Editor's note: The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that global warming has triggered a series of species migrations and can trigger disasters such as extreme weather events, the spread of infectious diseases, and food shortages. In the current turbulent situation, cultivation in Ukraine, one of the world's largest granaries, will be hit, and whether climate issues will further exacerbate food problems in other regions has become an imminent challenge. Originally published in the New York Review of Books, jonathan Mingle is the author of Fire and Ice: Soot, Unity, and Survival on the Roof of the World.
In 2010, western Russia and Eastern Europe suffered severe droughts and heat waves. Fires ravaged the entire region, temperatures soared, the skies in Moscow darkened and radioactive dust entered the atmosphere near Chernobyl, Ukraine. The fires overwhelmed Russian staff; at least 12 countries, including Ukraine, provided firefighters and material assistance to Russia. As of October of the same year, more than 55,000 Russians had died from the heat and air pollution caused by wildfires. It was one of the worst heat events on record, and the researchers later concluded that climate change made it a sharp increase in the likelihood of such a scenario.
On July 25, 2020, in the Krasnodar region of Russia, rice production has a downward trend due to the impact of drought.
On 28 February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest Sixth Assessment Report. Understandably, the war news left no time to care about the report's contents. Bad climate news has become numb. What news will another large-scale IPCC report contain? The lengthy, boring, and intensive technical report, published by IPCC Working Group II, composed of 270 authors from 67 different countries, happens to be the most suspenseful document in human history. As climate activists tweeted, "Everything is really in jeopardy." ”
The 2010 Russian heatwave was an "extreme weather event" labeled by the IPCC authors as having a "Reason for Concern" (or, in the language peculiar to the report, called an "RFC"). Based on more than 34,000 published studies, the authors categorized "127 different regional and global risks" into five distinct RFC categories, including "unique and threatened ecosystems" (bleached coral reefs and vanished alpine glaciers) and "large-scale single events" (the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, or the Amazon is turning into a savannah). These geomorphological events are becoming more frequent and worrying, to say the least. But if the reader can push aside the deliberately bland language and overcrowded numbers in the report, he will find that in the 3675-page carefully examined report, there is a cascade of smaller, more imaginable horrors. The report is full of uncertain futures, and readers can even read it as an open-ended, "choose your own adventure" version of Silent Spring, or as UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it on the day of the report's release, "an atlas of human suffering."
Some of this suffering is happening now: Nearly half of the world's population experiences chronic water shortages every year. Some suffering has not yet occurred, but it is already difficult to escape. By 2050, 1 billion people will be directly at risk of coastal flooding near where they live as sea levels rise. As the world warms further, people have a higher "confidence" in what might happen, and the degree of refinement of these situations is clearer. Just like scientists got more powerful camera lenses in the six years since the last IPCC evaluation. They provide a high-resolution perspective on how the natural and material world in which we inhabit shrink and empty itself. The world is becoming more chaotic, less abundant, and more difficult to recognize.
A surprising discovery: Half of Earth's species are moving to the poles or to higher elevations on land. This will have consequences that are almost unimaginable to us today, but one consequence of which is that tuna, mackerel, herring and other fish are moving far from the tropics, which will change the nutritional outlook of traditional fisheries and the billions of people who rely on these fish for protein.
Infectious diseases are also spreading. We can expect more malaria at high altitudes and in cooler parts of Africa and South America, where mosquitoes have traditionally been rampant; more Lyme disease moves north throughout North America through ticks; and more dengue, chikungunya and West Nile viruses spread throughout southern Europe. Pests and pathogens that attack tree crops, cereals and vegetables are also occupying new territories. They are also traveling towards the poles at an average rate of 2.7 kilometers per year.
At the same time, as temperatures rise and precipitation patterns change, the range of certain key staple crops is gradually changing. By 2100, the amount of land currently used for agriculture and livestock is expected to decrease by 8 to 30 percent (depending on how much we allow for climate warming). This is about one-tenth to one-third of the world's farmland being cut down, resulting in large-scale "climate incompatibility".
