Food prices hit a record high this December, and rioting is predicted to increase in severity through 2011 and 2012, according to many analysts. Joe Romm's Extreme Weather Events Help Drive Food Prices to Record Highs is an excellent overall starting point from a climate change perspective, but there are at least four other issues - in addition to direct climate change impacts on agriculture - that world citizens need to keep in mind as we reflect on trends related to global food insecurity. First, the gist of Romm's post:
As ClimateWire and SciAm explains,”world food prices hit a record high in December thanks to crop failures from a series of extreme weather events around the world...
Particularly worrisome is that oil — a key in put to agricultural production and transport — is already at $90 a barrel and we’re just coming out of the deepest global recession since the Great Depression. At the same time, the country's top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, warns: "Given the association of extreme weather and climate events with rising global temperature, the expectation of new record high temperatures in 2012 also suggests that the frequency and magnitude of extreme events could reach a high level in 2012." And so the combination of peak oil and extreme weather are likely to create growing food insecurity this decade, particularly since the nation and the world have decided to take no action to address either problem. We’re already seeing rising hunger in the least developed countries. Lester Brown warns, “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.” So what's missing? Here is how I introduced my concerns on the comment thread of Romm's post:
DW Description: Chris Langan is known to have the highest IQ in the world, somewhere between 195 and 210. To give you an idea of what this means, the average...
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