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Climate Change is Putting Your Favorite Foods at Risk

by MaiDuggan290 Posted on January 5, 2016

The climate is changing the global temperature is rising, weather patterns are changing, sea levels are rising. Its effects are serious and widespread, but have you ever considered its effects on your favorite foods? Here are 6 foods that will likely be affected if climate change progresses.

Avocados. Scientists expect to see a 40 percent decrease in avocado production over the next 30 years unless farmers uproot and seek more suitable climates. Why? Blame the warming global temperatures. That means a drastic increase in avocado prices, which probably means your guacamole consumption will be cut down in its prime.

Chocolate. Chocolate brings happiness its just scientific fact. But cocoa crops may be on the decline. While cocoas ideal altitude is 100 to 250 meters above sea level, that’s expected to rise to 450 to 500 meters above sea level by 2050. With most cocoa coming from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, this could have a dramatic impact on cocoa costs as yield begins to decrease and arable land diminishes.

Coffee. Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. However, it’s an environmentally sensitive plant. Coffee-growing regions around the world are experiencing the initial complications of climate change. A serious fungus called coffee rust has been sweeping across Central America, spurred by warming temperatures. A pest in Hawaii known as the coffee berry borer is expected to become an even greater threat to crops in upcoming years if it is allowed to spread. And with the temperature rise, coffee-growing regions in Africa the birthplace of coffee are expected to decrease from 65 to 100 percent. Thats right, 100 percent. No more African coffees if the surface temperature continues to spike.

Almonds. Over the next 30 years, almond production is expected to decrease by 20 percent. Interestingly, the model scientists used did not account for decreased rainfall due to changing weather patterns, so this decrease in yield could indeed be greater. If the drought in California is any indication, we may not be enjoying almond milk as regularly in the future.

Grapes. Grapes are very sensitive to temperature and weather changes. In fact, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 19 to 73 percent of the land suitable for grape-growing in wine regions will be lost to climate change by 2050. France is already feeling the effects, with some winemakers being forced to harvest earlier due to an increase in mild nights and extreme weather. If this trend continues, grapes may thrive less in these regions, while places like China or Montana may become surprisingly more accommodating.

Potatoes. With rising surface temperatures, potato farmers in the Andes have been forced to move to higher and higher altitudes to grow their crops. Eventually, if temperatures continue to rise, farmers will simply run out of arable land. (Unless were looking to start farming on Mars.) Think of all the traditional foods around the world that are potato-centric! Its the third most consumed crop worldwide after wheat and rice, with over a billion people regularly consuming potatoes.

Climate change is real, and our agriculture is extremely sensitive. If you needed a reason to get serious about climate change, what’s more powerful than the threat of losing your favorite foods?

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Climate Change is Putting Your Favorite Foods at Risk

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Move Over, Monsanto: The Pesticide and GMO Seed Industry Just Spawned a New Behemoth

by MaricelGbr Posted on December 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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US chemical titans Dow and DuPont have agreed to a $130 billion merger. Once combined, DowDuPont (as it will be known) intends to split into three parts, including one devoted solely to agriculture. The announcement likely triggered corner office gasps in Basel, Switzerland, and in St. Louis, Missouri—hometowns of the globe’s two-largest pesticide and seed companies, Syngenta and Monsanto. That’s because Dow and DuPont are both sprawling conglomerates that contain massive ag divisions. Combining them into a “leading global pure-play Agriculture company” (as the companies’ press release puts it) will create a gargantuan new rival for those market-leading agribusiness titans.

To highlight the gravity of the deal, here’s a snapshot of the industry’s pre-merger position. After waves of mergers and buyouts in the ’90s and early ’00s—coinciding with the emergence of genetically modified seeds—the global seed landscape shook out like this:

The companies that rose to dominate the space—Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont—also sold pesticides, and lots of them. While these giant chemical companies’ rationale for moving into GM seeds was to diversify away from reliance on peddling bug- and weed-killing chemicals, the two business lines always had a certain synergy. That’s because the era’s blockbuster GM trait was herbicide resistance—the companies engineered corn, soybean, and cotton varieties that could thrive even when they’re doused with these companies’ own branded herbicides. The rapid adoption of these crops gave rise to a plague of herbicide-resistant weeds, a boom in herbicide use, and a new iteration of crops, including ones from Monsanto and Dow, engineered to resist multiple herbicides.

Earlier this year, Monsanto made a bold, sustained push to buy out its rival Syngenta. The combined company would have been truly enormous, controlling something approaching a third of both the seed and pesticide markets (see charts here). Syngenta’s management ultimately fought off the bid in August, but rumors of coming mergers and buyouts in the agribiz sector have swirled ever since. With the Dow-DuPont deal, those prophecies have proven thunderously true. The new firm will mash up DuPont’s seed heft with Dow’s fat share of the pesticide market. Let’s call it DowDuPont Agri. Here’s a sketch of its girth, made by crunching numbers in the above charts. Antitrust regulators may shave the final company a bit—DuPont and Dow both sell corn seeds, for example, and there is speculation that Dow’s relatively small corn seed business might have to be sold off.

Note that in this scenario, the same three mega firms—Monsanto, Syngenta, and DowDuPont Agri—will control more than half the global seed market and nearly half the pesticide market. The GMO seed industry once vowed to wean industrial agriculture off its reliance on pesticides. But as I wrote in May, when the globe’s biggest seed company (Monsanto) was hotly pursuing marriage with the globe’s biggest pesticide maker (Syngenta), the industry now appears to be betting big on a pesticide-soaked future.

And the new company will likely—unless antitrust authorities make it sell off overlapping business segments—emerge as a bigger seed and agrichemical player than the two that currently stand atop the market.

But I may soon have to rev up Datawrapper again and redo those charts. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the DuPont-Dow tie-up could “spur agricultural rivals to forge their own partnerships, further shrinking the handful of companies that dominate the global seed and pesticide business.” As recently as mid-November, Monsanto execs were publicly contemplating another bid for Syngenta, and some prominent Syngenta shareholders are pushing the company to reconsider its refusal to merge with Monsanto in the wake of the new merger, the Journal reported last week. “The synergies in terms of costs, distribution, and R&D would create huge value for shareholders and establish a dominance that would be difficult for any competitor, including a Dow/DuPont, to rival,” one fund manager whose firm owns Syngenta stock told the Journal. But the hottest takeover rumor involving Syngenta involves not its US rival, but rather China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina, a vast state-owned enterprise.

There’s also talk of Monsanto making a play for the agrichemicials division of German chemical giant BASF, which owns a juicy 12 percent of the global pesticide market (see chart above). In the wake of the Dow-DuPont merger, I am left to wonder: What new, yet even more massive beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward our corn fields to be born?

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Move Over, Monsanto: The Pesticide and GMO Seed Industry Just Spawned a New Behemoth

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The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2015

International shipping and aviation emit as much as entire wealthy nations, but they’re not bound by the COP21 deal. 06photo/Shutterstock With the Paris climate talks coming to a close, participating nations are hashing out the details of how to hold each other to their carbon reduction goals and finance the whole transition to a cleaner world. Non-state actors are present, too; 400 cities signed a Compact of Mayors to set and track climate goals. And financial institutions have made big commitments to shift investment away from fossil fuels and better disclose climate-related business risks. But there are two particular industries that must factor into any plan to cut carbon and yet aren’t directly represented in the current COP21 talks: international shipping and aviation. They’re both big. International shipping produces 2.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to all of Germany. Meanwhile total aviation yields about 2 percent of global GHGs, and international flights account for 65 percent of that figure. These emissions won’t be covered by reductions being discussed at COP21, because they don’t happen within the boundaries of any specific countries. They’re also projected to rise dramatically by 2050. Two major obstacles stand in the way of resolving emissions from international shipping and aviation. The first is procedural: those industries are not bound by the Paris climate deal. The second is practical: the world currently lacks a promising technology to replace carbon-based propulsion systems, as well as a promising alternative to carbon-based fuel. Read the rest at CityLab. See original article here:  The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores ; ; ;

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The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores

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The Ugly Truth Lurking Behind the Climate Talks

