Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A climate crisis role playing exercise, hosted by the World Wildlife Fund and the Center for American Progress, has concluded that the world can survive the ravages of climate change, providing we implement a global carbon tax, and create a new global governance structure.
Food Chain Reaction was held last November in Washington DC. The game was played by 65 international experts, who assumed the roles of nations, multilateral organizations and multinational business, and confronted a burgeoning food security crisis in the decade 2020-2030.
The players were divided in teams for Africa, Brazil, China, the European Union, the United States, multinational businesses and the international institutions. Their task: to figure out how they could cooperate to guide the world through a decade of mounting climate pressures and the resulting disruptions. There was no safety net. Through their actions, the participants could either get the world ready for an ever more apparent – and volatile – new normal, or drive it off a cliff.
In the end, even as extreme weather ran rampant and food prices flirted with 400 percent of the long-term average, they came up with a host of solutions. Cooperation mostly won the day over the short term individual advantage. Teams pledged to jointly build international information networks and early warning systems on hunger and crops, invest in smart agricultural technology and build up global food stocks as a buffer against climate shocks.
The most eye-catching results, however, were a deal to institute a worldwide carbon tax and a global food security summit that was tasked with setting up a whole new global governance structure for climate and food security issues.
Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/cargill/2016/02/15/food-security-in-a-time-of-climate-change/
I’m skeptical about the claim that additional global governance can improve the resilience of food production. Central planning was a disaster for Soviet Agriculture – distant bureaucrats tend to make poor farm managers.
Oh what a surprise, they got the results they wanted.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) & Photosynthesis are the foundation of Life on Earth. Plants/plankton turn Sunlight/CO2 into Food/Oxygen. Neither animal nor blade of grass would exist, absent CO2. Increasing CO2 lengthens growing seasons & encourages plants to move higher in altitude & Latitudes; just as it helps to shrink deserts, plants using water more efficiently. Rising temperatures also lengthen growing seasons, help babies of nearly every species, increase net rainfall & save lives; because cold kills. The Earth is greener, more fertile & life sustaining than it was 40 years ago.
Ceding more power to the UN is just a euphemism for transferring more wealth to the developing world with their corrupt, inefficient, dysfunctional and brutal governments. The money could then be used by their ruling classes to enhance their lifestyles and beef up their militaries which in turn would ensure those ruling classes stay in power. As for fighting climate change, this is just a ruse because it’s not even seen as a priority among the majority of Third World citizens. Besides, what would happen if the money destined toward this fight proved to be ineffectual or to have been diverted to other causes. Would we get a refund?
But it’s all a conspiracy theory…..isn’t it? Even when stated in writing people protect the UN machinations to control the world as a right wing conspiracy theory. There’s enough written proof of their real goals and they are becoming more and more bold about it. The EU is their proving ground and we see how that’s going so far. National sovereignty is the key to survival. The largest, most prosperous countries in the world will not relinquish sovereignty because they either already have what’s being promised or the people in power won’t give up their control. Why should they?
We may survive climate change, but will we survive the UN?
The climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the Sun and the oceans and Mankind does not have the power to change it. Our real problem is Man;s out of control population. If Man does not control his own population then Nature will, catastrophically.
willhaas commented: “…If Man does not control his own population then Nature will, catastrophically…”
So either way “man” loses. I’ll take my chances with nature.
“We’ll survive Climate Change – if we cede More Power to the UN”
Ummm – NO.
And we’ll survive it anyway – just as we have for the eons of changing climates before us.
Greedy, power-hungry IDIOTS.
Science must be put in to the hands of scientific institutions and not in to the hands of UN as this agency is more interested to collect trillions of dollars to distribute to serve the vested interests only. This will be deathbed to science.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Most of the scientific institutions are in lock-step with the UN. I fail to see how your suggestion would help.
Ban-Ki Moon & The Funky Bunch rule 😉
Well, ceding power to the UN is far preferable to ceding power to the EU. If you saw the mess they made here in the Common Market days, with farming subsidies giving rise to all kinds of scams and the price of food skyrocketing, you’d know what I mean.
Other consequences of EU meddling are the exhausting North Sea fish stocks, and the disastrous floods which the UK has suffered.
Why are these idiots looking into the future and playing games when there are so many people going without food NOW?
Perhaps they are not so ‘expert’ after all.
From https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats (undated but agrees with other documents for 2015 figures)
I really disliked the so called research linking conspiracy theorists with climate change scepticism, I really don’t buy it. But of late there seems to be an uncomfortable amount of people posting who seem determined to prove me wrong.
You’re right Gareth, nobody conspires these days, there is nothing practical about organising, or planning! Plotting, intrigue and iniquity are things of the past. Politics is about individual values not party lines. Elites would never collude out of self interest. Terms like “organised crime” have no meaning today because that would imply conspirators. Forget corporate corruption, it doesn’t exist because it would require a conspiracy to defraud and that is impossible in the world today where “everything is awesome”. Forget the entire political history of history nobody ever conspired that is just a theory! / sarc/exasperation (I don’t know anymore.)
As someone working in alternative agriculture, I can assure you that we HAVE answers to ensure longterm production increases and more stability in our food systems. We are ignored though and there is some rather interesting work going off on the side anyway. For instance I know growers in various parts of africa using tree based systems to provide reliable quality food, that over time become more and more fertile in places considered non arable, even without irrigation involved. Not all such models work in the first world where labor is expensive but robots might one day change that but they do very well in the third world. My own work here in the high desert SW shows I can grow a range of crops here including treecrops that could replace the grain we feed animals currently (large portion of grain goes to animals) all while producing much much more meat then current cattle production here. I use goats not cattle but the amount of meat is easily an order of magnitude higher, ore actually but hard for me to say for sure at this point because I am only doing a small area currently I dont have the land to scale up yet.
The most obvious potential here although there are many is to use such models to improve the arid regions we currently grow half the worlds meat on. They would become more and more fertile and hold more water over time while producing more then currently while providing treecrops as well. We could readily free up the farmlands growing grain for livestock now with treecrops, use more of them as fillers in our own food or eat directly and many other potentials.
My real point here is when or if the world stops ignoring some of those at the edges of food production advancement we have answers already for sharp increases for decades to come. We have many international groups all supposedly seeking out such answers, for instance bill gates spending mountains of cash across africa for this goal. Yet somehow literally missed groups ALREADY doing it in AFFORDABLE ways simply by a change in mindset with mostly onsite and VERY sustainable inputs. yet it is ignored even though youd have to try to ignore it if you study food production and africa to any extent. This tells me that an entire field is so closed minded it cannot see many of the answers and more then adequate ones already exist and are being implemented in a few places. Extreme cognitive dissonance. OR they do not want answers, they want control.
Considering some of the other things I know about having happened the answer appears to be control. Hard to imagine, but little else makes sense.
This is one way to ratchet up the dues. It will not be long before the UN partakes in the day after claims of a mandate in U.S. elections.
And these organizations are still apolitical non profit for the IRS and other national tax collectors.