Latest / the Dr Gilbz pod / Ep. 2 | Climate change is coming for our food | Paul Behrens

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Ep. 2 | Climate change is coming for our food | Paul Behrens · the Dr Gilbz pod

• speaker-0: Our food systems are already creaking under the strain of war, environmental damage and climate change. But we ain't seen none yet. El Nino's biggest impacts are just around the corner and climate heating is only really just starting to cause our problems. And when we're talking about something as fundamental as food, that should worry you. In this episode of the podcast, I'm speaking with Paul Behrens, a climate scientist who specializes in the impacts of climate heating on food systems and an all-around excellent climate communicator. In fact, I'm really excited about bringing you this conversation. instead of me rambling on, let's just get it. All right, here we go. Today, I'm joined by the wonderful professor, Paul Behrens, who's a professor in environmental change. And Paul, you work on all sorts of different things, but climate change, energy, food. speaker-1: to it. speaker-0: all of these kinds of very important societal topics. Maybe you can give us a little bit more of an intro to your work so I don't just butcher the beginning. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks, Alex. I I I've taken a a winding path. I started off actually in astrophysics and ⁓ really enjoyed that, but felt like I really had to come back down to Earth because ⁓ there was so much to do here. And I worked in the energy systems for a while, but as time has gone on, ⁓ I've become more and more worried about the food system. ⁓ but also kind of thinking if we do get this right, it would be amazing. ⁓ it's amazing, obviously, we the energy system right, but the food system is something we all interact with every day. We all make choices every day. ⁓ and so many things that we we can do to improve our resilience to climate change and reduce all the impacts of the food system is really good for us. So I kind of just got more and more excited by it, also terrified by the impacts of ⁓ environmental change on on food systems. speaker-0: I think you've just summarized the perpetual experience of being a climate scientist. Both the terror about what's actually happening, but also the kind of daring to imagine how much better it could be because of the hope and the possibility that is contained within these sorts of topics. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I mean we'll get onto this. But I mean, if you have a food ⁓ you know a food system transformation, you're looking at a situation where we could help ⁓ farmers spare land, bring back nature, an area almost the size of Scotland, of parks all the way up and down the country, people with access to green space, you know, got terrible outcomes in mental health in a lot of areas in the UK, but also and other high-income nations too. We've got some of the worst ⁓ biodiversity and nature outcomes, actually in the world, you know. ⁓ so If you just imagine what that could do, ⁓ on top of that, you'd save tens, sometimes even hundreds of billions of pounds per year in some studies, if we were to eat a healthier diet, ⁓ be but be more productive, feel better. Just, you know, we can get into all of this, but it is just that that possibility for the future compared to how the current system is grinding away at so many people, farmers through to people in their everyday lives buying the food on the shelves. Yeah, you you just some you could just sort of see how it could be so much better. speaker-0: I like that kind of way of looking at things that's both this, you know, the fear-based thing, but also the excitement because there are so many opportunities and possibilities. And this is, it seems to be something that you have as a kind of common thread through lots of your work. mean, your book has this like optimism, pessimism, framing, doesn't it? Where you kind of flip-flop between the two to kind of present both sides of the coin. And I, yeah, I think that's an interesting way to look at it because I think often we end up being either labeled a pacifist or labeled an optimist. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And I think there's lots of different ways of sort of thinking about that. But in the book I was I was really getting fed up with lots of books where you'd have 80% of just terrible news and at the end sort of twenty percent or maybe even less, five percent saying, Well, some the this magic technology might save us, or you know, well, fingers crossed. And I was like, Well, what what what happens does it i if we just really commit to either the the where we're going and and how good things could be? and So it's got these paired chapters of of of pessimism and hope in food, energy, demographics, climate change, economics. I think the thing to bear in mind, and just to come clean here, is I think we are on the road to really, really beautiful times. I think that ⁓ on our current trajectory ⁓ it's quite conceivable that we could lose the ability to have organized society ⁓ by the end of this century. I am extremely ⁓ worried and I think that there is only an outside chance of avoiding that. ⁓ but to you know, that O side chance is absolutely worth plowing everything in to try and get to. So I I would say I'm sort of kind of kind of pessimistic in the sense that I think we're gonna be going through this really bumpy, awful period. ⁓ but that, you know, I'm what do you want to do? Curl up in the in the corner and and and rock? You know, you you you you're gonna you're gonna even if it was a one percent chance, you're gonna fight all that you can for it. ⁓ so that's kind of my attitude on this. speaker-0: Yeah, I think I'm absolutely with you on that. as an aside, I learned a really fantastic word from Susie Dent, I think during the pandemic, which is latibulate, which means to basically hide in a corner and wait for the bad thing to be over. speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ yeah, okay. Well so we're not gonna be litibulators. Yeah. None none of that none of that for us. What's the opposite? Co can we could we be ⁓ anti latibulators? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, I don't know what the opposite is. Is there one? Who knows? But yeah, I think this idea that like, there's always this kind of, ⁓ and here's the silver lining. Like whenever I've done TV stuff, there was like, can you just like not make it too doomy because, you know, people don't want to be terrified. I understand that. But at the same time, it feels extremely disingenuous to be like, but everything's going to be fine because we have wind turbines. Like, obviously that's part of the solution, but it's not the only thing. And there was a quote in the beginning of your book I wanted to just read out as well because I thought it was really good. And this one from Ernst Bloch, fraudulent hope is one of the greatest malefactors, even innovators of the human race. Concretely genuine hope is its most dedicated benefactor. I just thought, yeah, that idea of fraudulent hope I hadn't come across before and is kind of how it feels if you're just constantly being like, but everything is actually gonna be sunshine and rainbows despite the fact that I've given you this enormous mountain of evidence to the contrary. speaker-1: It just feels yeah, fraudulent and also a lack of trust of people. That's what ⁓ really bothers me. And that's why we did this ⁓ national emergency briefing to try and address this. But there seems to be this feeling that we can't, you know, that that that the people, the general public, whoever that is, of course, we're the general public, you know, but ⁓ can't handle, you know, the truth in a sense. ⁓ that you know, that this is far too scary, we don't want to bring people down, dooby dooby doo. But Clearly, understanding where we're going is different to Amorphous Doom. I mean, if you get on and you say, okay, look, stuff's it's gonna be awful, it doesn't help anybody. But being specific and saying, look, the chances of multi breadbasket failures is going up under climate change, ⁓ that we might have food chronic food price inflation, that's already started. But look, here are the things you can do about it, and this is the way in which it works and how we can interrupt those problems and actually turn them around to you know, be opportunity to be better for us, you know, then I think then that's perfectly fine. And that's one of the reasons why I think the National Emergency Briefing, which is this briefing that we gave to 1200 people in Westminster Central Hall, 10 sort of experts. ⁓ there was a general there, there was an emergency room doctor, there was myself, there was people talking about tipping points and nature. And and and we we we sort of just delivered the the the facts straight up. ⁓ and I think there was a huge interest in that. It was turned into a into a short film which is being shown up and down the country. had 2,000 screenings. The idea of that again, which I think goes to this point about the psychology of it, is you couldn't, you know, it's not available on YouTube. You ch can't just go online, watch it on your own and be, you know, terrified and and wonder what to do next. You watch it as a community. You talk about what's happening locally, what can be done, what sort of things you can ask of the council of MPs, all the you know, all the rest of it. And ⁓ and and I think that's the way you do it. That's the way you sort of build sort of resilience because that's a no regret scenario. ⁓ where, you know, i e even if nothing sort of direct comes of it, you you've got a community building exercise. You know, and and people have sort of said, you know, is this just preaching to the choir? Is this just in a bubble? Actually, no. I mean, partly I think, you know, the choir has to sing louder. I think, you know, you can always make more of a nuisance of yourself. This is one thing I've learned through my life is you can always make more of a nuisance. And, you know, i i it sometimes that's a good thing to do, sometimes, you know. ⁓ but ⁓ the other thing is it seems to be breaking out of the bubble. I mean, we did a specialized national emergency briefing for ⁓ lawyers and it was hosted by the deputy president of the Supreme Court in the UK. and in the front row was Sir Dame Dame Sir Sir, you know, it's quite it's quite overwhelming to have all of these titles arrayed in front of you. And ⁓ you know, we went down and we we we gave ⁓ six minute ⁓ versions of the briefing that we gave. I joked six minutes is like the usual ⁓ you know, accounting ⁓ slot for for the lawyers. So it was like they they bill in six minute intervals, I think. So that's obviously what we were doing. And ⁓ and you know, we we've spoken to ⁓ sports groups up and down the country, ⁓ to doctors, to school groups, to you know, it's it's really sort of reached out. So I know that the BBC, Channel Four, ⁓ Hatchet, BFI, Tate, you know, a lot of these big institutions that we think about in our minds, they're all doing briefings. You deliver information, but you also then have the hope and you y you know you you you get hope through interacting with other people, seeing things change, th seeing people understand. And hope is basically, you know, a a future that's better than you can imagine today. And we can imagine a pretty bad one. a future that, you know, has a reasonable pathway of getting there. So it has to be reasonable. It can't just be utopia. You know, you have to think about how actually some of these transformations really transform ⁓ the systems around us and a way in which you can act within that pathway. You know? And I think that's how we sort of get there and keep going in these times. speaker-0: Yeah, I'm really glad you did talk about the National Emergency Briefing because it was something I wanted to talk about with you anyway. So I saw you speaking at this 1976 event, which in some ways was kind of like a mini version of the National Emergency Briefing in that it had lots of different people speaking from different sort of positions, whether that was you talking about food or Hayley Fowler talking about water and the head of the National Fire Chiefs Council talking about the risk of wildfire in the UK. and parents, kids, all of these different people talking about different aspects of the 1976 heat wave compared to today, compared to what it's likely to be like in the future. And I guess it's the same with the national emergency briefing, like, especially as scientists, we get really stuck into our particular niche. And sometimes it's hard when you've got your head buried in the detail to kind of look up and appreciate the rest of the picture. And actually, when you hear all of the evidence presented together, in a way like that that's, you all of you are really great speakers. So like compelling, evidence-based, really clear, great graphics and visuals, and like concise and impactful. It does really hit home. And I think it's sometimes we need to remember as people who do care about climate change and do care about the good of society, that you need to sometimes remind yourself of the gravity of the situation and also the possibility and how you can act on it. And I like this idea that the screenings are only really things that are kind of offline and that you can be together with people because that community organizing is really the only way that we're going to achieve any positive change because alone we sit in the dark and we let the billionaires and politicians make decisions for