From Homo Sapiens Save Your Earth
Co-authored by Anthony Marr and Peter Carter
2008
This is the section we had on global climate change and agriculture.
We had sections on Arctic sea and methane but it seems we missed the connection of the loss of Arctic albedo cooling on N. hemisphere, and hence world, food security.
Anyway, as Anthony reminded me on Facebook about this section in our book written four years ago I dug it out.
It's quite short.
13. Climate Change and Agriculture
"Peak food" will occur before a +2ºC global
average temperature increase is reached and we are on course to
reach that well before 2050 if nothing is done. In those regions most
vulnerable to climate change, agriculture has been damaged by global heating
already and will get far worse with time.
Many people don't realize that human civilizations depend totally on
agriculture, and that agriculture is dependent on the climate. In fact, there
were no human civilizations before the invention of agriculture. So we owe a
lot to crop cultivation, and we owe it to ourselves to learn how global heating
is affecting what we eat.
Agriculture has only been
possible for the last 10,000 years because of an exceptionally stable
climate, complete with the right temperature range and
the right amount of rain and snow. Our industrial consumer
economy is messing all that up. By 2050, most of the world will be dying
of disease, thirst and famine – if we don't stop burning fossil fuels and
spewing greenhouse gases now.
Our human and sacred duty is to ensure that future generations, in
our own nations and around the world, have food security. We have done
badly so far in this regard. Our world economy has created crushing
permanent debt that enslaves hundreds of millions of people who
survive on the edge of genocidal famine.
There are already 850 million undernourished poor people in the world
today. What will happen to them when their subsistence agriculture
collapses under global heating? And will the rich nations come to their aid
then? I doubt it. They will be concerned with their own food security.
These hundreds of millions of the poorest people will be left to starve.
Global Land Temperature Warmest On Record In March 2008
(ScienceDaily, 19 April 2008)
"The average global land temperature last month was the warmest on
record."
The land is being heated up
and fast – faster than it's ever been heated before. This is
going to hurt agriculture. We don't need computer models to figure that out.
But the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) does not hint at a food crisis from global climate
change, nor do they mention escalating deaths from water deprivation or starvation
… or mention a global emergency for future food security.
Incredibly, impacts on
agriculture are not included in the lists of dangerous climate changes.
Even more incredibly, no one is saying it should be – even though when
agriculture goes, we all go.
The "all" includes
all wildlife. That's because if agriculture goes down, our large urbanized
world population will strip the planet bare. Anything that is edible will be
eaten.
The Amazon is set to collapse long before 2080 given current rates
of GHG emissions. The human population is bound to finish off what
little wildlife survives. The great wildlife preserves of Africa are in high
climate vulnerable regions and in multi-year drought already. The wildlife that
has lived with humans for millions of years will fall due to people who are
desperate for food and water.
The western United States is in a multi-year drought that research
in 2008 determined was due to global climate change. Australia is in a
multi-year drought affecting half its farmland – the worst drought in a
thousand years.
The combination of growing human populations with growing water and
food scarcity will mean the final end for wildlife. People who care about
nature and other animals had better get very active very quickly on the global
climate change crisis.
***********
Not only is agriculture going to suffer due to global heating. It is
also a major cause of both habitat loss and climate change, with each making
the other worse. Obviously, then, we have to give agriculture a lot of
attention. But as agriculture is so important, why isn't it at the top
the IPCC's list? Why is it not at the top of anyone's list?
The 2007 IPCC report does not
recognize global climate change as a risk to world food
security, and their computer-modeled assessment doesn't tell us nearly how badly climate change will impact the growing
of food. The models and the IPCC assessment that relies on them
greatly underestimate the real world impacts to agriculture. This has given
rich nations an excuse to do nothing.
On agriculture, the IPCC only tells part of the truth and distorts the
most important part of the truth. Remember, the IPCC is first and
foremost a government organization to which the scientists report. It's not a
public process. The assessments are negotiated and written behind closed doors.