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2015

As a climate deal nears, power players want accountability (just not for themselves). US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon meet on the sidelines of the Paris climate negotiations. Mandel Ngan/Pool/AP LE BOURGET, France—When I meet new people here, the first question I usually get is a variation on, “Are these your first climate talks?” What they want to know is if I’m an expert like them—if I know the jargon, the unwritten rules, the backstories of who’s been fighting who since Kyoto ’97. The answer is, yes, these are my first talks. And that’s made for some humbling learning curves (look, “ADP” and “informal informal” aren’t exactly self-defining terms). But the good part is that I got to come here with the outsider’s perspective of someone who’s spent more time covering disaster, social upheaval, and response, particularly in Haiti, the country ranked as the third-most affected by climate change so far. In other words, I’ve seen a few things—things that leave me with a question right at the center of what is likely to be the major battle in the final stage of these talks. I think everyone gets the importance of money and power at these negotiations by now. The operating assumption is that rich countries who’ve benefited most from carbon emissions will pay something to alleviate the effects of global warming on the poor, while helping the new major polluters, such as India, get off carbon before they burn us past the point of no return. Read the rest at The New Republic. Link:  The Ugly Truth Lurking Behind the Climate Talks ; ; ;

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The Ugly Truth Lurking Behind the Climate Talks

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The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks

by Myrna Posted on December 8, 2015

Officials postponed the auction of an oil and gas development lease until next spring. Anton Watman/Shutterstock It’s hard to lead the charge against the global consumption of fossil fuels while making money off the sale of them. Perhaps in recognition of this conundrum, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages some 245 million acres of public land, has announced it will postpone an oil and gas lease auction scheduled for December 10 until March 17, 2016. The leases for sale include nine parcels of land in Arkansas and Michigan, totaling 587 acres, eligible for fossil fuel exploration. That means the federal government won’t be selling off land for oil or gas development just as the COP21 climate talks in Paris approach their dramatic conclusion. The planned sale had been drawing heat from climate activists, who are rallying behind the “keep it in the ground” philosophy that to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to leave most of fossil fuel reserves untapped. President Barack Obama articulated that concept in his rationale for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline in November: Ultimately, if we’re gonna prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re gonna have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. That said, the sale will go ahead a few months after the delegates return home from Paris. If Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline for the stated reasons, why go ahead with federal mineral rights leases? One difference is the money from these routine drilling rights sales goes to the government, not to a Canadian energy company. Another possibility is that the goal isn’t really to stop extracting fossil fuels. Read the rest at CityLab. View this article:  The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks ; ; ;

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The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks

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Here’s Why the Words “Loss and Damage” Are Causing Such a Fuss at the Paris Climate Talks

by Myrna Posted on December 8, 2015

It’s not just mitigation and adaptation anymore. Rich Carey/Shutterstock PARIS, France — There’s a big sticking point in the negotiations over a global climate deal, and it centers around this little phrase: “loss and damage.” The concept has become hugely important to developing countries and climate justice advocates at the COP21 talks — and a big headache for developed countries. The conversation around climate aid — money and assistance that goes from rich countries to poorer ones for climate change–related programs — has traditionally focused on two areas: mitigation, which means cutting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions by doing things like building up renewable energy capacity and halting deforestation; and adaptation, which means preparing for future climate changes, by taking steps such as building better drainage systems to deal with higher seas and more severe storms, and shifting to heartier crops that can withstand higher temperatures and lower rainfalls. But now developing countries are pushing for assistance in a third area: loss and damage. This refers to irreparable losses (loss of lives, species, or land taken over by rising seas) and recoverable damages (damaged buildings, roads, power lines) — basically, to what happens when mitigation and adaptation fall short and climate disaster strikes. At this point, no matter how much we cut emissions or how much we prepare for coming changes, there will still be significant loss and damage from climate change. Already, the devastating effects of rising sea levels, hotter temperatures, and extreme weather events are growing rapidly. Small Pacific island nations are experiencing regular flooding, which submerges roads, batters houses and seawalls, and sends populations fleeing. In nations like Bangladesh, farms are ruined by the infiltration of salt water. Read the rest at Grist. Follow this link: Here’s Why the Words “Loss and Damage” Are Causing Such a Fuss at the Paris Climate Talks ; ; ;

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Here’s Why the Words “Loss and Damage” Are Causing Such a Fuss at the Paris Climate Talks

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Are We Reaching Peak CO2?