Reading these scenarios page after page can induce a kind of "claustrophobia": when familiar animals, plants, forests, and temperature zones conducive to human comfort have changed dramatically, people feel that there is nowhere to hide from these risks that are quietly occurring, and people are squeezed and have no space.
Much of the report outlines those "harms that may be avoided through timely and carefully planned adaptation.". However, the report also notes that there are hard limits to the physical changes that humans and other species can adapt to. Without more serious action to reduce emissions, three degrees of warming (which we are currently on track) will be a threshold. Before vital organ failure, the body can withstand a limited amount of heat. Residents of most parts of the world are expected to usher in more summer days, when it is dangerous to work in the sun or even outdoors. Temperate regions are not immune. If the world warms by 3 degrees, 90,000 Europeans are expected to die in the heat by 2100, three times as high as when temperatures rose by 1.5 degrees.
Another hard limit is close at hand for species in polar or mountainous regions, where they are physiologically unable to adapt to higher temperatures and have no room to migrate to polar or altitude. They will directly deplete the "climatic space" and become extinct. Once the temperature rises by more than 2 degrees Celsius, the likelihood of major biome shifts and species extinction increases. Now, the "most ideal" warming scenario (maintained at 1.5 degrees Celsius) would lead to the imminent extinction of 9 percent of terrestrial and freshwater species; but if global temperatures rise to 3 degrees Celsius, the IPCC estimates that up to 29 percent of terrestrial and freshwater species could be endangered.
On July 30, 2019, in Irulissat, Greenland, climate change is having a profound impact on Greenland. The weather is unusually warm and many glaciers are melting.
In a world where temperatures rise by 3 degrees Celsius, pollinators such as bees are among the most threatened species. In a hotter world, the overlap between pollinator activity windows and plant flowering time (the time pollen is produced) is likely to be broken, which is very unfavorable for both. Bees may be buzzing quietly against the backdrop of our other larger concerns, but this decline in magnitude will not be overlooked. They appear on the price tag of supermarket products and in malnutrition mortality statistics. The IPCC cites an estimate: "The complete elimination of pollinators would reduce the global supply of fruit by 23 percent, vegetables by 16 percent, and nuts and seeds by 22 percent, leading to a significant increase in nutrient-deficient populations and malnutrition-related diseases." ”
In particular, the threats to the global food system are multifaceted. Droughts, pests, extreme weather, floods and heat waves can lead to crop yield losses and affect global supply chains. Many of the report's conclusions are not surprising, but still worrying, one of which is that climate change has slowed the growth of agricultural productivity. Since 1960, crop yields per acre have almost tripled due to the advent of mechanization and other modern agricultural technologies (plant breeding, fertilizers, irrigation systems, pest control). This trend is now weakening. Climate change may have reduced agricultural productivity growth by 12 percent in North America since 1961; in Africa, its growth has slowed by 34 percent.
Climate change has become a catalyst for inequality, weakening the ability of some countries to help lift people out of poverty. From 1991 to 2010, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall reduced per capita GDP in African countries by 13.6 per cent, widening the gap between the world's poor and rich countries. If temperatures rise by more than 2 degrees, food production across Africa will begin to regress.
While the long-term average of these declines is frustrating, one of the most pressing messages in the report is: Fear of extreme events. Low-probability extreme events have potential "cascading downstream effects" that can cross national and ecosystem boundaries, and the likelihood of these events is rising. Chapter 16 contains an infographic detailing the impact of the 2011 floods in Thailand on the global economy, a recent disaster that could serve as a harbinger. The floods killed 813 people. They have also disrupted Thailand's process of producing semiconductors for the automotive and electronics industries in the United States, Europe and Japan, as well as the production of other important products. This has led to severe production delays at U.S. automakers and pushed up the price of computer hard drives around the world.
The impact on the supply of electronic components is undoubtedly a serious matter, hurting the livelihoods of many people. But the impact on the global food system is something else entirely. Consider what the report calls the prospect of "multiple granary failures." From Australia to Argentina, the world's food-producing regions are becoming increasingly vulnerable to multiple shocks: pests, droughts, extreme heat. Extreme weather events in one part of the world could spread outward, affecting staple food supplies in distant regions; the impact of COVID-19 on global supply chains may be even mild compared to supply disruptions caused by climate change. In 2007 and 2008, Russian food production was low, while Australia was in the midst of its own severe drought and prolonged heat waves. As a result, there have been protests against the price of bread in 40 countries.
Notably, Ukraine and Russia together make up one of the world's largest granaries, accounting for a quarter of global wheat production. Ukraine is one of the world's largest exporters of sunflower oil and the third largest exporter of corn and wheat. During the extreme summer of 2010, the agricultural sectors of both countries suffered heavy losses. The drought has led the Russian government to worry about the food problems of its citizens and therefore ban wheat exports. Ukraine has also restricted the export of wheat and corn due to reduced crop yields. The resulting supply shock led to a 27% increase in global wheat prices. Egypt's heavy reliance on food imports from both countries fueled the turmoil in Egypt caused by soaring food prices, culminating in the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Staff holding rye grain in their hands on March 15, 2022. The conflict in Ukraine has hit global cereal markets, with food prices climbing and food prices rising.
Vulnerabilities in the global food supply chain are now emerging. A prominent agricultural economist predicts that the current situation will "cause the largest supply shock in my lifetime on the global food market." Planting in Ukraine this year is sure to be affected by the current conflict and disruptions in the supply of fertilizers and other resources in Russia. Turkey, Egypt and Sudan are among many countries that rely on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. According to David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, half of the WFP's wheat was bought from Ukraine before the turmoil. "This granary helps us feed the world," he said in an appeal and warning, "including Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria and many, many other countries."
Global supply chains and commodity markets are complex. But the consequences of soaring prices of wheat and other commodity cereals are simple: more people will suffer from hunger, leading to more poverty and more political discontent.
Perhaps more disturbing than any of the "causes of concern" listed in the report, as well as individual impacts, most of the effects arrived sooner than expected, and oceanographers seem particularly afraid of the rapid migration of marine species to the poles, leaving a "biodiversity valley" near the equator, and the speed at which the poles would change. The permafrost of the Arctic is melting, and the ice shelves in the Antarctic are thinning ahead of schedule.
Every day of greenhouse gas emissions is accelerating our transition to these irreversible, predictable, and catastrophic systems that are the foundation for a stable climate. As one of the report's lead authors put it, our atmosphere is "taking stimulants doped with fossil fuels," and we are accelerating into a dark, chaotic future. In a summary for policymakers, the authors conclude: "There is a need for concerted global action on adaptation and mitigation, and any further delay will cause us to miss a fleeting and rapidly closing window of opportunity that will not provide a livable and sustainable future for all." ”
The next report for the sixth assessment will be published in April. This goal will focus on mitigation. We will have many ways to reduce emissions, but we already know the slogan: the future of humanity is being undermined by our continued dependence on burning oil, gas and coal, and the world needs to transition to clean energy as soon as possible.
Since the IPCC released its first report 32 years ago, its policy response has been frustratingly weak. But leaders can act quickly and decisively if they wish. The European Commission has just announced plans to reduce natural gas imports from a certain country by 65 percent this year and rapidly expand renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Just as flooding rivers jump over their banks and open up a new channel, the current global situation could affect energy investment options that will shape society for decades to come. The question is whether countries will use this opportunity to move towards renewables or go backwards by increasing their own oil and gas production. For example, some of the chaotic noise caused by the restoration of the Keystone-XL pipeline is not surprising, but it has the potential to drown out more sane voices.
If the IPCC's latest warning boils down to any single motto, doubling down on fossil fuels would be a grave mistake. In early March, Svitlana Krakovska, a ukrainian representative to the IPCC, a meteorologist and climatologist, said she hoped that the current situation would not distract attention from the urgency of preventing a climate catastrophe, but rather strengthen our collective focus on it. "We want the world to stay the course in building a climate-resilient future," she said. "Human-induced climate change has the same root causes as the current situation – fossil fuels and our dependence on them.