This helps me appreciate a previous piece you wrote on why climate optimists are the real threat. If you think climate change is about to be stopped with a new technology and are hell bent on ignoring bio-diversity collapse, then you will of course not be taking the need to prepare for this seriously.
Fantastic as usual David! As a "fruitarian" I was fascinated to read what you wrote about fruit trees and how dependent they are, more than most other food crops, on a reliable, consistent climate. I've noticed that in recent years in the wild extremes of fruiting (or not) of my plum trees in Oregon. Now I've just got to convince my kids to move on to land and try to become regen farmers at the same time they are working jobs to support themselves and raise their kids. Don't even know where to start on that one . . .
So you're actually a fruitarian, eating only raw fruit? Who would've thought! I have a friend who was basically raw vegan for 20 years, following the teachings of one Guy Claude Burger (Instinctotherapy) - and he only had positive things to report about this diet. He remains healthy at almost 60 years of age, so I don't dispute that a diet like this can indeed be beneficial for some individuals. But, on a related note, a fruitarian influencer recently died of starvation on Koh Phangan...
As with so many other topics, I beg to differ on a few important details in the underlying justifications though - but that would be stuff for another essay!
Moreover, it's true: the situation is so damn difficult - especially when most family members remain trapped within the system, with limited opportunity (or motivation) to change that... Well, many things *will change eventually,* either way, but the longer we prolong the necessary & inevitable changes to our own lifestyle, the more chaotic it will be in the future.
Who was it that said "collapse now and beat the rush" - John Greer?
Yes that was John Greer. And ha ha, no.I'm not really a fruitarian.Just my favorite food and I need plenty of fruit all the time but yes I would probably starve if that's all I ate!
Thank you for articulating what I have struggled to for a long time. The binary thinking of "we need to stop climate change" and "what makes you hopeful" fall far short of the nuance we need now, like this piece. But much like it's true that far more people can, in various ways, participate in small-scale subsistence polyculture-based agriculture, the kind of nuance you present here is ALSO attainable. I think it's a kind of nuance people labored and leisured under for most of human history.
I'm so glad you enjoyed this rather lengthy piece - it's feedback like this that motivates me to keep going, to be honest. Thank you so much for your kind words, and for taking the time to share your perspective.
Late to the party reading this but it is a great summation of where we are standing at this point in history. The crops that get us through the next thousand years will often need to be different to the ones that got us this far.
Yeah, that's definitely another very important aspect - thanks for the link. I have the feeling the above essay could have easily been twice as long, but I had to cut it as short as possible; hence many a topic was swept under the rug for reasons of maintaining at least some remote semblance of brevity. Demanding 30 minutes of your attention is already more than I could ever ask for.
Another thing I thought about including (and that I now regret not having worked into the essay) is a discussion of *how* the food crisis will start playing out and make itself being felt for commoners throughout the world. Arnold Schroder (from the World Tree Center for Evolutionary Politics and Global Survival) said in an interview that - at first - the whole crisis will likely not even be talked about in those terms. It will be first noticed as *constantly rising food prices* for the consumer (which has already been happening for some years), and the media will try their best to conceal (or turn a blind eye to) the broader issue underlying this trend. Anything to keep the peace and don't frighten the masses - maintain the illusion at any cost, for as long as anyhow possible.
So we will hear a lot about "inflation," "rising costs," "sanctions" and "economic turmoil" - and comparatively little about failed harvests and crop losses. People will complain, and play round after round of the blame game, pointing to politicians, policy makers, farmers, scientists, corporations... Without being fully able to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the flood that's about to be unleashed.
Beautifully written, and powerfully put. We are on a similar journey into climate choas, setting up food growing and sharing systems for our small isolated community in the face of the coming storm. It's interesting to hear your wisdom from a fruit growers perspective. It gives context to our temperate region trials of failed fruit crops. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective, I'm glad my writing resonates! It seems most of what I do in my writing lately is to simply spell out "difficult truths," things that a great many people are already aware of or are able to perceive on some level. But I've found that *talking about those issues* - hard as it is - is always better than ignoring them. The cognitive dissonance & mental exhaustion resulting from this repression of terrifying but inevitable truths is even more harmful in the long term than being honest, grieving.... and consequently getting busy saving whatever might be saved.
