment window into a vegetable garden, is being pitched as the wave of the future in a TED video posted there. Additionally, urban farms appear to be on the rise. You can watch a video about them here in an earlier Paleoterran post.
John Michael
Reader Comments (3)
Or, we can just acknowledge the fact that while climate-change induced food price spikes will indeed effect the world's poorest first, if those populations decline as a result (famine, would-be parents deciding it's impractical to breed, etc), all it will mean is a return to equilibrium. It is an undeniable fact (although it is frequently denied) that most of the world's poor exist precisely because the ideas, technology, and wealth of the "wasteful" West has filtered down in to their cultures. It may be something as simple as a plastic water bucket instead of a clay pot - which ends up providing just that one extra bath that prevented that one extra child from catching some hideous infection. Where did that technology come from? Where was the bucket itself produced?
There is no reason for anyone in the West to fret about - let alone act to stop - their lifestyle because of the indirect effect it has upon people in Third World countries. Those people came into existence because the West was allowed to live in relative affluence - and thus have the free time to discover ways to make the basics of life better or more efficient - and if they go out of existence because that affluence affects the climate and thus won't support the Third World's feeble attempts to feed themselves, well, what is the difference?
In order to say that population growth in third-world countries has been increased through access to first-world goods, you would have to cite a study. Without evidence, what you're stating as fact is really just speculation. I doubt that the first-world industry which produced that plastic bucket was motivated to sell it to third-world consumers to reduce the prevalence of disease; it's more likely to assume that profit was the motive. If that is the case, then it's yet another example of how outmoded the first and third-world categories have become: instead, what it appears we have is a global economy in which first-world countries fabricate goods from raw materials, and third-world countries provide the raw materials necessary for production of those goods. So, if, as you say, food price spikes happen, are not responded to, and lead to reduced populations in poorer countries, the effects will be felt world-wide. Fewer people in those countries means fewer resource providers and fewer consumers.
Having spent time in the third-world, I can assure you that the attempts of those there to feed themselves are anything but feeble. Often they have to struggle. And the struggles they experience are often due in part to the policies of first-world countries. (For an example of this, look into why Argentina restricted its food exports.) How many lives have been made more difficult by the limited perspective evinced in your post, in which first-world countries act as if the welfare of poorer countries was of no concern? "What is the difference?" you ask. Well, in an increasingly connected world, in which it becomes difficult for Americans to continue pretending that they exist separate from other nations, the difference is this: the loss of those invisible people who drilled the oil, mined the ores, and otherwise provided the resources necessary for your plastic bucket. If they mean little to you, perhaps it's because you've never considered them.
I find the following comments offensive. They demonstrate a high level of ignorance as well as little regard for the value of human life- "There is no reason for anyone in the West to fret about - let alone act to stop - their lifestyle because of the indirect effect it has upon people in Third World countries. Those people came into existence because the West was allowed to live in relative affluence - and thus have the free time to discover ways to make the basics of life better or more efficient - and if they go out of existence because that affluence affects the climate and thus won't support the Third World's feeble attempts to feed themselves, well, what is the difference?
WE MUST ALL BE AWARE OF THE EFFECTS OUR ACTIONS HAVE ON ALL PEOPLE AT ALL TIMES- Thank you for this forum to post constructive comments.