Walmart’s Meat Counter Could be Just As Deadly As a Mass Shooter
Rather than worrying about getting shot while shopping for groceries at Walmart, consider the possibility of there not being any groceries to buy. Or that the groceries being offered up are killing the planet...
In case you haven’t heard, today’s news feed is chock full of wannabe monsters wandering around scaring people while shopping.
In Missouri, a heavily armed man wandering around a store in body armor was detained --even though is get up was legal-- for causing a panic. In Florida, police questioned a man who reportedly asked a Walmart clerk for “anything that would kill 200 people.” Another unhappy Sunshine State shopper was arrested after driving his golf cart through the front door of a Walmart and deliberately running several people down.
Now that I have your attention with “if it bleeds, it leads,” let’s learn about some boring sciency stuff. Like mass famines, ever-growing forest fires, and melting glaciers. And hamburgers.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN-sponsored group of volunteer climate scientists from around the world, has released a report focusing on land — specifically, the ongoing and projected effects of a warming planet on the ability of humanity to continue to feed ourselves.
From Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist now writing about the environment for Rolling Stone:
“The way the world uses its land must change fundamentally,” Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and who was not associated with the report, said in a statement. The report compels all of us, Le Quéré said, to “rethink how food is produced globally” in order to avoid “potentially serious disruption to the global food supply.”
The report confirmed that the world’s land areas are warming about twice as fast as the oceans, a phenomenon that was long predicted (soil heats up faster than water, which is why we cool off in swimming pools). Warming over land is happening so fast that even since the end of the 10-year average used in report (2006 to 2015), global land temperatures have increased by a further 20 percent. New data show that last month, July 2019, was the hottest month ever measured on the planet.
Robinson Myer at The Atlantic dug really deep into the hellish landscape possibilities of this IPCC report:
...on our current trajectory—and on any trajectory, frankly, where the United States does not adopt a serious climate policy—it’s far more likely that the planet will warm at least 3 degrees Celsius (5.1 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. That means that average land temperatures will be 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they are today.
The IPCC warns that people who live on such a planet will face a “very high risk” of famine, water scarcity, and mass vegetation die-offs. Some of the people who will see that planet have already been born
We’re not talking about some far off future. Things are already going south. Via National Geographic:
Extreme weather events have already increased in size and intensity and are playing a role in food price spikes in recent years, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report and a climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Extensive spring flooding in the U.S. Midwest this year led to extremely late planting of corn and soy crops, reducing potential yields. Drought wilted rice fields in Thailand and Indonesia, and scorched sugar cane plantations and oilseed crops in India.
Record-breaking heat waves in Europe this summer have affected many crops, including an expected 13 percent decline in French wine production.
More scary stuff from Nature:
About a quarter of the Earth’s land area appears to suffer soil degradation already ― and climate change is expected to make things worse, particularly in low-lying coastal areas, river deltas, drylands and permafrost areas. Sea level rise is adding to coastal erosion in some regions, the report says.
Industrialised farming practices are responsible for much of the observed soil erosion and pollution, says Andre Laperrière, the Oxford, UK-based executive director of Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, an initiative to make relevant scientific information accessible worldwide.
The report might provide a much-needed, authoritative call to action, he says. “The biggest hurdle we face is to try and teach about half a billion farmers globally to re-work their agricultural model to be carbon sensitive.“
There are a myriad of issues when it comes to food production, distribution, and consumption. All of them are interrelated. Food waste, inefficient distribution, packaging, and monocultures are just a few.
But the one thing we folks in the industrialized world can do today is to reduce our consumption of red meat.
Looking at the water footprint of various food items helps to understand why this is important:
one pound of beef = 1,799 gallons of water
one pound of pork = 576 gallons of water.
one pound of soybeans = 216 gallons of water
one pound of corn = 108 gallons of water
As you can see, the biggest culprit is beef. According to a study by researchers from Bard College, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Yale University, beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer 11 times more water, and five times more greenhouse gas emissions than other animal proteins.
From the Guardian:
The new IPCC report emphasises that land will have to be managed more sustainably so that it releases much less carbon than at present. Peat lands will need to be restored by halting drainage schemes; meat consumption will have to be cut to reduce methane production; while food waste will have to be reduced.
Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets. “The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds … presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
A little context is in order here before people start yelling about this being a vegetarian/vegan sermon.
I’m not going veggie. But I am consciously moving to “green up” my diet. In addition to my growing awareness of the impacts of climate change, I’m also paying attention to the health benefits involved in eating less meat.
The possibility of food shortages in industrialized countries is decades away, so In and Out won’t be switching over to lettuceburgers anytime soon.
But when it comes to the rest of the world, particularly those regions closer to the equator, it’s already happening. Food shortages related to climate change are a major factor in driving human migration.
In Western Europe, this means Africans desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean. In our hemisphere, this is a factor in driving people from Central America northward.
From the Christian Science Monitor:
At the core of the political conundrum lie two interlocking issues: the dire climatic conditions facing some of the poorest agricultural areas in the less-developed world, whether in sub-Saharan Africa or Central America; and the growing numbers of their people ready to risk everything in the hope of finding sanctuary in Europe or the U.S.
For international charities and advocacy groups working in Africa or Central America, the priority is clear. They argue the need for a well-funded, targeted drive to help the millions in rural communities threatened by destitution, ill health, or outright famine. Some want the United Nations to endorse the idea of adding a new category of internationally accepted refugee: “climate refugees.” Their view is that a concerted effort to deal with the problem represents a critical step in any long-term answer to the wider issue of migration.
***
Today’s Washington Post has an important postscript to the story about the hundreds of food workers detained by ICE in Mississippi.
It seems as though El Trumpo thinks he doesn’t have to play by those rules:
Since January, The Post has interviewed 43 immigrants without legal status who were employed at Trump properties. They include waiters, maids and greenskeepers, as well as a caretaker at a personal hunting lodge that his two adult sons own in Upstate New York.
In all, at least eight Trump properties have employed immigrants who entered the United States illegally, some as far back as 19 years, The Post has found.
As president, Trump has launched a crusade against illegal immigration, describing Latino migrants as criminals who are part of an “invasion.” Such remarks drew renewed criticism after Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso, which is under investigation as a hate crime targeting Mexicans and immigrants.
https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold/status/1159835517745168385?s=20
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com