But how can the extinction of species (including ours) and the destruction of
the planet be negotiated?!
Even by the underestimations of the IPCC's 2007 assessment, the
world faces catastrophe in a matter of decades:
By 2020 up to 250 million
people will be short of water.
By 2020 regions of African
agriculture will be down 50%.
By 2050 more than a billion
people in Asia will be short of water.
The models show that
by 2050 under climate change 2 billion people will be vulnerable to devastating
floods.
The Himalayan snow pack is
melting rapidly on which two and a half billion people depend for irrigating
their agriculture. By 2085 57% of the world population will have to face
life under water stress.
The IPCC is guilty of criminal negligence by failing to tell
governments the full extent of the adverse factors, the expected impacts,
and the risks. Here's what the IPCC has told our governments about
agriculture in The Report for Policy Makers:
Food, fibre and forest products
At lower latitudes, especially
seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease
for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C), which would increase the
risk of hunger. Globally, the potential for food production is projected to
increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but
above this it is projected to decrease.
That's it. That's all our governments have to go by in planning for
food security under global heating!! And it's wrong. It's wrong because the
numbers are derived from computer models that do not yet include a
large number of the most important known damaging impacts on crops.
The IPCC's 2007 technical report puts the danger limit
for agricultural decline not at +3ºC but +2ºC:
Food crops
• Modelling studies suggest
crop yield losses with minimal warming in the tropics.
• Mid- to high-latitude crops
benefit from a small amount of warming (about +2°C) but plant health
declines with additional warming.
The truth is that what we are now committed to (a temperature increase
of +1.4ºC) is close to global "peak food" under global
heating. The emergency is desperate. Our children's generation
will be hit with peak food. The truth is, this means that agriculture will go into decline globally
at a global average temperature increase of +2ºC.
The IPCC's +3ºC is local heating, which is much higher than the global
average that everyone is using for assessment and planning. Translating this to
a global average is closer to +2ºC as the global temperature increase at
which agriculture worldwide goes into failure, according to IPCC data.
And the research shows that a global average temperature increase of
+2ºC is the danger threshold for agricultural decline in the US, Canada, the
European Union and Australia.
Once agriculture goes into decline from global heating it will stay in
decline and totally collapse.
But their figures are arrived at by the IPCC relying on models that
omit many of the most important damaging effects on agriculture. These are
recorded in the long technical papers that the policy makers don't use. They
are:
· climate variability
· extremes of precipitation
· extreme weather events
· increase and change in weeds
· increase and change in insect pests
· increased resistance to pesticides
· decrease and change in soil nutrients
· competition for resources
· water quality
· air quality
· stratospheric ozone depletion
· disruption of ecological integration
with plant growth
· combined adverse effects on crops due to all
the above
· combined effects of heat, water deprivation,
and loss of feed for livestock=
· effects of a temperature increase over +5ºC
· effects after 2100
These are not included in the IPCC's 2007 official Report to
Policy Makers. But the long IPCC technical report on agriculture – which
governments don't use – explains that they are variables their computer models
can't compute. The numbers that policy makers are working with are,
therefore, wrong. Real world agriculture will be hit earlier and harder than
the model numbers say.
***********
Climate Variability
The truth is that the IPCC assessment relies on models that omit
all the most important factors that all farmers know about. The models do not
include the single most important thing to all farmers – regular climate
predictability. Global heating does not just cause a different climate (climate
change), it also causes climate variability. Farmers will be guessing at when
to sow, etc. This will put entire crops at risk.
Furthermore, models cannot predict the effects of global climate change
on essential synchronization of stages in agricultural plant ecology,
many of which have to occur with precise timing. Research shows that
crop growth, development and yields, for crops such as cereals and fruit trees,
can be damaged if their temperature thresholds are surpassed for just a few
days during certain crucial stages of their development.
