Can Billions Eat Without Destroying The Environment? NO.

Much attention has been focused on the recent IPCC report on the dire manifestations of even worse global warming by 2040, e.g.

Climate report understates threat

That report, in the words of Erik Solheim - quoted by WaPo writer Margaret Sullivan in a recent piece ('Earth's Fate Is All That Matters Now') :

"Is like a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen. We have to put out the fire."

But will we? CAN we?  With the deniers still in full dispute mode, that may be too big an ask.

Another report - bearing an equally grave message -   published last Wednesday in the journal Nature,  has received far less attention. The report featuring 23 authors hailing from Europe, the U.S., Australia and Lebanon - reviewed the many components of the global food system and how they interact with the environment. One of the primary takeaways was that transformation of the existing food system is just as critical as controlling the increase in CO2 tied to climate change. This is given that the planet will hold as may as 9.5 billion to 10 billion people by 2050. Right now the population is  7..6 billion, meaning we are talking about an additional 2 billion mouths at least.

Will they get enough to eat? Will the existing system be able to deliver given what we know about it? Not really!  As in the case of the IPCC report there is the chasm between what needs to be done to save a dire situation and what most likely will be done.  Many are preaching the need for carbon taxes given the ominous United Nations report — prepared by The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.  But this still isn't enough to stave off the worst warming,  likely to be closer to 4 C more by 2050.  That will require putting 500m autos out of commission in the next two years. Anyone likely to do that? Any nation?  Hardly!

Similar constraints and plain human cussedness and obstinacy stand in the way of having the food to feed an additional 2 billion or so by 2050.

For example, with the current demand for meat and animal protein, some 70 percent of the world's fresh water is already used for agriculture - much of it for meat consumption, Already, half the planet's ice -free land surface is devoted to livestock or the growing of food for those animals - not humans.  This is an area equal to North and South America combined, according to Katherine Richardson, Director of the Sustainable Science Center at the University of Copenhagen.

To give an idea of the water intensity of typical livestock based production, A 1/3-pound burger requires 660 gallons of water. Most of this water is for producing beef. Meanwhile,  one pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water, which includes irrigation of the grains and grasses in feed, plus water for drinking and processing.

It doesn't take a Mensa member to see this is totally unsustainable in a world faced with 25% more humans in barely 30 years.

This is critical given the current demand for food is increasing more rapidly than the population. So by the time the population hits even 9 billion we will be in serious trouble.

Added to the problem is the fact that one of the primary reservoirs for CO2 - rain forests - are inexorably being cleared for more crop land. So while more space is rendered to feed human livestock, and humans, less is available for CO2- absorbing trees in forests.

Not even mentioned yet is the amount of current food waste which translates into massive water waste we can ill afford.

Seven years ago a  study released  by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). showed roughly 1.3 billion tons of food was either lost or wasted globally due to inefficiencies throughout the food supply chain.  According to the report, industrialized and developing countries wasted or lost roughly the same amount of food each year – 670 million and 630 million tons respectively. But while rich countries wasted food primarily at the level of the consumer, the main issue for developing countries was food lost due to weak infrastructure – including poor storage, and inadequate processing and packaging facilities that lack the capacity to keep produce fresh.

 At the time it had been made evident that food losses mean lost income for small farmers and higher prices for poor consumers in developing countries. Now we also know the exent to which food waste and losses mean wasted water resources as well. 

According to a report  published in Plos One  6 months ago, Americans alone wasted over 25 percent of their food between 2007 and 2014.   Researchers at the US Department of Agriculture analyzed eight years of food dat  to see where food is wasted and also what members of the public say they do at meal times.  About 150,000 tons of food is tossed out in US households each day, equivalent to about a third of the daily calories that each American consumes. Fruit and vegetables were the most likely to be thrown out, followed by dairy and then meat.

This waste was also found to have an environmental toll, with the volume of discarded food equivalent to the yearly use of 30 m acres of land and 4.2 trillion gallons of irrigated water. Rotting food not only denies nutrition to a vast population that needs it but also clogs up landfills and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Let us also note, for the record and in terms of the new Nature paper, that ruminants such as cows are prodigious generators of methane as they digest food.   Thus, the Nature report notes that greenhouse gas emissions from the global food system could be reduced significantly if people curb red meat consumption and instead follow a diet based on fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.

In effect, the report emphasized a "synergistic combination of measures will be needed to limit environmental damage" especially as the world population dramatically increases.

But can this be done? One contributor to the Study, Johan Rockstrom, insists:

"Feeding humanity is possible. It is just a question of whether we can do it in an environmentally responsible way."

To which I concur, for the present population, but not for the one projected in 2050.  If we keep eating heavily protein -based diets, especially now in the U.S. and China (which has derived a new taste for pork and beef amongst its middle class millions) there is no way in hell that 9.5 billion can be adequately fed in 2050. Far less doing so without terminating whatever is left of the environment by then.

Interestingly, the Nature report is mostly agnostic on the issue of GMO crops and foods in the food supply. This is incredible given now even another physician - Dr. Erika Schwartz - has weighed in against them in her book, 'Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You'.  Well, in her particular chapter it could have been headed 'Don't Let Monsanto Kill You', i.e. with its glyphosate -riddled GMOs that engender all manner of cancers, other health issues.

Curiously, the report also takes no position on population growth - which is remarkable in itself. That is given that unless global population is stabilized no change in food production or efficiency will be able to feed the additional billions.  We may not like to admit it, but in terms  of adequate resources this planet does have a human carrying capacity.

The projections now are for at least 9.5  billion people by 2050, and an 80 percent probability of 12.3 billion on Earth by 2100. Simply put, there simply aren't the resources to support even the lower addition. At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. The graphic below puts this into perspective;                                               

The interpretation of the graph (upward) is straightforward. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is,  the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.7 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate.

