Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Who would have guessed that raising the cost of energy with regressive carbon taxes would harm a vital, low margin energy intensive economic activity?
Climate taxes on agriculture could lead to more food insecurity than climate change itself
- Date:July 30, 2018
- Source:International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- Summary:New research has found that a single climate mitigation scheme applied to all sectors, such as a global carbon tax, could have a serious impact on agriculture and result in far more widespread hunger and food insecurity than the direct impacts of climate change. Smarter, inclusive policies are necessary instead.
New IIASA-led research has found that a single climate mitigation scheme applied to all sectors, such as a global carbon tax, could have a serious impact on agriculture and result in far more widespread hunger and food insecurity than the direct impacts of climate change. Smarter, inclusive policies are necessary instead.
This research, published in Nature Climate Change, is the first international study to compare across models the effects of climate change on agriculture with the costs and effects of mitigation policies, and look at subsequent effects on food security and the risk of hunger.
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The researchers stress that their results should not be used to argue against greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts. Climate mitigation efforts are vital. Instead, the research shows the importance of “smart,” targeted policy design, particularly in agriculture. When designing climate mitigation policies, policymakers need to scrutinize other factors and development goals more closely, rather than focusing only on the goal of reducing emissions.
“The findings are important to help realize that agriculture should receive a very specific treatment when it comes to climate change policies,” says Hasegawa. “Carbon pricing schemes will not bring any viable options for developing countries where there are highly vulnerable populations. Mitigation in agriculture should instead be integrated with development policies.”
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Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180730120348.htm
The abstract of the study;
Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy
Tomoko Hasegawa, Shinichiro Fujimori, Petr Havlík, Hugo Valin, Benjamin Leon Bodirsky, Jonathan C. Doelman, Thomas Fellmann, Page Kyle, Jason F. L. Koopman, Hermann Lotze-Campen, Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Yuki Ochi, Ignacio Pérez Domínguez, Elke Stehfest, Timothy B. Sulser, Andrzej Tabeau, Kiyoshi Takahashi, Jun’ya Takakura, Hans van Meijl, Willem-Jan van Zeist, Keith Wiebe & Peter Witzke
Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop-production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions that are expected in important agricultural regions. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may also negatively affect food security, due to indirect impacts on prices and supplies of key agricultural commodities. Here we conduct a multiple model assessment on the combined effects of climate change and climate mitigation efforts on agricultural commodity prices, dietary energy availability and the population at risk of hunger. A robust finding is that by 2050, stringent climate mitigation policy, if implemented evenly across all sectors and regions, would have a greater negative impact on global hunger and food consumption than the direct impacts of climate change. The negative impacts would be most prevalent in vulnerable, low-income regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where food security problems are already acute.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0230-x
Sadly the full study is paywalled, but I think we get the idea.
Modern farming is energy intensive.
One easy example, production of Ammonia, a key ingredient in fertiliser, produces 1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. 80% of that ammonia ends up as fertiliser.
Production of Ammonia is sensitive to energy prices. A few months ago, Ammonia production in Europe was halted when global petroleum prices rose to a level which made production unprofitable.
There have been efforts to find a clean energy route to Ammonia production. To eliminate natural gas and CO2 emissions from the ammonia production cycle, you have to start by electrolysing water for hydrogen, itself an expensive process, before applying the extreme pressures and temperatures required to crack biologically inert nitrogen molecules and force the nitrogen to combine with hydrogen to form ammonia. The product is very expensive ammonia.
Raising the price of ammonia with carbon taxes, and passing costs on to farmers would be a gruesome balancing act between food affordability, farm productivity and ammonia production costs.
Affordable Ammonia is only one of the energy intensive inputs required to keep farms producing at a level which keeps food cheap.
I suspect there are many other essential economic activities which are also severely adversely affected by carbon taxes.
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‘Food insecurity’ is a made up term with no meaning. But you should be skeert!
If carbon taxes increase the risk of food insecurity AT ALL, it will be worse than climate change increases the risk of food insecurity. Because climate change does NOT increase the risk of food insecurity. In fact, climate change DECREASES the risk of food insecurity.
Crops need three things from the environment to flourish: heat, moisture, and carbon dioxide. All three of them increase under global warming. Of course, theoretically, the heat factor has some point of diminishing (even negative) returns, but we are not likely to reach that point even after burning every bit of fossil fuels available to us. And even if we did reach that point, we could easily compensate by planting and harvesting crops earlier. Moisture has a point of diminishing returns too; i.e., flooding. But that’s just a marginally increased risk; the increase in moisture, on average, will be beneficial to crops. Alarmists, for some reason, seem to think that climate change will REDISTRIBUTE the moisture globally, so areas where rainfall was once plentiful will become arid, and vice versa. I have never seen any evidence that such a thing will happen, but even if it does, so what? We’ll still be getting more rainfall, globally, and production can move to those areas where rainfall is now abundant. There is no point of diminishing returns for carbon dioxide, either real or hypothetical. I’ve seen a couple of studies claiming that certain nutrients in certain crops will decrease if temperatures continue to increase, but the nutrient decrease is small, and far outweighed by the increase in production, which I talk about in the next paragraph.
So now that I’ve debunked the major “global warming is bad for food supplies” arguments, let’s talk about all the ways global warming is GOOD for crops. Again, all three of the things that crops need from the environment will increase if global warming continues. This means yields will increase. But it also means ACRES will increase. Vast areas of Canada and Russia (the two biggest, by area, nations in the world) that are too cold for crops will become warm enough. But perhaps the biggest advantage global warming will provide for crops is the increase in GROWING SEASON LENGTH. Corn planting, for example, typically begins in mid-April in the US and continues through the end of May. But imagine if we could plant it in February. With all the additional heat units (degree days) we could get throughout the season, farmers could potentially harvest corn in July, maybe even late June. This would give farmers enough time to plant and harvest ANOTHER CROP before temperatures got too cold to grow corn. That would, for practical purposes, DOUBLE corn yield in those areas where it could be done. Between that, the normal increase in yield, and the increased growing area, I believe potential food supplies would at least triple if global warming continues. (I say “potential” because I don’t actually think farmers will take advantage of the increased growing area and increased growing season length. If they do so, production will increase so much that the bottom will fall out of crop prices. But the point is, IF WE NEED IT, the production potential is there, so food security is increased.