Tropospheric Ozone Increase
It is known that ground level ozone, which is increased by global
warming, is toxic to green plants and greatly reduces plant growth. The
ozone level has already increased sixfold in some regions of the US. The
following is taken from the IPCC's technical report but not included in the all-important
report to policy makers:
...increasing ozone
concentrations in future decades, with or without CO2 increases,
with or without climate change, will negatively impact plant production,
possibly increasing exposure to pest damage.
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
Increased ultraviolet-B radiation is damaging to plants. This occurs
from stratospheric ozone depletion. Ozone depletion, which is as bad as
it has ever been, is increased by global heating. This is not included in
the IPCC report to policy makers.
Total Impacts are Additive and
Synergistic
While clearly the combined effects of all these adverse factors
from global climate change have to result in reduced crop production,
the models are unable to predict the overall real world effect – so the policy makers are using predictions that are wrong. The
effects in the real world on our children's and grandchildren's food
security will be far worse.
There is another impact further down the line that comes from sea level
rise. It's been found that this will damage crops due to salination miles
inland from the coast.
While policy makers only get to work with the incorrect
computer-modeled temperature numbers reported in the Summary for Policy Makers,
the IPCC's 2007 technical report (which the policy makers don't get to see)
says that better computer models are required:
Current risk-assessment tools do not sufficiently consider these
key interactions. Improved modelling approaches that link the effects
of ozone, climate change, and nutrient and water availability on
individual plants, species interactions and ecosystem function are needed.
All of the impacts combined will occur against a background of
increased land degradation from intensified agriculture in most
regions. The models can't tell us how this will add up:
Natural land resources are
being degraded through soil erosion, salinisation of irrigated areas,
dryland degradation from overgrazing, over-extraction of ground
water, growing susceptibility to disease and build-up of pest
resistance favoured by the spread of monocultures and the use
of pesticides, and loss of biodiversity and erosion of the
genetic resource base when modern varieties displace traditional
ones.
The total effect of these
processes on agricultural productivity is not clear. Additionally,
multiple stresses, such as forest fires and insect outbreaks, increase
overall sensitivity.
These combined impacts will occur on top of severe poverty and
disease amongst the most climate change vulnerable populations,
which can only be exacerbated by climate change. Global heating will
increase and spread all the worst diseases. This will reduce the ability of the poor populations to work the
land and produce their food.
We thus have a very long list of different adverse impacts on
agriculture. They have the potential to not only be additive but also – far worse – synergistic in their effects on food supply.
***********
What will be the end result of carrying on emitting GHGs? The total
global collapse of agriculture, which with our current rising emissions
will be before 2050. By that I mean we'll be started on an inevitable
downward trajectory forever.
With a global average temperature increase of +1.5ºC, there will be
significant decline on several continents and some decline affecting some crops
in North America. What the IPCC said on global average temperature
increase is:
For increases in global average
temperature exceeding 1.5-2.5°C and in concomitant atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations, there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure
and function, species' ecological interactions, and species' geographical
ranges, with predominantly negative consequences for biodiversity, and
ecosystem goods and services e.g., water and food supply.
The AGRICULTURAL TIPPING POINT will be a +1.5ºC global average
temperature increase. Right now, today, we cannot avoid a +1.4ºC increase.
It might be impossible to avoid a +2ºC increase and it certainly will be
impossible without an all-out global emergency effort on the scale of a world
war.
***********
What about adaptation? Can't that take care of this problem?
Agriculture Canada, for example, says that impacts of global climate
change in general will be adverse for Canada but that farmers will adapt as
they have in the past. However, it will be impossible for farmers to adapt to
all the different changes wrought by global heating. How can they adapt to
something that keeps changing? Research shows that the best they will be able
to do is put off the inevitable for 10 to 20 years. That is not to be relied on
because the models omit many adverse effects (as we've seen).
Mitigating Meat Eating
The very best method for adaptation is not mentioned by the IPCC,
but it's simple. Stop producing food from flesh. Nothing is so easy
and effective as switching to a vegetarian diet. The livestock
industry is a major emitter of GHGs. A healthy change in diet would also reduce
destruction of the Amazon, which is being cleared for livestock and for
agribusiness to grow food for livestock.
