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Climate change and hunger

July 14, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Worldwide, people are producing more food than ever, but most of that production is concentrated into only a handful of places. For example, fully one third of the world’s wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia. Across the globe, several major crop-growing regions, including some in the United States, are heading towards sharp drops in harvests as a result of climate change.

These forthcoming changes are not only bad news for farmers, but they are also bad news for everyone who eats. According to a new study published in the journal Nature, it is going to become harder and more expensive to feed a more crowded and hungrier world.

Specifically, under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, six key staple crops will see an 11.2% decline by the end of the century, compared to a world without warming. The largest drops won’t be in the poorer, more marginal farmlands, but rather in places that are major food producers. These are places like the US Midwest that has long benefited by having both good soil and ideal weather for raising crops like corn and soy.

When the weather is not ideal, it can drastically reduce agricultural productivity. Extreme weather in many places has already damaged crops. Flooding has destroyed rice in Tajikistan, cucumbers in Spain, and bananas in Australia. Severe storms in the US this spring caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage to crops.

As the climate changes, rising average temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are likely to diminish yields and extreme weather events like droughts and floods could wipe out harvests more often. As climate change intensifies, agriculture is the most weather-affected sector of the economy.

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How climate change will worsen hunger

Photo, posted may 20, 2011, courtesy of Lance Cheung / USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Bad news for birds

April 1, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report was released recently. The report is produced by a coalition of leading science and conservation organizations. The bottom line is that there have been continued widespread declines in American bird populations across all mainland and marine habitats.

More than one-third of U.S. bird species are of high or moderate conservation concern. Among these, 112 are tipping point species that have lost more than 50% of their populations over the last 50 years.

Protecting bird species is not just about biodiversity and stewardship of nature. Wild birds have surprisingly large economic impact. Nearly 100 million Americans are engaged in birding activities which contribute substantially to local and state economies. The 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation estimated that the total economic output related to bird watching activities was an amazing $279 billion and birding-related activities support 1.4 million jobs. Bird watching and other encounters with nature are beneficial for human well-being, including reducing stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.

The rapid declines in birds are related to habitat loss, environmental degradation, and extreme weather events. Moreover, if conditions are not healthy for birds, they are unlikely to be healthy for people as well. Fortunately, many actions that are good for birds are good for us, so conservation efforts going forward are important.

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State of America’s birds: Population declines continue

Photo, posted October 30, 2018, courtesy of Shenandoah National Park via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The green grab for land

March 27, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Solar and wind farms are spreading rapidly around the world. Many economists believe that solar power has crossed the threshold where it is generally cheaper than other ways to make electricity and will become the dominant energy source in the next couple of decades. As a result, both solar and wind farms are gobbling up more and more land around the world. Estimates are that they will take up around 30,000 square miles by mid-century.

One concern is whether we are entering an era of trading food for energy. Land conflicts seem inevitable since solar power operates best in unshaded areas with gentle winds and moderate temperatures, which are the same conditions favored by many crops.

China is installing more solar farms than the rest of the world combined. Many of these are in the Gobi Desert, where there is no competing need for the land. But some are in eastern China, in densely populated grain-growing areas.

There are a number of strategies that reduce the impact of solar farms on land use. One approach is to put them on old industrial or brownfield sites that are otherwise unusable. Another is floatovoltaics: putting solar panels on the surface of lakes and reservoirs. And then there is agrivoltaics, where solar panels are installed above crop fields or where livestock graze between or even beneath solar arrays. China has more than 500 agrivoltaic projects that incorporate crops, livestock, aquafarming, greenhouses, and even tea plantations.

Green energy has both environmental and economic benefits to offer, but it must conserve nature and not excessively grab land needed for people, wildlife, and ecosystems.

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‘Green Grab’: Solar and Wind Boom Sparks Conflicts on Land Use

Photo, posted May 25, 2011, courtesy of Michael Mees via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

National drought

December 5, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change brings with it many kinds of extreme weather. It isn’t just higher temperatures. It is changing patterns of weather and weather events that are rare or even unprecedented.

Late October saw drought conditions throughout almost the entire United States. Only Alaska and Kentucky did not have at least moderate drought conditions.

The previous four months were consistently warmer than normal over a large area of the country. When that period started, about a quarter of the country was at least somewhat dry, but in late October, 87% of the country was dry.

Droughts in many parts of the U.S. and in places around the world are becoming more frequent, longer in duration, and more severe.

Residents of New York City were urged to start conserving water. This October was the driest October since record keeping began in 1869. The upstate reservoirs that supply New York’s water were below two-thirds full. They are normally more than three-quarters full in the fall.

Even the Southeast, which received huge amounts of rain from Hurricane Helene, is experiencing drought. Not much rain had fallen since that storm and warmer temperatures mean more evaporation and drier soils.

Drought is not just a lack of precipitation. Drought conditions are driven by abnormally high temperatures that remove moisture from the atmosphere and the ground.

Whether widespread drought conditions will persist is unknown. If a predicted La Niña condition develops in the tropical Pacific, drought conditions in the southern half of the country could get worse, but the Northeast could see lots of rain and snow.

To have nearly the entire country experiencing drought conditions is pretty rare. But unusual weather is becoming the new normal.

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In a Record, All but Two U.S. States Are in Drought

Photo, posted May 21, 2024, courtesy of Adam Bartlett via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Geoengineering could create winners and losers

November 13, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Geoengineering – deliberate interventions to alter the climate and curb climate change – is a controversial topic, to say the least. Once practically considered taboo even to discuss, there in increasing interest in at least exploring various ideas about how to halt or reverse climate change through direct actions that impact global temperatures.

Putting aside the very real concerns about the risks and dangers associated with such action, there is also the issue that climate interventions may create dramatically different effects across the globe, benefitting some areas and adversely affecting others.

A recent study by scientists at Rutgers University tackled this very issue. Published in the journal Nature Food, it described the results of computer models simulating the impacts of stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI), which is spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it would partially shield the Earth from the Sun, lowering temperatures.

The study looked at 11 different SAI scenarios and found that none of them benefitted everyone. Uncontrolled global warming favors crop production in cold, high-latitude areas such as Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, and our northern border states. Moderate amounts of SAI favors food production in the mid-latitudes (such as in the US and Europe.) Large amounts of intervention favors agricultural production in the tropics.

Even if geoengineering might not have dire consequences – which is by no means certain – it would create winners and losers. Nations may have different ideas of what constitutes an optimal global temperature. So, who gets to decide where to set the global thermostat? The prospects for conflict loom large.

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Climate Intervention Technologies May Create Winners and Losers in World Food Supply

Photo, posted November 18, 2021, courtesy of Conall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio