According to Google’s news search, there have been over 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British TV presenter who resigned due to an affair with a younger colleague. On the other hand, there were only five news stories found by Google about a scientific paper published last week. This paper reveals that the risk of simultaneous crop losses in the world’s major growing regions, caused by climate breakdown, has been dangerously underestimated. In the world of media, which should not be confused with the real world, celebrity gossip is considered thousands of times more important than existential risk.
The scientific paper examines the effects of stuck meanders in the jet stream (known as Rossby waves) on crop production. Stuck patterns in the jet stream lead to extreme weather events. Put simply, if you live in the northern hemisphere and a kink in the jet stream is stuck to the south of you, your weather is likely to be cold and wet. Conversely, if it’s stuck to the north of you, you’ll experience escalating heat and drought. These stuck weather patterns, aggravated by global heating, have a detrimental impact on crops. Certain meander patterns can expose major growing regions in the northern hemisphere, such as western North America, Europe, India, and east Asia, to extreme weather simultaneously, resulting in significant damage to their harvests. Our food supply relies on global stability, so when there are simultaneous crop losses, it poses a “systemic risk” as described in the paper.
Already, regional climate shocks have contributed to a disturbing increase in global chronic hunger. For many years, the number of hungry people in the world was declining, but since 2015, the trend has reversed and is on the rise. The primary reason for this is not a lack of food, but rather the loss of resilience in the global food system. When complex systems lose resilience, instead of dampening the impacts of shocks, they tend to amplify them. So far, these shocks have disproportionately affected poor nations that rely on imports, leading to local price spikes even when global food prices are low. If extreme weather were to hit multiple major growing regions simultaneously, the consequences would be unimaginable.
There have been other papers published on similar themes, highlighting the impacts of increasing occurrences of “flash droughts” and concurrent heatwaves in grain-producing regions, as well as how global heating affects food security. Unfortunately, these papers have largely been ignored by the media.
We are now facing the unthinkable convergence of two existential threats: environmental breakdown and food system failure. There are indications, which I have attempted to explain in articles for The Guardian and in a parliamentary presentation, that the global food system may be nearing a tipping point due to structural issues similar to those that caused the financial sector’s collapse in 2008. When a system approaches a critical threshold, it becomes impossible to predict which external shock could push it over the edge. Once a system becomes fragile and its resilience is not restored, it becomes a matter of when, not if, it will fail.
So why isn’t this front-page news? Why do governments fail to take action when they are aware of the existential risk we face? Why is the Biden administration allowing excessive oil and gas drilling that exceeds the US carbon budget five times over? Why is the UK government abandoning the promised £11.6bn international climate fund? Why has Labour postponed its £28bn green prosperity fund? And why do media outlets like the Sun, the Mail, the Telegraph, and the Express attack every green solution that could help prevent climate chaos? It seems like there are always more important issues.
The underlying problem isn’t difficult to understand: governments have failed to break the cycle of wealth accumulation known as the patrimonial spiral, as described by economist Thomas Piketty. Consequently, the rich have continued to get richer, and this trend is accelerating. In 2021, the ultra-rich captured nearly two-thirds of all new global wealth. Their share of national income in the UK has nearly doubled since 1980, and in the US, it is higher than it was in 1820.
The increasing wealth of a small fraction of society gives them greater political power and leads to more extreme demands. This is epitomized by a sentence in the resignation letter of UK environment minister Zac Goldsmith, where he notes that instead of attending an important summit on the environment, Rishi Sunak chose to attend Rupert Murdoch’s summer party. It is impossible to work together to solve our common problems when power is concentrated in the hands of so few.
The ultra-rich aim to sustain and expand the economic system that has benefitted them. The more they have to lose, the more inventive their strategies become. In addition to traditional methods like buying media outlets and funding political parties aligned with their interests, they employ new tactics to protect themselves. Corporations and oligarchs with vast fortunes can hire countless experts, thinking tanks, troll farms, psychologists, and micro-targeters to provide justifications for their actions and to demonize and threaten those working towards a habitable planet. They even devise legislation to suppress protests, which is supported by politicians funded by the same wealthy class.
This situation is incredibly messed up. The battle to protect Earth’s systems and the human systems that depend on them is led by individuals working with limited resources on the fringes, while the richest and most powerful use every available means to thwart them. Can you imagine trying to explain this to your children in the future, when these problems have escalated beyond anything we can comprehend?
When looking back at previous human disasters, all of which will pale in comparison to the current crisis, one repeatedly asks, “Why didn’t they…?” The answer lies in power—the power of a few to undermine the interests of humanity. The struggle to prevent systemic failure is a battle between democracy and plutocracy. It has always been, but the stakes are now higher than ever.
George Monbiot is a columnist for The Guardian. If you would like to share your opinion on the issues discussed in this article, you can submit a response of up to 300 words via email for publication in the letters section. Please click here to submit your response.