Climate alarm

OILS & FATS INTERNATIONAL VOL 37 NO 7 SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 2021

EDITORIAL:

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With extreme weather events striking us in the space of just a few months – from Hurricane Ida hitti ng the US Gulf to wildfi res raging across southern Europe – the eff ects of climate change feel very real and are already directly impacti ng our industry.

Hurricane Ida damaged several US agribusiness faciliti es and is expected to aff ect US grain and oilseed exports, transport ti mes and costs (see p4).

In South America, the conti nent’s second largest river – the Paraná – has been drying up, reaching –0.28m at the Port of Rosario on 9 August, the lowest level recorded since 1944. Citi es along the river have been running dangerously low on water, vessels have been loading a quarter less cargo than normal for fear of getti ng stuck and the cost of moving products has risen. The Paraná carries more than 80% of Argenti na’s agricultural exports to the Atlanti c Ocean, including almost all of its soyabeans.

Meanwhile, a new study authored by German climatologist Niklas Boers and published in Nature warns that weakening ocean currents in the Atlanti c will result in longer, hott er and drier summers across the Mediterranean basin, with a profound impact on olive growing and olive oil producti on, parti cularly in Spain and Italy – the world’s two largest olive oil producers.

Climate scepti cs would contend that forest fi res, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and storms have always occurred throughout human history.

However, as Nati onal Geographic explains, while climate change has not been proven to directly cause individual extreme environmental events, it has been shown to make these more destructi ve and more likely to occur frequently.

A broad range of evidence shows that our world has warmed by 10C above pre-industrial levels, due to the burning of fossil fuels increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which trap heat within the Earth’s atmosphere. Warmer air holds more water vapour and when this turns to rain, it tends to fall in heavy downpours, potenti ally leading to more fl oods and problems like landslides.

Higher temperatures also lead to increased evaporati on and surface drying, with a new report esti mati ng that Brazil has lost almost a fi ft h of its surface fresh water in the past decade (see p4). Extreme heat can also lead to more frequent, severe and prolonged heat waves and droughts and can make forest fi res worse.

The eff ects of climate change go well beyond oilseed crops and agriculture – it encompasses the world’s freshwater supplies, land degradati on, rising sea levels, food security, livelihoods, health and widespread migrati on, with all the human and economic costs that come with it.

We are seeing the eff ects of 10C of change and the target for a climate-safe world is to keep global warming to below 1.50C. However, on current trends, our GHG emissions will heat the planet’s surface by another 3-40C by 2100. Is it already too late? Some observers are describing the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parti es (COP26) due to take place in November in Glasgow as the last chance to make necessary changes.

The most recent hurricane and wild fi res are the alarms bells sounding yet again for humanity to fundamentally change how we produce, distribute and consume almost everything, starti ng with energy, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns we must do.