I am often asked why I bother, if "it's all doomed, anyway", and my response always is that nothing is set in stone. There are too many variables for anyone to honestly know what will happen. But, if I can ensure that the innocent lives of the non-humans that surround me can continue without pain and suffering for awhile longer, then that's worth doing. The only way I can do that is by being honest about what is happening right now. Repression serves no-one.
Great piece. One thing I'd add to your discussion of antibiotics: the herbicide and dessicant glyphosate, widely used as RoundUp in conventional farming and in "climate smart" farming, as well as on lawns, was patented by Monsanto as a broad spectrum antimicrobial/antibiotic. This chemical is an antibiotic that permeates our food and eco-systems. Notably sprayed directly onto certain crops to dry them for harvest, (not just for killing "weeds"). Beer, tea, oats all off the charts in glyphosate residue. (My book The Ecology of Care goes into the implications of this in depth.--as our microbiome turns on brain development and regulates most of our body's processes.)
Agricultural research has fostered productivity growth, but the historical influence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) on that growth has not been quantified. We develop a robust econometric model of weather effects on global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) and combine this model with counterfactual climate scenarios to evaluate impacts of past climate trends on TFP.
Our baseline model indicates that ACC has reduced global agricultural TFP by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth.
The effect is substantially more severe (a reduction of ~26–34%) in warmer regions such as Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. We also find that global agriculture has grown more vulnerable to ongoing climate change.
The lead author of “Anthropogenic Climate Change Has Slowed Global Agricultural Productivity Growth,” published April 1 in Nature Climate Change put it this way.
“It is equivalent to pressing the pause button on productivity growth back in 2013 and experiencing no improvements since then. Anthropogenic climate change is already slowing us down.”
Also, I think you might really enjoy this essay by Erik Assadourian from 2021. It speaks to your thesis about the necessity of moving people "back to the land". Erik talks about HOW the sacrifices required to prevent COLLAPSE will be painful.
He makes the point that while "Collapse Living" and "Low Impact Living" aren't going to be that different materially. They are VERY different in non-material ways.
Collapse may visit you, too, one day. Have you imagined living through this?
Funnily, the differences in lifestyles between living in collapse and intentionally preventing collapse aren’t all that great — in both cases, gone are the cars, the larger homes, the rich diet, the extreme levels of comfort.
But there is one key difference that is deeply undervalued: security and a feeling of control.
In the No Impact scenario, there are no gangs roaming, no threat to life and limb (other than climate disasters, which we can only make less probable in the No Impact scenario but cannot stop them in either case).
No shortages of basic foodstuffs, though electricity and heat, being so expensive (or even rationed), may be in short supply, forcing people to get used to colder homes in the winter and hotter ones in the summer.
But there’d be a positive side too, public transportation might grow in scope so being car-free wouldn’t mean you’d be trapped in your neighborhood.
Public services — from water and sewage treatment to libraries and the humble street light (often taken for granted but even that does not work in Beirut) — would still be available.
Medicines would be accessible as would bread and at least seasonal produce.
I find his argument more and more compelling as time goes on.
REALLY loved this post. I will be referencing it in the future I am sure.
This helps me appreciate a previous piece you wrote on why climate optimists are the real threat. If you think climate change is about to be stopped with a new technology and are hell bent on ignoring bio-diversity collapse, then you will of course not be taking the need to prepare for this seriously.
Fantastic as usual David! As a "fruitarian" I was fascinated to read what you wrote about fruit trees and how dependent they are, more than most other food crops, on a reliable, consistent climate. I've noticed that in recent years in the wild extremes of fruiting (or not) of my plum trees in Oregon. Now I've just got to convince my kids to move on to land and try to become regen farmers at the same time they are working jobs to support themselves and raise their kids. Don't even know where to start on that one . . .
Thanks, Daniel!
So you're actually a fruitarian, eating only raw fruit? Who would've thought! I have a friend who was basically raw vegan for 20 years, following the teachings of one Guy Claude Burger (Instinctotherapy) - and he only had positive things to report about this diet. He remains healthy at almost 60 years of age, so I don't dispute that a diet like this can indeed be beneficial for some individuals. But, on a related note, a fruitarian influencer recently died of starvation on Koh Phangan...
As with so many other topics, I beg to differ on a few important details in the underlying justifications though - but that would be stuff for another essay!
Moreover, it's true: the situation is so damn difficult - especially when most family members remain trapped within the system, with limited opportunity (or motivation) to change that... Well, many things *will change eventually,* either way, but the longer we prolong the necessary & inevitable changes to our own lifestyle, the more chaotic it will be in the future.
Who was it that said "collapse now and beat the rush" - John Greer?
Yes that was John Greer. And ha ha, no.I'm not really a fruitarian.Just my favorite food and I need plenty of fruit all the time but yes I would probably starve if that's all I ate!
Thank you for articulating what I have struggled to for a long time. The binary thinking of "we need to stop climate change" and "what makes you hopeful" fall far short of the nuance we need now, like this piece. But much like it's true that far more people can, in various ways, participate in small-scale subsistence polyculture-based agriculture, the kind of nuance you present here is ALSO attainable. I think it's a kind of nuance people labored and leisured under for most of human history.
I'm so glad you enjoyed this rather lengthy piece - it's feedback like this that motivates me to keep going, to be honest. Thank you so much for your kind words, and for taking the time to share your perspective.
Late to the party reading this but it is a great summation of where we are standing at this point in history. The crops that get us through the next thousand years will often need to be different to the ones that got us this far.
*Tubers not grains* is a slogan I would rally behind. Yams in particular seem utterly indifferent to the crazy weather we've had here.
Really appreciating your writing lately, thank you.
Thank you, Max - coming from you (land defender, indigenous ally, and phenomenal environmentalist author in one), your kind words mean so much to me!
Keep up the good work, my friend!
Thanks David! Cheers!
Additional to crop yields diminishing, as the level of CO2 increases the nutritional value of crops decreases in a double wammy.
Added below thanks.
https://kevinhester.live/2023/03/23/on-the-verge-of-starvation/
Yeah, that's definitely another very important aspect - thanks for the link. I have the feeling the above essay could have easily been twice as long, but I had to cut it as short as possible; hence many a topic was swept under the rug for reasons of maintaining at least some remote semblance of brevity. Demanding 30 minutes of your attention is already more than I could ever ask for.
Another thing I thought about including (and that I now regret not having worked into the essay) is a discussion of *how* the food crisis will start playing out and make itself being felt for commoners throughout the world. Arnold Schroder (from the World Tree Center for Evolutionary Politics and Global Survival) said in an interview that - at first - the whole crisis will likely not even be talked about in those terms. It will be first noticed as *constantly rising food prices* for the consumer (which has already been happening for some years), and the media will try their best to conceal (or turn a blind eye to) the broader issue underlying this trend. Anything to keep the peace and don't frighten the masses - maintain the illusion at any cost, for as long as anyhow possible.
So we will hear a lot about "inflation," "rising costs," "sanctions" and "economic turmoil" - and comparatively little about failed harvests and crop losses. People will complain, and play round after round of the blame game, pointing to politicians, policy makers, farmers, scientists, corporations... Without being fully able to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the flood that's about to be unleashed.
Beautifully written, and powerfully put. We are on a similar journey into climate choas, setting up food growing and sharing systems for our small isolated community in the face of the coming storm. It's interesting to hear your wisdom from a fruit growers perspective. It gives context to our temperate region trials of failed fruit crops. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective, I'm glad my writing resonates! It seems most of what I do in my writing lately is to simply spell out "difficult truths," things that a great many people are already aware of or are able to perceive on some level. But I've found that *talking about those issues* - hard as it is - is always better than ignoring them. The cognitive dissonance & mental exhaustion resulting from this repression of terrifying but inevitable truths is even more harmful in the long term than being honest, grieving.... and consequently getting busy saving whatever might be saved.
