Our climate problems continue
The world produces more food than ever, yet 800 million of mother earth鈥檚 people go hungry while 2 billion others are obese or overweight. This according to Sam Kass in last week鈥檚 Newsweek magazine. Diets are rich in calories but deficient in nutrients. The result is a host of health problems and diseases. Our food production is also a drain on our resources consuming 70 percent of our fresh water and adding 30 percent to our greenhouse gases. Kass goes on to say that agricultural production has claimed 40 percent of earths land, wiping out cultural habitat and local ecosystems causing a loss of biodiversity so great that we are now living through the 6th great extinction.
Another view by the editorial board of USA today discusses our filthy air claiming that at the dawn of the industrial age CO2 levels were 280 parts per million, today we are at 410 parts per million. After several years of decline, 2018 saw a rise of over 3 percent. CO2 is colorless, odorless and tasteless, yet it wraps itself around our planet like a heat trapping blanket.
Another eye opening article in the New Yorker magazine titled 鈥淟ife on a shrinking planet鈥� discusses in detail the fact that wildfires, heat waves and rising sea levels are making large tracts of our earth uninhabitable. Within a few hours late last year, the Paradise Fire in California destroyed over 10,000 buildings, killed at least 63 people and wiped an entire town off the map. Last week, we reported that this same fire also caused the bankruptcy of a large utility company, the first large corporate casualty of climate change.
It appears that a period of contraction may be in the making as to where mankind will be able to live; and, adding another billion people in the coming decades to our food needs will require even more land and resources to produce the food for these individuals. Each year another 24,000 people abandon Vietnam鈥檚 Mekong Delta as crop fields are polluted with salt from rising seas.
On the other side of the climate debate, a full page ad in the Wall Street journal criticized Chuck Todd & NBC鈥檚 Meet the Press for not allowing enough other viewpoints. The ad was not a part of the Journal鈥檚 creation and was paid for by the Competitive Enterprise institute. A lot of people simply do not believe climate change is real and that a lot of the research is being made up. Another part of the debate brings up the idea of predatory delay to describe the blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable systems that resist change.
Lastly, it is good that so much is being said today. The debate has begun and that is probably a good thing. Even our president has weighed in with his tweets on the subject. I do wish he would get the fact that a day or two of cold or hot weather is not because of climate change. Winter will still have cold and snow. Weather is the day to day events that take place. Climate is the long term results of these day to day events. Climate is what we expect and weather is what we get.
Jack Hughes is a resident of Chalk Hill