I’m not so sure it is a good video. They make no mention of the areas that will become available for growing food (Siberia, parts of Canada); of course, those countries may or may not choose to take advantage of that.
Interesting that child malnutrition in South Asia is modelled to improve in spite of climate change. Why their & not in Africa? Is it actually down to political stability, largely unaffected by climate?
At the end, it promotes some technological second green revolution as the only way to save the day. What about agrarian renaissance, or any other options that I haven’t heard of?
Hi Peter. Interesting comment. I think the idea that now-frozen tundra would be readily available for farming probably is a bit of wishful thinking. Although tundra is thawing, that does not necessarily produce all the climactic conditions necessary for successful food production. You still have to deal with drought, weather patterns, and so on. Moreover, even if some more farm land became available, you’re also talking about massive economic and population shifts. Because frozen tundra traps CO2, its thawing likely will accelerate the ecological problems caused by global warming, such as sea level rise and drought in other areas. So, it is not as though some Canadian farmers could simply make up for food production lost in Asia and ship it over there.
It’s of course true that humans have adapted to climactic shifts many times in our history, and I’m inclined to agree that a policy designed simply to preserve the present status quo is unrealistic and counter-productive. However, at the same time, IMHO it’s important to mitigate rapid man-made climate change in order to soften, to the extent possible, the speed and intensity of such disruption.
There’s also this thing called “the sun” that hits different parts of the earth for different durations at different times of year and has a profound effect on growing seasons irrespective of relative warmth and coolness. It doesn’t help that the Yukon and Alaska are much warmer if they’re only seeing a few hours of sunlight per day.
3 replies on “Climate Change and Food”
I’m not so sure it is a good video. They make no mention of the areas that will become available for growing food (Siberia, parts of Canada); of course, those countries may or may not choose to take advantage of that.
Interesting that child malnutrition in South Asia is modelled to improve in spite of climate change. Why their & not in Africa? Is it actually down to political stability, largely unaffected by climate?
At the end, it promotes some technological second green revolution as the only way to save the day. What about agrarian renaissance, or any other options that I haven’t heard of?
Hi Peter. Interesting comment. I think the idea that now-frozen tundra would be readily available for farming probably is a bit of wishful thinking. Although tundra is thawing, that does not necessarily produce all the climactic conditions necessary for successful food production. You still have to deal with drought, weather patterns, and so on. Moreover, even if some more farm land became available, you’re also talking about massive economic and population shifts. Because frozen tundra traps CO2, its thawing likely will accelerate the ecological problems caused by global warming, such as sea level rise and drought in other areas. So, it is not as though some Canadian farmers could simply make up for food production lost in Asia and ship it over there.
It’s of course true that humans have adapted to climactic shifts many times in our history, and I’m inclined to agree that a policy designed simply to preserve the present status quo is unrealistic and counter-productive. However, at the same time, IMHO it’s important to mitigate rapid man-made climate change in order to soften, to the extent possible, the speed and intensity of such disruption.
There’s also this thing called “the sun” that hits different parts of the earth for different durations at different times of year and has a profound effect on growing seasons irrespective of relative warmth and coolness. It doesn’t help that the Yukon and Alaska are much warmer if they’re only seeing a few hours of sunlight per day.