So, so true, David.
I am often asked why I bother, if "it's all doomed, anyway", and my response always is that nothing is set in stone. There are too many variables for anyone to honestly know what will happen. But, if I can ensure that the innocent lives of the non-humans that surround me can continue without pain and suffering for awhile longer, then that's worth doing. The only way I can do that is by being honest about what is happening right now. Repression serves no-one.
Great piece. One thing I'd add to your discussion of antibiotics: the herbicide and dessicant glyphosate, widely used as RoundUp in conventional farming and in "climate smart" farming, as well as on lawns, was patented by Monsanto as a broad spectrum antimicrobial/antibiotic. This chemical is an antibiotic that permeates our food and eco-systems. Notably sprayed directly onto certain crops to dry them for harvest, (not just for killing "weeds"). Beer, tea, oats all off the charts in glyphosate residue. (My book The Ecology of Care goes into the implications of this in depth.--as our microbiome turns on brain development and regulates most of our body's processes.)
Loved your article. Re: On reaching the point of diminishing returns I remembered this paper, which strengthens your argument.
Anthropogenic climate change has slowed global agricultural productivity growth.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, Toby R. Ault, Carlos M. Carrillo, Robert G. Chambers & David B. Lobell
Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 306–312 (2021)
Abstract:
Agricultural research has fostered productivity growth, but the historical influence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) on that growth has not been quantified. We develop a robust econometric model of weather effects on global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) and combine this model with counterfactual climate scenarios to evaluate impacts of past climate trends on TFP.
Our baseline model indicates that ACC has reduced global agricultural TFP by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth.
The effect is substantially more severe (a reduction of ~26–34%) in warmer regions such as Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. We also find that global agriculture has grown more vulnerable to ongoing climate change.
The lead author of “Anthropogenic Climate Change Has Slowed Global Agricultural Productivity Growth,” published April 1 in Nature Climate Change put it this way.
“It is equivalent to pressing the pause button on productivity growth back in 2013 and experiencing no improvements since then. Anthropogenic climate change is already slowing us down.”
Also, I think you might really enjoy this essay by Erik Assadourian from 2021. It speaks to your thesis about the necessity of moving people "back to the land". Erik talks about HOW the sacrifices required to prevent COLLAPSE will be painful.
He makes the point that while "Collapse Living" and "Low Impact Living" aren't going to be that different materially. They are VERY different in non-material ways.
Lessons from Lebanon: A Meditation on Collapse.
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/lessons-from-lebanon-a-meditation-on-collapse-86efdecedb6e
Collapse may visit you, too, one day. Have you imagined living through this?
Funnily, the differences in lifestyles between living in collapse and intentionally preventing collapse aren’t all that great — in both cases, gone are the cars, the larger homes, the rich diet, the extreme levels of comfort.
But there is one key difference that is deeply undervalued: security and a feeling of control.
In the No Impact scenario, there are no gangs roaming, no threat to life and limb (other than climate disasters, which we can only make less probable in the No Impact scenario but cannot stop them in either case).
No shortages of basic foodstuffs, though electricity and heat, being so expensive (or even rationed), may be in short supply, forcing people to get used to colder homes in the winter and hotter ones in the summer.
But there’d be a positive side too, public transportation might grow in scope so being car-free wouldn’t mean you’d be trapped in your neighborhood.
Public services — from water and sewage treatment to libraries and the humble street light (often taken for granted but even that does not work in Beirut) — would still be available.
Medicines would be accessible as would bread and at least seasonal produce.
I find his argument more and more compelling as time goes on.
REALLY loved this post. I will be referencing it in the future I am sure.
Great work.
In India, which was an agrarian state, for centuries, it clearly has.