us. And it's only if we can get together and actually work together that it's going to shift the dial. And it may not shift the dial as much as we need it to, but it will shift the dial somewhat. And that's better than nothing. It's better than the tubulating. speaker-1: You can't you can't you can't let I mean it's gonna put from some pressure on somewhere for change. ⁓ I think I think you're exactly right about the science science side of things. You know, it it's it's all too easy to compartmentalize day to day. I mean we all do it, we have to do it for your own ⁓ sense of mental health. ⁓ but I think scientists are quite good at doing that as well. And that's why I think scientists should go to the national emergency briefing as well, because there may be things, you know, that even in climate science that is useful to draw across. I I always think it's useful to see how things be communicated, even if you think you know all of the details already. ⁓ but in science especially the holistic thing that we've kind of lost of like, you know, this is the way we're heading. And, you know, to some extent the literature shows us this. You know, it doesn't get the attention it should, but we've systemically underestimated the impacts of climate change over time. ⁓ and I got this this plot which I, you know, ⁓ there's only in a couple of papers that have of people have done is is these sort of ⁓ burning embers plot showing how what we thought would ex would happen at above five degrees is now slated for happening below two degrees at ⁓ at ⁓ you know for in terms of tipping points. ⁓ and similar for like e ecological and economic impacts as well. and you know the other thing I guess I'd like to draw out a little bit about the the summer of 76, because that is quite an interesting event is the light room. So it's sort of projected on these huge walls. And this was based off the summer of 76, which was you know a very hot year. In the UK where we ⁓ peaked at ⁓ thirty-five point nine degrees. ⁓ my god. Of course we peaked at forty degrees just a few years ago. ⁓ and even this year, yeah, I think we peaked at ⁓ was it thirty-eight at the end, thirty-nine? Very hot. Thirty seven point. ⁓ was it thirty-seven? Okay. ⁓ nearly thirty-eight. Rounding error. Yeah. And so it was really sort of looking back at that time, looking at Now and then looking into the future in 2056, where the Met Office did a forecast for 2056 ⁓ 56 at at ⁓ 45 degrees and sustained periods of over 40. and I guess, you know, if you look at both the summer of 76 event and also the national emergency briefing, what I've come to learn as a scientist is actually that ⁓ the people who are able to have the vision to put these things together. ⁓ so for the National Emergency Briefing, you know, ⁓ Simon Nick Aldridge and and for ⁓ the summer of seventy-six ⁓ Frankie Oliver, they just got these visions and they're just like, this is gonna this is gonna be transformative in the way people see. And as scientists on our own, we can't we can't we just don't act like that ⁓ solo, you know, and I so I I I guess in in being involved, I've become much more hopeful I'm not sure about, but much more ⁓ excited and enthusiastic. And I guess the reason why I'm bringing this up is that there's research that shows that scientists would like to do more and we underestimate how much we would like to do. So one study, for example, found that about 29% of scientists are already active act sort of doing some sort of advocacy in climate change, but that 58% would like to are not currently doing so. And if you looked across the world, that's, I don't know, tens, hundreds of thousands of people. very trusted voices. So, you know, and actually we also in that same study. speaker-0: trusted voices as well. speaker-1: ⁓ we also found out, if this is not my study, but we found out as scientists that we also don't judge one another as much as you might think for doing the advocacy. So you might think, ⁓ my other colleagues are going to judge me, but actually it's much, much lower percentage than you might think. It's I think it was below ten percent. So, you know, it it just goes it just goes to show that if we can sort of harness this sort of latent ⁓ enthusiasm, this in latent willingness to get involved, it would be quite transformational as well. speaker-0: Yeah, I guess it kind of reflects the surveys of the broader public. 87 % something of people care about climate change enough that they want to see more done about it. And I can't remember the exact percentages, but most people assume that other people don't care about climate change around them. we're all in our own little worlds caring about this thing and assuming that nobody else does, feeling alone with it. Whereas actually, we're all feeling that. So if we can organize and meet other people who evidently share our beliefs and our passion and our enthusiasm, then that can only be a kind of invigorating and revitalizing experience. speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ yeah, totally, totally. I mean so first really big study that sort of what made quite a lot of waves was in the US and they asked people, what percentage of people in the country do you think support a carbon tax? You know, the the sort of the the the evil word in the US. And I don't know what you would think. ⁓ like I thought it would be pretty low. And actually the public that was surveyed in in this paper ⁓ thought it would be about thirty-four percent of the population would support a carbon tax. Then they said, Do you support a carbon tax? ⁓ and the actual result was sixty-two percent. So there was roughly ⁓ you know, a a doubling of support that people didn't realize. And actually, if you look across the different environmental actions, it was the same story. Recently in the UK, they did some surveys of different people intending to vote different ways. And ⁓ they asked people, you know, do you ⁓ support or don't mind onshore wind turbines? And actually across multiple surveys now. It's well above 60% and in some surveys above 70%. So what it just goes to show is we just completely misunderestimate how much we actually care. And what's really interesting is there's another slate, sort of slate of studies coming out that are looking at, you know, if you do correct this, does that mean people are willing to do more because they know more people around them care? And it's a bit mixed evidence at the moment, but because it's quite hard to do the experiments, but it looks like it does it is. So it looks like that once you know that other people want more action, you're willing to take more action as well. It's a little bit like the ⁓ you know, the biggest indicator of whether you're gonna get solar panels on your house is whether your neighbor's got solar panels, you know. Yeah. It's