by JeraldKayser Posted on December 8, 2015

green4us

Maybe! Emission of CO2 from coal burning and cement manufacturing, the two biggest humanmade sources. The trend has slowed recently and actually reversed in 2015.Graph by Jackson, et al., modified (red rectangle added) by Phil Plait Our planet is heating up. The cause is in some ways simple: Humans add a lot of carbon dioxide to the air every year, about 40 billion tons of it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas: It lets sunlight through to heat the ground, but the infrared light the ground emits gets absorbed, and cannot escape to space. That warms us up, slowly but inevitably. By every measure available to us, we see the effects of this increased heat. But there’s hope, at least a hint of it. A new study has some hopeful news about global warming: The global emission of carbon dioxide slowed substantially in 2014, and is projected to drop a little bit in 2015. This comes after over a decade of quite sharp growth in emission. Better yet: This happened while the global economy underwent “robust growth,” and it happened in part due to switching to renewables (solar and wind power) as well as a drop in coal use. Globally, over the past 15 years, we’ve been dumping roughly an extra billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, jumping from 25 billion tons per year to over 37. But the rate has slowed in the past couple of years; in 2014 the growth slowed dramatically, and according to the new research the rate is projected to drop in 2015 by roughly 0.6 percent, from 35.9 billion tons to 35.7. Read the rest at Slate.

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Are We Reaching Peak CO2?

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Obama Just Called Saving the Planet an “Act of Defiance” Against Terror

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2015

As major UN talks kick off in Paris, the president acknowledged America’s role in causing global warming. A major two-week summit on climate change opened on Monday in Paris, and President Barack Obama was there to urge world leaders to push for a strong international agreement to slow global warming. In his speech (video above), the president also offered a rebuke to the terrorists behind the November 13 attacks in the French capital that left 130 people dead. The summit, he said, is “an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children.” Obama acknowledged America’s unique responsibility for ensuring success at the talks, which are designed to produce an unprecedented agreement between nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change. It’s the first time nations have tried to reach that goal since the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, crumbled over disagreements between the United States, China, and developing nations. In his second term, Obama has sought to make action on climate change a central part of his legacy; a strong agreement in Paris would be a vital component to that. “I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter,” Obama said, “to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.” Prior to the speech, Obama met privately with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders have worked closely over the last year to advance a joint climate agenda. Xi also gave a speech, in which he said it was “very important for China and the United States to be firmly committed to the right direction of building a new model of major country relations.” Obama’s remarks come a day after the White House announced a sweeping initiative to double public-sector investment in clean energy research and development from $5 billion to $10 billion by 2020. That new program, known as Mission Innovation, also includes more than a dozen major private-sector investors, including Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg. Finance for clean energy and for climate change adaptation is likely to be a major issue at the talks, as vulnerable nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere urge the United States and other major emitters to pony up more cash. At the last major climate summit in Copenhagen, countries agreed to raise $100 billion per year for a UN-administered climate adaptation fund. That goal is only about two-thirds met. Jump to original –  Obama Just Called Saving the Planet an “Act of Defiance” Against Terror ; ; ;

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Obama Just Called Saving the Planet an “Act of Defiance” Against Terror

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2 GOP Candidates Have Reasonable Positions on Climate Change. They Won’t Be in Tonight’s Debate.

by Myrna Posted on November 10, 2015

Pataki and Graham aren’t invited. Workers stand in at the candidates’ podiums in preparation for Tuesday’s Republican debate in Milwaukee. Morry Gash/AP If you were hoping for a reasonable discussion about science during Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debates, you’re probably going to be sorely disappointed. That’s because the only two candidates with serious positions climate change have been excluded from the event. Last month, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former New York Gov. George Pataki made news when they called out their own party for rejecting the science behind climate change. “I’ve talked to the climatologists of the world, and 90 percent of them are telling me the greenhouse gas effect is real, that we’re heating up the planet,” said Graham during CNBC’s Republican “undercard” debate—the early-evening consolation prize for candidates who aren’t polling high enough to land a spot in prime time. “It’s…not appropriate to think that human activity, putting CO2 into the atmosphere, doesn’t make the Earth warmer,” added Pataki. “It does. It’s uncontroverted.” Out of all the candidates in the crowded GOP field, Graham and Pataki also have the strongest track records when it comes to actually fighting climate change. In the Senate, Graham once sponsored a cap-and-trade bill intended to reign-in greenhouse gas emissions. As governor, Pataki helped create a regional cap-and-trade program in the Northeast. So I was excited to hear what they would have say on the issue during the debates that will air Tuesday on the Fox Business Network. Like its sister network Fox News, Fox Business is a major epicenter of climate science denial. Unfortunately for science, Graham and Pataki won’t be on stage Tuesday. Neither of them are averaging anywhere close to 2.5 percent in the polls—the threshold Fox established for the main debate. They aren’t even managing the 1 percent required to participate in the undercard debate. Instead, viewers will hear from an array of global warming deniers. Ted Cruz believes that climate change is a “pseudoscientific theory”; Donald Trump calls it a “hoax”; and Ben Carson insists there’s “no overwhelming science” that it’s caused by humans. Viewers will also hear from candidates like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (who was recently demoted to the undercard stage). Christie acknowledges that climate change is real but seems to oppose any realistic plan to deal with it. Then there are the folks who will be asking the questions. Last year, Fox Business managing editor Neil Cavuto—one of the moderators for Tuesday’s main debate—explained how he first became a climate change “doubter”: Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Here’s what Trish Regan, one of the moderators for Tuesday’s undercard matchup, had to say when Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) called climate change the country’s top national security threat during a Democratic debate earlier this year: #Bernie says #climatechange is our biggest #1 threat. Maybe he should run for office in #Denmark? #DemDebate — Trish Regan (@trish_regan) October 14, 2015 So since you’re not likely to hear this tonight, here’s Pataki explaining why you really should believe what climate scientists are saying—and why you should vaccinate your kids, too: Read more: 2 GOP Candidates Have Reasonable Positions on Climate Change. They Won’t Be in Tonight’s Debate. ; ; ;

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2 GOP Candidates Have Reasonable Positions on Climate Change. They Won’t Be in Tonight’s Debate.

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Google-powered map shows that deforestation isn’t just about the Amazon

by CharlotKLYM Posted on September 2, 2015

Google-powered map shows that deforestation isn’t just about the Amazon

By on 2 Sep 2015commentsShare

When you hear deforestation, you might think Brazil. It’s a fair association: Over the past four decades, upwards of 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down. But Brazil also boasts a relative success story, having reduced deforestation in the Amazon by 70 percent over the past ten years. Instead, new data from a collaboration between Google and the University of Maryland illustrate unprecedented — and until now, largely overlooked — forest loss in Southeast Asia and West Africa, among other hotspots:

The collaboration between the tech behemoth and the Maryland researchers expands the scope of Global Forest Watch, a satellite-driven mapping tool that tracks deforestation around the globe. The new satellite analyses are surprising to many and demonstrate the continuing need for rigorous forest monitoring outside regions of traditional deforestation concern.

“I think the key drivers in these key hotspot areas are a combination of external demand from China and internal issues with governance and control,” says Nigel Sizer of WRI, in a video about the data. “A lot of the clearing is actually illegal in some of these countries.”

Sizer cites rubber plantations in Cambodia as an example of such governance issues. A booming rubber industry needs space in which to operate, and wild forests are often the obvious candidates for clearing plantation space in the Southeast Asian country. But proposed rubber plantations are often covers for illegal timber operations, in which forests are cleared and the wood is sold and exported, but plantations never actually appear. Since the turn of the millennium, Cambodia’s tree cover loss has accelerated faster than any other nation’s. Close to a half million acres of forest are lost every year in the country, with much of this loss coming from ostensibly protected forests.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) launched Global Forest Watch in early 2014, a year that saw a global loss of 45 million acres of tree cover. (Not all tree cover loss, however, is caused by deforestation — forest fires, tree disease, and plantation harvesting can also be blamed.) The WRI mapping tool itself — which is pretty incredible — tracks changes in tree cover and land use and allows citizens and journalists to geotag deforestation stories. The group aspires to leverage the tool to expose illegal forest clearing, reports RTCC:

The research is the largest and most up-to-date global dataset for tree cover loss, and shows the promise of cloud computing to help authorities to root out illicit activity.

Satellites can detect areas as small as 30 square metres now, updating global coverage every eight days to track changes, said Matt Hansen at the University of Maryland.

The technology has revolutionised forest surveillance, which before relied on the likes of donor funding for countries to make forest inventories.

Whether or not Google’s deforestation monitoring falls under Alphabet remains, like everything else about Alphabet, an open question.

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Google lays bare overlooked deforestation ‘hotspots’

, RTCC.

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Google-powered map shows that deforestation isn’t just about the Amazon

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