For Many, Climate Change Will be Increasingly Hard to Swallow

 

Despite the above map of expected climate change damage, we have it pretty easy. Our climate change damage has been a mixture of drought/water loss and flooding, but we can still feed ourselves. In Asia, it’s mostly flooding. In Africa, it’s mostly drought. In some areas, parts of Canada and Russia, for example, global temperature rise will actually bring more land into cultivation.

Yet the big picture shows an overall significant reduction of viable farmland globally. This in turn creates desperation, often civil war or other violent reactions, death and famine… and ultimately a massive pressure on those living where food is no longer being cultivated sufficiently to feed the then-existing population to migrate… even where they are not welcome. None of this takes into consideration the extreme harm and reduction in life expectancy of farmworkers as their work environment soars into physiologically intolerable.

There’s an argument, even for diehard climate change marginalizers, based on the very real escalation of the price of most agricultural goods. Prices at the supermarket are likely to continue a general trend of cost increases, a reality that impacts those in middle income and lower brackets the most, and no matter which is the “party in control,” the political blame will rest with that party. In fact, it appears that food costs seems to rise in proportion to land taken out of agricultural production ( from flooding or drought) and even relative to temperature rise.

The United States is faring reasonably well compared to more nations on earth, and still our consumers are mad as hell over rising food prices. The Associated Press (March 23rd reports) tells it like it is: “Economists looked at 20,000 data points to find a link between weather and rising prices. They then looked at climate projections and saw sticker shock…

“Food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change, a new study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank found… Looking at monthly price tags of food and other goods, temperatures and other climate factors in 121 nations since 1996, researchers calculate that ‘weather and climate shocks’ will cause annual food inflation to rise 1.5 to 1.8 percentage points within a decade or so, even higher in already hot places such as the Middle East, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Communications [3/21], Earth and the Environment… And that translates to an increase in overall inflation of 0.8 to 0.9 percentage points by 2035, just caused by climate change extreme weather, the study said.

“Those numbers may look small, but to banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve that fight inflation, they are significant, said study lead author Max Kotz, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany… ‘The physical impacts of climate change are going to have a persistent effect on inflation,’ Kotz said. ‘This is really from my perspective another example of one of the ways in which climate change can undermine human welfare, economic welfare.’

“And by 2060, the climate-triggered part of inflation should grow, with global food price inflation predicted to increase 2.2 to 4.3 percentage points, the study said. That translates to a 1.1- to 2.2-percentage-point increase in overall inflation… Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University’s business school who wasn’t part of the research, said what he calls ‘climateflation’ is ‘all too real and the numbers are rather striking.’

“Kotz and European Central Bank economists looked at 20,000 data points to find a real-world causal link between extreme weather, especially heat, and rising prices. They then looked at what’s projected in the future for climate change and saw sticker shock.

“Usually when economists talk inflation and climate change, it’s about rising energy prices in response to efforts to curb warming, but that’s only part of the problem, Kotz said… The study points to 2022’s European heat wave as a good example. The high heat cut food supplies, causing food inflation to rise two-thirds of a percentage point and overall inflation to jump about one-third of a percentage point, Kotz said. Prices rose even higher in Romania, Hungary and parts of southern Europe.”

Some experts posit that we are at or near the tipping point where methane and carbon dioxide from melting permafrost are depleting reflective ice, replacing it with darker, heat absorbing ocean waters or land… creating a vicious cycle of accelerating, self-generating climate change. These simple food-cost metrics don’t take into consideration the additional pressures from farmers forced to migrate from failing farms, the resulting conflicts and the rising cost of servicing what food production centers do remain. Brings a whole new meaning to “stand back and standby.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a world where too many people refuse to accept reality, strangely, reality always wins.