just y you see it and you you chat about it, you're like, ⁓ yeah, then you know, ⁓ it's a good idea. So, you know, all of that stuff sort of gives me quite a little bit of a lot of hope of these social diffusion. speaker-0: You hear this term social tipping points a lot as well, increasingly anyway. We're used to hearing about tipping points in the climate system, the AMOC collapse or the loss of ice sheets or dieback of the Amazon rainforest or something. But less is maybe being said about these social tipping points where there's an inertia. When you see other people taking action, you realize that there's a community of people who all care about this thing. And then you get this momentum building where it actually becomes... big, it snowballs essentially. Have you ever looked at this? speaker-1: Yeah, I have looked at that. I I mean it's there's there's lots of interesting sort of stats and work out there. ⁓ there's obviously the early sort of Erica Chenoworth work that's you know says that there's sort of yeah ⁓ that ⁓ revolutions have never failed ⁓ if they've reached more than thirty three point five percent of the population. And it's even lower if it's ⁓ if it's ⁓ peaceful. ⁓ the those tend to be sort of more sort of big scale sort of one-shot things. ⁓ But there's other studies that suggest, you know, maybe the tipping point thresholds around 25%, 25 to 40%. This is ⁓ Dana Sentola's work. And Dana Sentola wrote a book about this and about sort of the different dynamics of social tipping, because it's both broad and deep. So, you know, it it's one thing where you just have a fad and a phase. It's another thing where people actually change the norms in their life, you know, in the way that they live their lives, you know, and and and so these have different dynamics in how ⁓ change spreads through society. It's good book. It's called called Change. ⁓ so so yeah, I mean one thing that I I think is worthwhile always remembering is there's probably, you know, we shall, you know, have around seven people that really care for us ⁓ i in you know in the world. And if we if we can describe and explain why we're making saints that we're making, ⁓ then those seven people are much more likely to adopt at least part of those changes. If those seven people go out and change another seven people, you only need, you know, twelve rounds of that and you've reached the world. as my friend ⁓ Hugh Montgomery ⁓ often says, you know, so y this is this is the power. I mean, this is this has been our superpower in evolution. I mean, this is the reason why we are where we're right now is because of our ability to cooperate and our the social dynamics and to tell story. speaker-0: Yeah, and we love storytelling and we definitely love working in a community. It's just we need to remember that maybe. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people trying to get in the way of that, yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, there are quite a of them. extra parts of the conversation where we discuss the impact of El Nino on food prices and what a sustainable diet fit for the future would actually look like. Subscriptions start from just the price of a coffee each month and you can also buy one-off posts like this episode for example. But if you can't afford it then absolutely no stress. know that times are hard for all of us right now. If you'd like to support the channel for free then make sure you're subscribed and that you give this video a thumbs up and a share with a friend. Alright. Let's get back to the video. I'm going to go back to a little bit more of the sciencey stuff. Yeah. Because I thought it'd be good to just remind ourselves of essentially why climate change is having such an outsized impact on food systems and what the kind of main drivers of that are and how we're feeling it as, you know, shoppers, you know, how that's reflected in the price of your grocery shop at the end of the week. What are the main things causing? climate change to impact food and what are the main drivers when it comes to the actual impacts on us and our lives. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So so climate's one of the ⁓ one of the drivers ⁓ of food price ⁓ changes. ⁓ energy is a big one because about energy about sort of twenty to forty percent of energy goes into the food system. So anything that happens to energy also happens to the food system. So this is why it's also really interesting to work in this because they're really interconnected in terms of the energy transition and the food transition. We've also got the geopolitical conflicts which haven't held. The way to think about climate change is this is ongoing, relentless extra pressure that we wouldn't have had before. So normally where we could have dealt with an impact, ⁓ say, you know, in the past we have had ⁓ different food crisis, it just makes everything much worse. ⁓ and so that's your major sort of issue. How how it's ⁓ driving is, you know, agriculture is one of the most exposed sectors to climate change, obviously. ⁓ it's out there in the open fields, ⁓ you can't air condition a crop, ⁓ and so you're at the mercy of the weather. And really that extreme weather is going to be droughts, heat waves, flooding, hail, storms. It's going to be strange seasonality. ⁓ it's gonna be having extremely hot periods, next of extremely cold periods. And so it's gonna throw the natural sort of cycle of crops ⁓ and livestock off. The general trend on this is that we've probably underestimated this. Well, not probably, we have underestimated this by quite a large amount. And this is quite clear from the crop modeling. And partly that's because we've un we've been unable to capture all of the different impacts that climate could have on the food system. And we've overestimated how much we think we can adapt and how much some of the other sort of maybe balancing factors like CO2 fertilization, which we can talk about, might might help. Turns out it doesn't. On top of that, you've also got the pests. Now, unfortunately, ⁓ generally the increase in temperatures does mean pests have greater and greater range. So it it it's not as if like ⁓ well, you lose some, you gain some because in some areas you won't get a pest, in some areas you will. Actually it turns out they're just pests press spread and spread and spread. You've also got pathogens as well. So you get more and more ⁓ antimicrobial resistance and more pathogens ⁓ being generated in livestock ⁓ and animal agriculture as well. And it's really like a non it's this sort of a nonlinear thing, you know, you you you you you can be fine up to a certain temperature and then it really drops off very quickly in terms of yield, for example. So, you know, every every sort of degree that you get above, say, thirty-five degrees for wheat, you have