Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate

Analysis of : Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate

Find the article Here

Summary:

In the 1980s, climate change was thought to be a miracle, rather than a disaster. Experts thought that plants would grow faster if there was more carbon dioxide in the air, as carbon dioxide is a catalyst for certain types of plants. Experts thought that, overall, "food output should rise in a warmer and CO2-rich world."(Dixon) However these experts were wrong. We now clearly know that climate change clearly is a disaster. For it turns out that the externalities of climate change, such as drier soil and worse pest infestation, vastly outweigh the positive outcomes of higher CO2 levels.  Another problem that has arrived due to higher CO2 levels is heat shock. It turns out "that crops critical to humankind’s caloric supply [...] are extremely sensitive to even short periods of high temperature."(Dixon) More and more the temperature for a day is 40 degrees Celsius  and when just one day of 40-degree plus weather produces a 7% drop in annual yield of corn, it is clearly a problem. Skeptics choose to ignore that the current low crop-yield is due to climate change. They say that this type of weather has happened before. However, the frequency of extreme weather is increasing drastically. In the 50s extreme weather affected less than 1% of earth's land area. Today, extreme weather affects around 10% of earth's land. If humankind does not change it ways, and if we do not invest more in research that would develop crop resistance to drought and high heat, "climate change will depress global food production in the coming decades" Most do not care about climate change, but they do care about the cost of food. Hopefully the fear of costlier food will vanquish climate-change denial once and for all, and will generate political pressure to fix our climate.

Analysis:

This is a hit-and-miss article. It does a great job at explaining the possible future food crisis. Dixon chooses very powerful examples. I was impressed by his ability to explain very complex ideas in layman's terms. He also managed to demonstrate a sense of urgency, something that Al Gore explains is quite a problem. I believe that he is correct in thinking that the thought of having less food will make more people feel worried about climate change. However Dixon seems to have a very cynical view of humankind. For his reasoning behind the thought of having less food making more people worried about climate change is not that mankind is worried about starvation, or that we are worried about conflict over food, but that we simply do not want to pay more. So, while Dixon may have done a good job predicting that food-shortages will lead to a more wide-spread belief in climate change as well as a larger sense of urgency, his reasons are wrong.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. "Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate." Editorial. The Globe and Mail, July 24, 2012. Accessed January 28, 2013. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/climate-changes-costs-hit-the-plate/article4436775/.