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Oxfam Warns Climate Change And Extreme Weather Will Cause Food Pric...
In two decades, if the effects on extreme weather are also considered, global starvation from Climate Change will be horrendous. Previous estimates only looked at gradual impacts such as rising average temperature.
“The huge potential impact of extreme weather events on future food prices is missing from today’s climate change debate. The world needs to wake up to the drastic consequences facing our food system of climate inaction,” Gore said….
“As emissions continue to soar, extreme weather in the US and elsewhere provides a glimpse of our future food system in a warming world. Our planet is heading for average global warming of 2.5–5°C this century. It is time to face up to what this means for hunger and malnutrition for millions of people on our planet,”...
... the impact of warming-driven extreme weather shocks leads Oxfam to conclude corn prices could increase a staggering 500% by 2030.
Oxfam’s new report, Extreme Weather, Extreme Prices, highlights for the first time how extreme weather events such as droughts and floods could drive up future food prices. Previous research only tends to consider gradual impacts, such as increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.
Tags: Climate Change, price of food, starvation
Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on Many of the articles on Climate Change now suggest that starvation will be the main impact on most of us. They often describe it in terms of the cost of food. But I think they ignore the bottom line, that there just won't be enough to eat. People envision going to the grocery store and seeing loaded shelves with high prices, instead of imagining empty shelves. Readers don't "get it" at a gut level.
Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on Here's an example of how extreme weather from Climate Destabilization cuts food production in unexpected ways. Drought and heat cut corn yield, then fungus destroys half of what's left. Corn stalks and weeds nearby are poisoned from the fertilizer which wasn't absorbed for growth, which poisons cattle eating them.
2012 drought: Pick your poison
More than half the corn crop sampled in Missouri isn't fit for human consumption, thanks to unusually high levels of a carcinogenic toxin.
Corn infected with the fungus Aspergillus flavus. The worst drought to hit the United States since the 1930s has farmers coping with a number of impacts, from cyanide poisoning in cattle to fungal infestations in corn.
... it's another chapter in an unfolding disaster that shows no sign of abating. And with climate projections showing more frequent summer droughts in heavy farming areas, these elevated drought-related poisons add to the challenges growers face in a changing climate.
"I've been
talking to veterinarians and other folks in Iowa since June, and I'd estimate somewhere around 150 cattle have died from toxic nitrate doses," said Steve Ensley, a toxicologist at Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
The annual tally is usually less than five, he said.
Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on In this interview with Bill Maher, Bill McKibbon says that each degree the climate warms will cut green yield 10%. If that's true, we're all going to starve a lot faster than expected.
Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on 
Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on In All Things Considered, 2013: A Tipping Year For Climate Change? we learn that it's happening now.
"We've already passed all kinds of tipping points," McKibben, the founder of 350.org, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden. "The NASA scientist Jim Hansen was saying, 'There's no other word for where we are now than planetary emergency.'"
"Food prices were up 40 and 45 percent around the world because the harvest failed in North America. The world is at a point [where] last year it grew less food than it consumed.... [emphasis mine]
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