really sort of much larger impacts on ⁓ on the crop if it remains that high. One of the things we can do ⁓ to cope with this is ⁓ more water irrigation, more cooling for animals. But of course, you know, A, that's more and more investment. So it's higher and higher costs, so people are gonna have to pay that. And of course we're having the water issues as well at the same time. So, you know, it it's this very complicated picture where we've s systematically underestimated. And I I have to say I do get a little bit angry and upset when I do hear about ⁓ economists talk about this. ⁓ because ⁓ we've had very famous economists like ⁓ William Nordhaus, who won ⁓ the ⁓ economics ⁓ Nobel Prize ⁓ for climate economics, saying that ⁓ it's not gonna be such a big deal because ⁓ agriculture is the most exposed sector and it only makes up three to percent of GDP. So therefore economic impact is gonna be low. Of course, the rest of the economy is based around that. And I think the biggest central ⁓ failure mode of society, or one of one of them, I think there's probably several others in climate change, but one of the largest failure modes is cost of living increases. And we know that climate change is driving already in food price inflation. So in twenty twenty three in the UK, an MST estimated third of food price inflation was driven by climate change. And there are studies suggesting that we should expect another one to three percentage points of food price inflation each and every year on global food prices by 2035. And as I say, whenever I see these sorts of things, I usually think it's on the lower end. Simply because when you then read into the methods of any of these papers, you see that there are things that have, you know, are impossible to measure. Like it's not the model's fault. I'm a modeler, you know. It it it it's just that we are so far out of sample. We are g in such an uncertain world that it's difficult to get all the negative parts. And I think personally that the negative things that we don't capture are more important and bigger than the positive things that we don't capture, if that makes sense. speaker-0: Yeah, it's about avoiding, it's the precautionary principle ultimately. It's like you want to avoid the highest risk, highest impact events. if that means that you're maybe missing some of the CO2 is plant food elements, then so be it. And there are certain food products that are particularly hard hit by this, right? Things like coffee or speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, one one thing I should mention is, you know, global stable staples, ⁓ the yields of those are still going up because of breeding and technology and all of the amazing innovations that we can do as as humanity. ⁓ the problem is it's running faster and faster to stand still because the headwinds of climate change are just pushing you back all the time. And what you see in countries like the UK, where breeding and technology is fairly well established, you know, we're pretty mature in our sort of agricultural system. There's lots of things we can do, but At the moment for we're we're pretty much set up, we're seeing a stagnation of yields and even a decline in some years. And so we're we're seeing huge stress in in in farming communities up and down the country. ⁓ so you know, in terms of the crops that are hit, actually, you know, there are quite a few crops that are hit in the UK already from climate change. And initially we thought that you know northern Europe would be sort of fairly spared from climate change, actually warming twice as fast as I think. ⁓ correct me if I'm wrong on that, under the the rest of the world. ⁓ and so yeah, if you look at the harvested products, you know, ⁓ globally, you're really looking at ⁓ cocoa in Africa, ⁓ coffee, olive oil, ⁓ rice, ⁓ oranges. ⁓ we had fruit and veg impacts in southern Mediterranean, ⁓ where we we actually import about twenty-four five percent of our imports from and large amount of our nutrients from is from these really exposed places. ⁓ and in the UK, you know, in 2019, ⁓ each UK chip was ⁓ estimated to be like an inch in shorter due to ⁓ due to climate change. You know, so ⁓ it's really affecting the things that we love. It's driving sort of increases in barley prices, so increasing the cost of beer. ⁓ it's ⁓ three of the five worst harvests on record occurred this decade in the UK. It's already costing farmers almost a billion pounds ⁓ due to heat and drought. I think we might have edged over that this year. so it, you know. Although you can single out specific areas where you've seen these dramatic explosions in price, like so for chocolate, for example, we've seen that massive explosion, or for olive oil. you know, it's generally just ri raising the prices of everything up. ⁓ and that's just gonna keep going and going until we get a handle on increasing the resilience of the food system. speaker-0: want to come back to the idea of resilience to climate shocks, but I also want to ask you about this thing you were speaking about at the beginning, which is this kind of like apocalyptic forecast of future food shortages and how, you said you're worried about these kind of multiple different shocks combining and compounding and creating a future that is increasingly difficult to survive. And I just wonder at what point can we say, ⁓ that these kinds of really scary forecasts are likely? What sort of future are studies mapping out? What are we thinking? speaker-1: Yeah, what are we thinking? It's going to be really differentiated across the world. In in lower and middle income countries, I think, you know, you will start to see some of these more apocalyptic things ⁓ come to pass ⁓ in relatively ⁓ soon in the sort of medium term, ⁓ maybe even the short term. ⁓ famines, when we think about sort of food issues, we think about famines. ⁓ famines are most still mostly about politics than they are about anything else. and you know, we've seen it as a weaponization. This is one of the great worries because it comes together with this kind of collapse of the quote unquote glob global world order in a sense, or this multilateralism. We've seen food as a weapon in Gaza, in Sudan, even in the Middle East, because actually the Middle East is very reliant on food imports. And of course, during the closure and ⁓ blockade, ⁓ that could had food impacts. ⁓ so the sort of the taboo or the reticence to involve food in some of the geopolitical conflicts seems to have come away. And at a time when food price inflation goes up, you what you usually get is more and more of these trade barriers, more and more of these governments responding in ways that rise ra raise the price even more and have these knock-on effects. And we've seen it in previous food crises where you actually see ⁓ the decay of states, you know, in