Industrial agriculture is extremely energy intensive but the IPCC says
nothing about decarbonizing our agriculture – an essential adaptation measure.
The truth is that industrial agribusiness has produced the most
vulnerable form of food production to global climate change. It relies on a
small number of monocultures developed to depend on intensive use of
energy, chemical fertilizer and pesticides. It can be expected to soon collapse
under a changed and variable climate.
***********
Biofuels
The rich governments are controlled by the mega
moneymaking fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel-dependent global
agribusiness. That is why the governments are pushing biofuels as the
solution to global climate change.
This is a disaster all of its own. From the start, the research said
that biofuels would not help air pollution or global heating. Now large
regions of food growing land are growing biofuels. The Amazon is being cleared
for biofuels. It's what makes the money. The truth is, it's burning food. And
it's providing an excuse for manufacturing more cars to spew more GHGs.
***********
Peak Water
Agriculture consumes by far the greatest amount of water in the world.
Industrial agriculture is a huge user and waster of water. Global heating and
climate change will be reducing available water just when
the requirement for it grows. Plant growth will demand more water
as the temperature rises, as will livestock.
The annual depletion of water from aquifers has been estimated at
160 billion cubic meters or 160 billion tons. Overpumping is a new phenomenon,
one largely confined to the last half century. Only since the development of
powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps have we had the capacity to pull
water out of aquifers faster than it is replaced by precipitation.
Some 70 percent of the water consumed worldwide, including both that
diverted from rivers and that pumped from underground, is used for
irrigation. Global heating
will result in aquifers being even more rapidly depleted, ensuring the
irreversible global collapse of agriculture. When the aquifers
are near empty, that's the end.
The livestock industry consumes and pollutes vast volumes of good
water. Livestock will need even more water with global heating.
***********
The consumer culture eats a vast amount of flesh, which is unhealthy
for both people and planet. If
all the damage of eating flesh were included in a full cost assessment of
the livestock industry, it would be the most costly of any industry in the
world. Agriculture is a major
source of GHGs, especially the livestock industry. And now it turns out to be a bigger
contributor to greenhouse gases than the transportation sector:
Livestock's Long Shadow
29 November 2006, Rome - UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Which causes more greenhouse
gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars?
Surprise!
According to a report published
by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector
generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18
percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.
The global livestock sector is
growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector.
Such rapid growth exacts a
steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow
–Environmental Issues and Options. "The environmental costs per unit of
livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage
worsening beyond its present level," it warns.
When emissions from land use
and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent
of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share
of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related
nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2.
Most of this comes from manure.
And it accounts for
respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as
CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64
percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.
Livestock now use 30 percent of
the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33
percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the
report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major
driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some
70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to
grazing.
At the same time herds cause
wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as
degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even
higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock
management contribute to advancing desertification.
The livestock business is among
the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources,
contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication and the
degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes,
antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the
pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water
cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources.
Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.
Livestock are estimated to be
the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South
China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.
Meat and dairy animals now
account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's
presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute
to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as
in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.
Removing flesh from our diet is rarely mentioned in the lists of things
to do about climate change. But it should be high up on every list.
***********
The IPCC never says we are in an emergency situation, nor that we must
act now, nor what the number of deaths will be at various levels of planetary
heating. It is important to
note that once agriculture in any region goes into decline from global climate
change, it will be all downhill for the population dependent on that farming
from then on. Even without all the above predictable adverse factors, the poor
and climate change-innocent Southern populations are now already condemned to
large agricultural declines, because we are committed to a +1.4ºC temperature
increase. This has started already in the dry regions of southern Africa.
No assistance has been provided to these people even though G8 nations
were obliged under the Framework Convention on Climate Change to do so. It
is hardly likely that the rich world will come to their rescue. Food is
strictly a business now and is utilized to make money. Plus, the rich
nations will be in fear for their own food security.
