Climate change fixes must fight short-term problems
Apart from emission reductions, we need wise agricultural policies, social safety nets, and international cooperation
Global warming is getting a little scary, as its consequences emerge more quickly than most scientists had expected, in soaring global temperatures, unprecedented wildfires and many other effects. This year is on target to be the fourth hottest ever, only just behind the three previous years, with CO2 emissions higher now than ever before, having actually increased 60% over the past 25 years.
Hope for a simple fix — such as a carbon tax— is naive, even setting aside the formidable political challenges. A new study suggests that a meaningful carbon tax could trigger food shortages by 2050, and even be worse than climate change continuing completely unabated.
In the research paper, published in Nature Climate Change, scientists compared estimates of how either climate change or a strong carbon tax would affect the global population at risk of hunger. The changing climate will directly hit agricultural productivity, while a carbon tax would raise energy prices, a key agricultural input. The study found that a stringent carbon tax would be likely by 2050 to have a greater negative impact on hunger than climate change, with problems worst in vulnerable regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
These are only estimates, and there’s plenty of uncertainty in this analysis. It rests on assumptions, for example, about how rising temperatures and other climate effects will influence food productivity, something we know little about. Other research concludes that rising temperatures could reduce GDP even in developed nations by as much as one-third by 2100. Uncertainties aside, the researchers’ best guess is that on the matter of food security, climate change would be bad, but a carbon tax big enough to reduce emissions significantly could actually be worse.
It points out why we’re going to have to be creative in finding ways to deal with the negative short-term consequences of the policies that will deliver long-term benefits. In addition to emissions reductions, we need wise agricultural policies, stronger social safety nets, and better international cooperation.
Policies designed to avoid climate disaster a century into the future and beyond might be expected to have some negative consequences over times as short as 30 years. Likewise, if governments implement a carbon tax — or take other serious actions on climate — they can also take further steps to handle adverse consequences stirred up as a result. Revenue from the tax could be used for food aid, for example, or to transfer more efficient production methods to food insecure regions, which might also further reduce CO2 emissions.
In this sense, the paper makes a useful point that long term climate policy will stir up short term issues, like food security. It offers information on what other policies we might put in place to counteract these problems, and so ensure a path forward for everyone. The views expressed are personal