twenty, twenty, tw ⁓ two thousand seven, two thousand eight. ⁓ we saw big issues in food riots and decay around ⁓ the world. we saw it we've seen in Syria, for example, when farmers were no longer able to farm, they went to urban regions and and contributed to the political instability there. And so that's the dynamics that I'm seeing. I'm not I'm not sort of saying, you know, in the UK shelves are going to go empty tomorrow. Although we have seen parts of shelves go empty due to climate impacts in the Mediterranean or fresh fruit, for example. So we have seen some of these dynamics, but not saying it's going to be sort of each for their own. In high income countries, the biggest thing I'm worried about is food price inflation. Because as I said before, you know, cost of living crisis is deeply connected to politics. And if you look at the reasons why people voted for Trump, that people are voting for alternative sort of populist parties or worldwide, it's due to cost of living crisis, is one of the main things that they state. And then if you look at that, this has a horrible feedback effect because you vote in Trump. Trump gets rid of all of the science needed to actually advise the farmers on how and where to farm, how to adapt, how to do things. Food goes up even higher. People get more and more scared. They vote for even more and more for strong men or whatever out of panic. And you get more and more of this political instability. So that's what I see about the poly. It's not when you say apocalyptic, it might it sort of sounds like zombies going for going for the test going into the Tesco's, you or that which I would be part of in that case. But It it's more it's not it's less bad and it's all of these other dynamics that feed into our politics and feed into the ways in which we can then respond to climate change. speaker-0: Yeah, I think that kind of political conflict, the way that those things intersect, like the geopolitics and the climate and the extra shocks and all of those kinds of big, seemingly separate but scary things, how they're intersecting and how they're likely to continue to intersect and intersect even more is something that lots of people are increasingly drawing lines between those and realising that things are looking... not so rosy. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean we ha we had the ⁓ joint intelligence committee report earlier this year. ⁓ and you've got ⁓ MI5, MI6, James Bond, I presume, ⁓ all the rest of them, ⁓ O D, and they're saying that, you know, we're actually at a risk of ecosystem collapse ⁓ around the world, which will affect UK food security. And they had some really stark stuff which I'd never s thought thought I would see so soon in a government document. I knew it was coming because you know the science, but they basically said, ⁓ under the current ⁓ system of food production in this country, we cannot produce as much livestock and yet feed ourselves. And whole scale change in in in in consumer diets would be necessary. Now, you know, scientists have been saying this for some time, but for the the MI5, MI6, MOD, but all the rest of them, the cabinet office to be saying this, and then amazingly, to hide the report, it was supposed to be ⁓ released by the king at the National Science Muse at the N Science Museum, I it was. ⁓ and they decided not to publish it. And then through Freedom of Information requests, we got an abridged version. I think it was in February, but we still haven't seen the full report. And just today, the Guardian has reporting the Environmental Audit Committee is demanding that we see the full report. ⁓ so it's not just scientists, it's not just activists, it's not just people within the food system who really feel like they want to see this report, it's the MPs themselves. And so they get it. You know, these are the security services, exactly what you're saying about the geopolitics, about whole the how this all interacts. And they get it. speaker-0: What do we need to do to actually make our food systems more resilient and to move people? Is it like an awareness campaign? it is it a mandate? Is it kind of policy measures? Is it different kind of instruments? Is it like pushing and pulling? Like how do we make that happen? And how do we channel that enthusiasm and that passion and that excitement and turn it into actual progress? speaker-1: It's one of the most complex areas because you go from everything from farming to what you see in the shops and everything in between, the food processors, the retailers, the wholesalers. ⁓ you've got the health ⁓ factors involved, you've got the land use factors involved. So it's one of the most interconnected areas. So people get a little bit overwhelmed. I think it's very I think it could be more simple than that. I think there's a series of things that you would do, ⁓ step by step. The biggest one is you wouldn't just rely on individuals. Yes, it's important for people to understand, but we need a food environment change. Just like we need an environment change towards nature and more climate resilience and healthier, we need healthier diets throughout. And what you need to do there is you need to make it easier for people to engage in that. And so then how do you change the food environment? Well, first thing you've got to accept is that the environment is already directed in some way. It's directed by the policies that we put in, the regulations, the relationships between retailers and wholesalers. And we have already constructed, you don't have a free choice to what to buy in the supermarket. I mean, I love potatoes. Who doesn't like chips? Now, well, some people I I love chips. Now, there's like hundreds of different types of varieties of potatoes. Can I go into a shop and buy a specific kind of potato? No, I can't. You know, it's it it is restricted. If I go into some shops in the UK, so many shops in the UK, I can't even get fruit. You know, you're you're in, I don't know, you're in one of the sort of like ⁓ corner shop type you there's there's no fruit available, right? So speaker-0: Or if there is, it's like all wrinkled and sad. speaker-1: So one thing we have to accept is it's not already it's it's already sort of organized for us. And so we need to organize it in a different way. Now the biggest single key lever that I think we've got is aligning public procurement, which sounds so policy and boring, but so powerful, to buy food and pres pre prep you know, to deliver food that is aligned with our national recommended dietary guidelines. And at the moment, ⁓ there are recommend you know, people are you know, hospitals, prisons, schools. ⁓ are advised to follow it, but they're not mandated and it's not checked. And actually, there's huge gaps in schools, for example. In fact, there was a recent one about school