Global Warming’s Double Whammy: Reducing World Crop Yields and Increasing Food Prices

While many people still refuse to believe that global warming is real, the evidence for it continues to slowly grow, bringing frightening consequences – massive food shortages around the world, and skyrocketing prices for what food there is.

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This is especially true for staple crops, like wheat and corn. For most major agricultural countries, rising temperatures have had a damaging effected crop yields, resulting in below normal levels, especially of wheat and corn, said a new study by Stanford University.

David Lobell, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of environmental Earth science at Stanford, said that he and his colleagues examined the temperature and rainfall records of major crop-growing countries over the last 30 years and did a comparative analysis of their crop yields.

The researchers found that global wheat production was 5.5 percent lower than what it would have been had climate remained stable. They also found that global corn production was lower by almost four percent.

Russia, India, and France suffered the greatest drops in wheat production relative to what they might have had without global warming. The largest comparative losses in corn production were seen in China and Brazil.

“Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without [these] climate trends,” Mr. Lobell told the Stanford Report.

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A Carbon Diet For Your New Year's Resolution: Frugality That'll Save Your Wallet and the Planet

Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of talk about how people need to lower their carbon footprint, but outside the eco-community, most people don’t even know what a carbon foorptint is. When the topic comes up, the questions are always: What is it and how does it affect me? Here’s an attempt to answer those questions.

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At its most basic level, a carbon footprint is the total impact one person’s activities has on the environment during any given day. A big part of it has to do with how much unrecyclable trash is generated, and power used - generating greenhouse gases - to operating things like household appliances and systems, electrics, and transportation.

The family carbon footprint is important for two reasons - slowing the outflow of money from the household budget and preserving the global environment.

The health of the global environment directly affects every wallet in many ways, including the cost of food. What most people eat that isn’t locally grown, and if the climate shifts where that food is grown, it either won’t be available anymore or become a lot more expensive.

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UK Expecting to Show a 23% Decrease in Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Next Year

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LONDON- The United Kingdom is on track to almost double its greenhouse gas reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, according to a new report by the country’s Department of Energy and Climate Change given to the United Nations.

The report’s findings predict that by 2010, the country’s greenhouse emissions will be 23 percent below levels recorded in 1990, “well in excess of the target of 12.5 percent set out under the Kyoto agreement.”

The report to the UN outlines the policies and programs that the UK has put in place, including:

• the Climate Change Act of 2008.
• energy efficiency programs.
• emissions targets for road vehicles, aviation, and industry in Europe.

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Declaration on Climate Change Adopted by African Ministers

NAIROBI, Kenya- In a special session yesterday, the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment has adopted the Nairobi Declaration which provides African countries with a platform to make a strong case for international support at the upcoming Copenhagen Convention for combating climate change.

“Africa’s environmental ministers have signaled their resolve to be part of the solution to the climate change challenge by forging a unified position, with diversity of economics, in advance of the crucial United Nations climate convention meeting in Copenhagen (Denmark) in just 192 days time,” said Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme, which hosts the AMCEN secretariat.

Mr. Steiner added in his statement that, “the development prize for Africa is an acceleration of clean and renewable energy projects and payments for carbon-storing ecosystems from forests up to eventually perhaps dryland soils, grasslands, and sustainable agriculture.”

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