Growing Climate Stability – Food and Farming Actions that Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

What is Growing Climate Stability?

An on-line, interactive report that showcases food and farming actions that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may be undertaken by nine market sectors—finance, business, marketing, media, sustainability advocacy, academia, research, agriculture, and government—that can effectively contribute to the reduction of atmospheric GHG concentrations from our current, and steadily increasing ~385 ppm CO₂eq (parts per million CO2 equivalent) back to 350 ppm. Why is 350 ppm an important number? James Hansen and others, along with Bill McKibben, point to the extensively researched climate record and ongoing climate change as demonstrating 350 ppm to be the maximum allowable for maintaining a stable, livable global climate like that of the past 10,000 years. Continuing "business as usual", with ever-increasing GHG concentrations, would likely result in an entirely ice-free world - a condition experienced by few living species, given that the last ice-free period occurred over 35 million years ago.

Some perspective

Global climate conditions have been favorable for life and relatively stable for the past 10,000 years and suitable for life for over 3 billion years. But geological evidence also shows that momentous (and highly disruptive) changes in climate can occur in periods as short as decades or centuries. A critical area of research that needs to continue to be supported is inquiry into Earth's geological record to seek the nature of the planet's peculiar climate variability and stability. It is critically important to avoid any "tipping points"—thresholds in GHG concentrations that could bring about harmful changes, that would be impossible to reverse, by any means. At this critical juncture in time, it is important to begin to stop the increase, and then bring down the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (C0₂, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.). Those are the main anthropogenic (human-generated) gases that trap the sun's heat in Earth's atmosphere and slowly cook the planet, as evidenced by the accelerating melting of glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, the Arctic, Iceland, and mountain ranges world-wide, and the rising sea level.

Why should you care, much less take action right now?

There are many important voices in this global discussion. To state the case, Vital Systems is honored to quote spokesperson, Lester Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute.

"It is decision time," says Brown. "Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we have to make a choice. We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come."

"Saving civilization is not a spectator sport," says Brown. "We have reached a point in the deteriorating relationship between us and the earth's natural systems where we all have to become political activists. Every day counts, we all have a stake in civilization's survival."

In his keynote address, Bold Solutions for a New Energy Economy, presented at the Ceres 20th Anniversary Conference in San Francisco, Lester lays out the four interlocking challenges the human family must address:

• Stabilize climate
• Stabilize population
• Eradicate poverty
• Restore the earth's damaged ecosystems.

He presents impacts in compelling detail:

• Food security based on the challenges we will have in growing food, based on the desertification and salinization of our soils; loss of land due to rising sea levels,
  
  • Example 1: Reduction of ½ the rice land in Bangladesh in the delta of the Ganges as the sea level rises; 2009 projections range from 5' to 20';
  • Example 2: For each degree C rise in temperature, there's a 10% decline in yields of corn, wheat, soybeans
    
• Displacement of populations in delta and low lying areas due to melting icesheets and rising seas,
  • Example: As we grow in global population from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the number of H-U-N-G-R-Y people grows from 960 million to 1.2 billion
    
• Collapsing fisheries due to oceans heating up,
• Falling water tables. Examples include:
  • As mountain glaciers—Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas, Andean Glaciers—melt, massive river systems (the Ganges, Yellow River, etc.), become seasonal at best
  • 15% of Indian grain is watered by over pumping from wells that are going dry
    
• As the Chinese and Indians grow more "affluent", they want more diverse goods,
• Policies that are being made include such steps that have already been taken:
  • Water statistics designated as national security issues
  • Construction of a wall between India and Bangladesh so that the 159.6 million (2008) Bangladeshi do not seek refuge upwards into India
    
• As China and India become more affluent, their citizens will want to purchase more products and services, and we need to account for the global GHG and population costs, energy and water shortage costs, land and ocean impacts of all of the above, food security and other critical extra-capital costs.

Business deals have been made:

• Libya has a 20 year lease with the Ukraine for wheat producing land in exchange for oil, which gives the Ukraine some freedom from Russia. A week after this deal was made, Russia negotiated a deal with Libya for oil.
• Haiti and Lesotho are currently totally dependent on international food production.
• Saudia Arabia, whose wheat growing potential will cease in 2016, has an $800 million overseas agricultural fund. But, possibly, money is not the coin for which they will have to trade for wheat on the international market in addition to which there are increasing global shortages. South Korea, for example, has frozen their grain exports and through Daewoo are growing corn in Madagascar and negotiating leases of agricultural land in Siberia.
• China, a major source of soybean production, is now an importer. Further, Chinese leaders are confronting spiralling global food prices with a return to a long-term policy of self-sufficiency in agriculture. But the country's urbanization process is chipping away at arable land and sucking the rural labor force into the cities. China, however, is well positioned to procure food from the United States as they currently serve as our banker.

Each person requires 4 liters (just over 1 gallon) of water/day. In addition, each person needs 2,000 liters (~528 gallons) of water/day to produce the food we eat. Food captures all other contemporary crises - GHG emissions reductions, current and future water shortages, arable land access and effective use, etc. - and, when addressed, shifts discussions and builds solutions to these crises simultaneously.

Thus Growing Climate Stability showcases food and farming actions that reduce GHG emissions in nine market sectors-financial, business, marketing, media, sustainability advocacy, academia, research, agriculture, and government. These actions were selected as models to inspire further, effective action towards the stabilization of global climate, and achieving food and water security, while healing earth's damaged ecosystems. We refer you to these actions directly as primarily presented, rather than interpreted information.

What does Vital Systems add to this effort?

• In Features, such as What about Meat?, which we are publishing as an initial, stand-alone report, Vital Systems educates citizens to participate in the critical, interconnected issues that impact all our lives and the lives of subsequent generations. We compile effective actions from nine market sectors, translate them into language and images focused on selected themes, and catalyze action by, if not measuring, presenting the value of acting upon the proposed effective findings to encourage more among us to become informed and effective citizens and consumers as we participate in the current interconnected challenges of climate instability, food and water inequity, increased global hunger, and population. In order to allow each of our visitors the opportunity to grasp the challenges before us fully, we have compared the numbers from excellent efforts drawn from diverse sources, as there are no GHG emission reduction standards crafted to date. More importantly, we compare climate data, fossil fuel data and efficiencies in vehicle use and, aspirationally, seek to include nutrition and health impacts in parallel so that the upsteam and downstream true cost pricing and accounting of food and farming actions are presented in a way that people can understand how each impacts the other, quantitatively, or through images or analogies.
  
• We review findings and actions from the nine market sectors that reach into every level of endeavor and produce multi-sector reports and features to reach each of us as effective actors in every aspect of our lives. We urge leaders among our site visitors, to negotiate multi-sector collaborations and produce multi-sector reports of reduced GHG emissions findings once a year. "Features" such as What about Meat? are richer than the menu of effective actions that are readily referenced, and further beg both your critical next level questions and your comments. We have encouraged our web visitors to review the questions and comments we have framed in our Next Questions section and add to them on and off line.