Given the report's omission of such hard realities it is evident to me that no, billions cannot eat without destroying what's left of the environment - and by 2050 the extra billions may not have enough to eat, period.

See also:

Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits | Nature

As Expected, Enormously Large Emissions Cuts Needed To Meet Paris Climate Criteria

A new T-shirt proclaiming "Science Is Not A Liberal Conspiracy" has just gone on sale online, and none too soon as the incoming administration seeks to stack the EPA with climate change deniers. Clearly, the announcement viewed on my FB page was also meant to counter the memes spread by the deluded Libertarian members of high IQ societies such as Intertel and Mensa. These anti-intellectuals follow the line and mold of Intertel's  Kort Patterson - a computer techie and Editor of Intertel's Region 7 NL 'Port Of Call' ,  who scribbled in the June issue:

"Many people continue to believe the lies and demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."

But global warming science as the T-shirt notes, is no "conspiracy",  nor are the scientists involved in climate research "conspirators". . AGW (anthropogenic global warming)  is based on pretty well settled science which - while it may have uncertainties as to timeline -  is very clear we are speeding toward a cataclysm for the whole species. If there is any major oversight or error it is in underestimating the intensity and emergence of the impact.

Now, a new report released Thursday from the U.N. Environmental Program,  shows this is very much the case.  In a release from Stockholm it announced the world is nowhere near on track to achieve the temperature goals adopted in the Paris Conference on Climate Change from last December.

The report dashes the PR nonsense released in that summit that lulled the world's people into false security. That is,  that the pitiful steps and "suggestions" in Paris would  avoid a burning planet. This is because the REAL steps needed to even have a chance of limiting the increase were too much to acknowledge.

UNEP has effectively called the summit's bluff, asserting that the world needs to slash annual greenhouse gas emissions by an additional 12- 14 billion metric tons by 2030 to have any remote chance to limit global mean temperature increase to 2 C. This was the putative temperature increment goal the world's nations agreed to in the  Paris pact. Putting the news into perspective,  the emissions gap is 12 times the annual emissions of the 28 nation EU transportation sector, including aviation. In other words, it's considerable.

I saw the actual gap at the time I wrote my Dec. 13, 2015 blog post, noting:

"This agreement is terrific for PR purposes and to make leaders feel like they  actually accomplished something besides more hand waving....But the sober realist knows that it won't do anything to really stem what's headed our way. We had our chances after the Rio Summit, but we just pissed it away and wasted time in useless exchanges with the deniers.."

In other words, what the Paris summit leaders proposed was literally "a day late and a dollar short".  This was based on report appearing 7 months earlier in a Guardian UK article (from May 17, 2015)  that bluntly noted:

"A paper used for guiding future business planning at the Anglo-Dutch multinational assumes that carbon dioxide emissions will fail to limit temperature increases to 2C, the internationally agreed threshold to prevent widespread flooding, famine and desertification. Instead, the New Lens Scenarios document refers to a forecast by the independent International Energy Agency (IEA) that points to a temperature rise of up to 4C in the short term, rising later to 6C."

This UNEP report reinforces that alarm by indicating the current science shows the need to move much faster. Thus, the Paris Agreement's proclaimed CO2 reductions would have attained 54-56 billion tons by 2030 leaving the world "on a path to 5.2 to 6.1 F increase" according to UNEP.  To instead get only 3.6F the total of 42 billion tons emissions would be allowed.

But since the world's leaders have little practical interest in achieving that, and the recent U.S. election alone will put climate deniers in charge of critical agencies, one must assume we are well on the way to a 4C world.  The signal for the onrushing calamity will also be intensifying. As UNEP leader Erik Solheim has warned (Denver Post, p. 9 A, Nov. 11):

"The growing numbers of climate refugees hit by hunger, poverty, illness and conflict will be a constant reminder of our failure to deliver".

That point and others will be emphasized in the U.N. Climate Conference to be held over the coming two weeks  in Marrakech, Morocco.

Also emphasized at that conference will be the extent to which the added emissions affect Arctic melting.  According to the World Bank, for example, the average American emits more than 16 metric tons of carbon each year. This translates to the melting of about 48 square meters of ice in the Arctic, enough to cover a 500 sq. foot apartment. These and other calculations appear in a new paper in Science by Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.  The goal is to quantify the rate of  Arctic melting and tie it to CO2 emissions and more importantly, "makes it possible to intuitively grasp how we all contribute to global warming."

Why does increased melting of Arctic sea ice matter? According to Walt Meier, a sea ice specialist at NASA:

"When you're changing the Arctic you certainly expect it to have ramifications outside the Arctic.  The climate system is interconnected . What happens in the Arctic doesn't  necessarily stay in the Arctic."

This dovetails with the Arctic heat emphasis exposed in the zonal temperature map shown above. and what is called "Arctic amplification".

It also means we have much to fear in terms of climatic-based catastrophes. For example, a much warmer Arctic means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions of the polar vortex.

Further, the Arctic heat anomaly detected in January was accompanied by a new record-low level for Arctic sea ice extent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center more than 400,000 square miles of the region were below average  for the month. This in turn was closely tied to warmer Arctic air temperatures.

Prof. Gunter Weller, a former climate scientist at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, had predicted much of this with his ground breaking research on Arctic warming in the 1980s. But most of us thought at the time humans would soon come to their senses. Even Prof. Weller expressed cautious optimism to me in one conversation in April, 1986. That hope now appears to be dashed as reality sets in on how far we really need to go - all the while battling a new administration that regards the science as a "hoax" . Not to mention a phalanx of pseudo-intellectuals who are convinced that climate researchers are "global warming conspirators".

Stay tuned!