Blog Action Day 2009: Hunger and Climate Change
It’s Blog Action Day 2009, a day when the bloggers unite online for a cause. It’s sort of like USA for Africa’s “We are the World,” except with 50% less singing, 100% more typing, and 23% more Hall and Oates (at least in my case). This year, the cause is climate change, which makes Blog Action Day sort of like “blogosphere for the atmosphere.”
The topic got me thinking to 2003 when the Pentagon was asked what they thought was the biggest threat to national security. The Pentagon didn’t say terrorism. They didn’t say banking, national health care or reality shows
They said climate change.
That’s right. The Pentagon, still recovering after 9/11, in a time when the correct answer to any question was global terrorism, said the greatest risk to U.S. national security was climate change.
Not because we would get a little hot, or that Al Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize, but because climate change would lead to world-wide hunger, food insecurity and famine, which would foment political instability and war.
In the end, it all comes back to food. The report here is pretty unsettling.
Climatically, the gradual change view of the future assumes that agriculture will continue to thrive and growing seasons will lengthen…Overall, global food production under many typical climate scenarios increases. This view of climate change may be a dangerous act of self-deception, as increasingly we are facing weather related disasters – more hurricanes, monsoons, floods, and dry-spells – in regions around the world. [Emphasis mine]
This reminds me of the halcyon days before 2008, when all signs pointed to an economy would continue to expand, unabated. There were a few people who sagely saw the meltdown coming but 99.9% of us ignored the warning signs that our economy was deeply troubled. We know how that ended. Now try, if you can, to imagine the banking collapse of 2008 translated to The Climate, a system that no government can bail out or nationalize.
Weather-related events have an enormous impact on society, as they influence food supply, conditions in cities and communities, as well as access to clean water and energy. For example, a recent report by the Climate Action Network of Australia projects that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in the rangelands, which could lead to a 15 per cent drop in grass productivity. This, in turn, could lead to reductions in the average weight of cattle by 12 per cent, significantly reducing beef supply. Under such conditions, dairy cows are projected to produce 30% less milk, and new pests are likely to spread in fruit-growing areas. Additionally, such conditions are projected to lead to 10% less water for drinking. Based on model projections of coming change conditions such as these could occur in several food producing regions around the world at the same time within the next 15-30years, challenging the notion that society’s ability to adapt will make climate change manageable.
That’s only the introduction.
Steven Chu, a Nobel Laureate and President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, said, “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”
Growing food is a delicate interaction between seed, soil and water to harvest the energy of the sun, that can only take place in temperate climates.
As the climate has been slowly changing, there is more water tension and soil erosion, which leads to less fertility, loss of arable land and harsher growing conditions, which leads to overall lower crop yields, which leads to scarcer amounts offood, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more hunger.
Last year, as food prices rose, wages stagnated. Here locally, many Angelenos fell off the edge of getting by and became food insecure and hungry. As unemployment has continued to rip through Los Angeles County (12.7%!), more and more people are out of work and having to deal with high food prices, driving a record number of people to food pantries and other food assistance programs.
You can’t tease apart climate and hunger. They are inter-related systems that have enormous effects on each other.
Thankfully, we are not powerless in this. We can and must advocate and work for the changes necessary to change the course we are on in order to leave a bountiful and temperate world for our grandchildren.
Here are some things you can do to fight hunger and climate change:
- Help green L.A. by planting a food garden in your home or apartment
- Start a community garden
- Donate your harvest to food banks and food pantries
- Donate leftover food from large events to food rescue organizations
- Learn about and advocate for sustainable agricultural practices
