Climate change has become a topical issue. Politicians,
scientists, religious leaders, educationists etc. are discussing it. Both
electronic and non-electronic media are covering the issue. It is so serious
that leading authorities on the environment are convinced if the trend is not
reversed it may lead to a “catastrophic ending” for Planet Earth, as Stephen
Hawking (Physicist) puts it.
Climate change is contributing to extinction of species,
dramatic rise in sea level, extensive droughts, deforestation etc.
There is obviously a need for reversal if Planet Earth is to
survive. In considering reversal, agriculture is of critical fundamental
importance. Can you imagine a dining table without breakfast, lunch and super,
because our environment can no more sustain agriculture? There will be no milk.
There will be no orange juice. There will be no bread. There will be no potato.
There will be no rice. There will be no corn. There will be no lettuce. There
will be no wine. One could go on and on.
Do you know the nutritional value of the food that comes to your
table? You may read my post titled “Dust Thou Art” dated August 25, 2015.
Mark Cackler, the World Bank’s
Manager for Global Agricultural and Food Security advances a discussion on a
climate- smart agriculture:
The human race is “trapped in a vicious
circle” according to Mark Cackler, the World Bank’s manager for global agricultural
and food security, “we will need to grow 50% more food by 2050 to feed 9
billion people ... but agriculture, which is paradoxically vulnerable to
climate change, generates 25% of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that
lead to climate change.”
This is essentially a no-win scenario, a zen koan, the ultimate
question that has no real answer: The more food “we grow using conventional
methods, the more we exacerbate the problem. It’s time for a climate-smart
agriculture. But first we must address a few manmade problems.” So here are the
World Bank’s four obstacles that must be solved before we can save Planet Earth
from the “catastrophic ending:”
1.
CLIMATE-CHANGE AGREEMENTS: HAVE FAILED PLANET EARTH FOR DECADES
“There is a frustrating lack of attention paid to agriculture in
the current global climate talks leading up to the Paris conference later this
year (2015),” warns the World Bank’s ag-manager:
“We need a climate change-agreement where agriculture is a big
part of the solution, and delivers a triple win: higher agricultural
productivity to feed more people and raise the incomes of poor farmers,
especially women, greater climate resilience, and reduced greenhouse-gas
emissions.” But unfortunately these goals are aggressively opposed by a
powerful network on capitalist ideologues, especially Big Oil.
2.
TECHNOLOGY: SILICON VALLEY IS FAILING AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PRODUCTION
“We still grow our food largely using 20th century technology,
over 100 years old in the case of fertilizer production! We need more and
better agricultural research to bring farming into the 21st century.”
But Silicon Valley
isn’t helping much. MIT Technology Review says America “Can’t Solve Big
Problems” anymore. Few tech geniuses want to be farmers. Elon Musk wants fast
cars and powerful batteries. Apple wants more gadgets for our narcissistic
culture.
Mark Zuckerberg tried to go beyond, recently predicting five new
technologies in the future of 10 billion “customers” on Planet Earth — virtual
reality, artificial intelligence, telepathy, laser beams, even “Immortality,”
in answer to a question physicist Stephen Hawking called one of “the biggest
questions in science.”
But Zuckerberg made no mention of agriculture, food or farming
technology in the future, just more stuff for a consumer-fixated culture with
short-term memories focused on selfies and the next-new-thing.
Worse, Zuckerberg totally missed Hawking’s biggest problem, his
prediction of a “catastrophic ending” for Planet Earth in the not-too-distance
future. “The long-term future of the human race must be in space,” says
Hawking, the kind of dark prediction that launched blockbuster films like
“Interstellar,” which opened in a farming dust bowl on a dying Planet Earth.
Hawking warned that the human race must start planning now for
living in space: “It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on Planet Earth
in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand” and certainly not
before America’s space explorers and capitalist innovators, such as NASA and Elon
Musk’s SpaceX, find a home for human civilization on new planets then transport
us to them — a scary future explored in thrillers like “Interstellar,”
“Elysium” and “Avatar.”
3. CARBON
EMISSIONS ARE KILLING PLANET EARTH: WE MUST PRICE, TAX, REGULATE
“Agriculture, like other sectors, wastes carbon because we don’t
price it properly,” says the World Bank’s Cackler. “Carbon pricing is an
essential way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and lower climate risks.” Yes, a
“price on carbon can drive investment toward a greener agriculture, a cleaner
economy and ultimately, more food for all.”
Yes, a perfect solution, idealistic and hopeful, but it needs an
unlikely surrender by hard-nosed Big Oil executives, shareholders, bankers and
world’s billion car owners pulling up to the gas pump every day. Why? A
BusinessWeek article recently detailed how Big Oil companies are already
pricing in carbon taxes and regulation. But we also can predict — based on the
experience of regulators with Wall Street banks — that Big Oil will do
everything possible to oppose, fight, sabotage, kill or minimize any and all
proposed carbon taxes and regulations.
4. WATER:
AGRICULTURAL EXCESSIVE WATER USE TRIGGERS 25% OF CO2 EMISSIONS
Today agriculture “consumes 70% of the world’s fresh water, and
too much of it is wasted” according to the World Bank. We need to “become wiser
about water.” Why? Because the “agricultural water generates 25% of
heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change.”
Ultimately the goal is to feed not just the seven billion living
on Planet Earth today, but the 10 billion predicted by 2050. Yet, even the
World Bank’s spokesman admits that won’t be easy: “Hunger has many causes,
including ignorance and injustice and violence, and there is no single solution
that will guarantee that every person, every day, everywhere, has enough to
eat. But, as incredulous as it sounds, even though one in nine people go hungry
today, it is within our power to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.”
Maybe.
Yes, like so many others idealists, hope springs eternal. And
many are hopeful now, especially backed by the pope’s support of the UN
climate-change initiatives. Moreover, the World Bank’s agricultural manager is
certainly hopeful: “If the sustainable development goals and COP 21 in Paris
are opportunities to come up with bold ideas to tackle poverty, reduce
inequality and address climate change, then climate smart agriculture should be
acknowledged as one of those ideas that will enable us to do all three in one.”
But will we get into space in time? The premise of
“Interstellar” emerges from Hawking’s prediction of a “catastrophic ending” for
Planet Earth in the “not-too-distance future,” and a clear warning that the
“future of the human race must be in space.”
Until then, we do need to feed Earth’s exploding population ...
and need new 21st century agricultural research and technology ... and need
more enlightened politicians and government leaders ... to give us “a global
climate-change agreement where agriculture is a big part of the solution.”
And finally we need to
get all the climate-science deniers to wake up and stop fighting change ...
because their resistance is not only killing the agricultural, farming and the
food industry sectors, but they are also accelerating the “catastrophic ending”
Stephen Hawking predicts for Planet Earth in the “not-too-distant future.”
Source:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stephen-hawkings-catastrophic-end-for-planet-earth-2015-07-09
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