healthy food in schools, and it didn't even mention the recommended diets. Now, if you put that into ⁓ action and into law, you would change the food environment overnight. Because if you did it and you said, A, we're gonna get food that's local where possible, we're gonna make it healthy, then you are gonna already save lots of money for the NHS. You're going to change the meals of 15 million meals a day that are served across different public ⁓ bodies. People are gonna engage with that food more. They're gonna hope hopefully enjoy it, feel better for it. And that's what we know from the New York experiments in New York hospital, which they're actually made permanent now, where they've done greener by default because it was cheaper, healthier for people, and people enjoyed it more. But on the supply, on the on the supply side, on the farming side, it gives a clear signal that farmers can then swap. I mean, right now, if you're a farmer and you're being asked to make these changes, what security do you have that somebody else isn't gonna come in or what some some other thing's gonna happen that then you're gonna have to change back? And you know that in the first five years of making these big changes on your farm, it might cost you money. You know, in the long run you're gonna make much more money, but it's gonna cost you in the short term to make these changes, perhaps to some farmers. And so how do people do that? Well, they need to know that the demand is there. And that's how you know that the demand is there is that the government procurement for all of the army and all the rest of it I just mentioned is going to be there with the demand, then you know you're safe. And so that's the first thing I would do. It's a no-brainer. Everybody can agree with it. We want healthy kids. We want healthy ⁓ patients in hospitals. ⁓ so why aren't we doing it already? It should have we should have done it yesterday. You know, and there's a there's a whole I don't know I could go on for a while here, but there there's a whole list of other things that you would want to do and and you can basically sort of roll out as you go. One of them is to improve the subsidies for farmers. Currently we are doing public money for public goods, which is a good start, but it's chopping and changing all the time. There's hundreds of different subsidies. I would argue that some of them aren't good subsidies, some of them are, some and some of them aren't. ⁓ and so we would revolutionize that. So you want to be at basically you want to be addressing the production side and the consumption side, each each as you go and then reinforming the food system as you go through that. speaker-0: And in terms of like the resilience to shocks, particularly in countries in lower and middle income countries that are growing lots of staples that we have to import, what can be done to, I don't know, protect, for example, the rice yield or the production of cacao or coffee or all of those kinds of products that we definitely can't grow here? speaker-1: Well, I mean, firstly we've been slashing our aid budgets, ⁓ you know, across the world in the UK and the US. And I think we're down to point three percent of GDP now. I think might be even lower than that. But that was from point seven seven five. Have to double check that. But it ⁓ you know, these are significant reductions. And so really we're pulling the rug rug out of ⁓ the very groups of people who are providing food for us. So it it's appalling really. I mean, one of the things that ⁓ can be done is inf i is irrigation. That's sort of the biggest, clearest one for very hot countries. But then of course the question is how do you make that you know sustainable over the long run? You know, and ⁓ there are solutions for that. There's sort of better integrated agriculture, there's multi-cropping, there's ⁓ agroforestry. So then you're using much less water. There's on top of that, there's precision agriculture where you're targeting the plants themselves and not having to water entire fields ⁓ pointlessly but actually you know targeting the plants themselves. Same things can be done with the fertilizer and other inputs. But ultimately, ⁓ you know, this is gonna need coordination. And you know, this is coming at a time when everybody's sort of pulling back from this multilateralism. ⁓ so overseas, ⁓ it seems to be at the moment the attitude is everyone for themselves. I mean, there's there's still some very good work that's going on from NGOs, ⁓ from foundations, ⁓ and they're trying their best to fill the gaps. ⁓ but ⁓ you know, it comes back to that sort of tipping point that we were mentioning before earlier. You know, I think then I wouldn't be surprised if we see a real ⁓ sort of understanding and tipping points, dawning realization in countries like the UK, the you know, the US in the next few years about food, food and and climate. And you know, once people start sort of seeing that, hopefully we'll build a consensus to get back involved and start helping the countries that we import from. And also improve our own production because ultimately in the very long run, ⁓ I think by the end of this century, ⁓ it it's going to be harder and harder to see how we're going to be having agriculture being produced in some of the regions that are going to be most hard hit, that are going to become quite uninhabitable for humanity. ⁓ you know, under sort of high ⁓ impact scenarios, we could see the global agricultural land shrink by about a third. And we don't then ⁓ make up for that in the trop temperate regions, unfortunately. ⁓ so under that scenario, I actually see in the very long term, So there's a lot of road in between now and then, but the UK would have to become a much larger producer of food in order to help buffer the global markets for food because we're gonna not gonna be hit in the same way as the tropics. Now, the one wrinkle to that, of course, is amock collapse. ⁓ and if AMOC collapse does happen, and you you probably covered this on the channel plenty of times, one paper, for example, suggests that ⁓ it might lead to the cessation of agriculture in the UK. ⁓ because we'd need so much ⁓ i irrigation. I mean that's literally one of the sentences from the paper. It's the white spread cessation, which I always think is like, yeah, wild. Yeah. speaker-0: I covered it in a video not so long ago and that's exactly the quote I pulled out because it feels so big. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's very uncertain. I should say that that's very uncertain. I reasonable people disagree within about a hundred years as to when those impacts are really gonna hit home. So it could be sooner, it could be later, but back to your proportion cautionary principle. speaker-0: Better to have and not need than to need and not have. So maybe you do also talk about like where we're making progress and maybe it's balancing that with some of the progress that's being made and you've talked about some of the solutions, things like silver pasture, agroforestry, mixed cropping, all that kind of stuff. Are there other areas that have been that we've seen progress in recently? speaker-1: That diversity is really important, you know. and I think we're going down that route. We we've gone from a situation where we were ⁓ had very broad, sort of broadly damaging subsidies to a situation situation now where at least we're trying to pay for nature and public goods and ⁓ and climate resilience. That's great. ⁓ on the consumption side though, we need to keep up because if we do that and we produce less here and bring back nature and we don't change the what we're growing. then we're just going to be importing from overseas and burning down the tropics. There is a way through this where, in our work, for example, we shrink ⁓ the size of the agricultural system something like 65, you know, ⁓ percent if we make these shifts, which means that we have plenty of space for nature. And we also have plenty of space for food production. And in fact, we can produce far more food than we are today. So we could have ⁓ cake and eat it, not to use the meter analogy. ⁓ if you see actual concrete action, you know, UK meat consumption is going down slowly. ⁓ people may not sort of see that, but it is. German meat consumption has been going down. ⁓ we've seen some reductions in food waste. Now it's very difficult to get done, ⁓ but we've seen some reductions. I think one of the biggest ⁓ exciting things that we've seen is sort of internationally recently is the Danish plant-rich action plan, where they got farm pig farmers ⁓ and farmers more generally, they got The industry, ⁓ they got politicians, they got all the public behind this plan for eating more plants. And they targeted all the way from production through to consumption. So they ⁓ have a public procurement law like one that I just mentioned before. They are bringing in a ⁓ carbon taxes ⁓ on farmers. And actually, what they've done is they've said that will the farmers can have a rebate in the early years ⁓ and then it will come in in full in late 2035, and they're actually. They're actually sort of expecting that just through those rebates that the farmers will make all the changes that they need to make. And they all agree to it. So this is in these highly polarized, difficult times, you've got a situation where the Danes, like they did with ⁓ wind energy, they saw which way the wind is blowing, they saw the writing on the wall or mix all the metaphors, but ⁓ they see they said, Look, we're gonna need this change, and they've actually sort of committed to it. And it's a real ⁓ food environment. ⁓ shift, you know, so they're really changing the way in which the the the country works and the food system there. So there are there are things that are changing. There is progress. ⁓ again it's just that we systematically underestimated how fast things would go. I mean we we had a study some years ago where we looked at ⁓ just what the ⁓ total ⁓ warming would be under sort of statistics. So just basically like the current changes and changes in the change of emissions over time. And we found like, yeah, we've avoided ⁓ several of the highest ⁓ scenarios that we thought we might be on ⁓ just by the efforts that we've currently put in persistent. The problem is, of course, is that the impacts have just got so much worse at lower temperatures. And that's this current constant if we've been, I suppose if we've been luckier in a sense, and the climate wasn't as sensitive and the impacts weren't as quite as sensitive to the emissions, then we might be ⁓ a little bit more hopeful, I would say, you know, the or at least the percentage of hope would i would increase. ⁓ but no, you you y y you keep going and keep trying to ⁓ make these changes wherever you can and learn from what people are doing. I think what the Danes did was incredibly strategic, incredibly sensible. They even are wrapped in sort of economic growth and exports and we we need more plants because we're going to export it like they did with the wind, wind turbines. ⁓ and I think that's speaker-0: feel like a true scientist. speaker-1: how scientists as well, we can be a bit savier as well and and understand how ⁓ you know, these groups do it. speaker-0: We all need to be a bit more Denmark is maybe the moral of the story. Yeah, I like to channel this excitement and enthusiasm because it does feel like there are good things happening as well. Sometimes we can get bogged down in the fear and the overwhelm about all the stuff that is not going the way that we want it to. Thank you for bringing that. speaker-1: Yeah. I think I think we are on the verge of some very big changes in society as well. ⁓ and when you see people like ⁓ Jeremy Clarkson saying it's taken me a long time to come around to climate change, but it's undeniable. And I've seen it on the farm. ⁓ when you see leaders ⁓ making statements, if you see people whose ⁓ professions depend on high carbon emitting lifestyles, like ⁓ travel reporters, sports people, you've pe seen reporters for the F one saying this is a luxury in a time of crisis. So when you see these people and these leaders changing, you do feel like we're on the edge of something. And I think in the next few years that will open up a huge number of opportunities and possibilities. speaker-0: I really hope you're right. ⁓ It's so good to talk to you. Thank you so much for this. I just wanted to give you a moment to do some shout outs like where can people follow you work? Where can people read your book? speaker-1: ⁓ my website has all my research details, dr Paulberrens dot com. ⁓ and ⁓ you can read my ⁓ book from any well, I would say bookshop, but it's probably better getting it online is it's gonna be quicker. ⁓ so the best of times, the worst of times, futures from the frontiers of climate. I have speaker-0: haven't read the whole thing, but I have read bits of it and what I saw I really liked. So I'll stick some links in the description. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. It's been so insightful and I knew you'd be a good guest. So thank you for following through on my hunch. speaker-1: Thanks a lot, Ella. Great chatting to you. speaker-0: What a good conversation. I really enjoyed that chat with Paul Behrends and thank you again to him for being such a fantastic guest. I really enjoyed hearing his perspective on that optimism versus pessimism piece and I think possibly our outlooks are quite similar in that sense. Like, yeah, s*** is f***. But I'm also excited about the prospect of making s*** less f***. I think you can have both of those things at the same time. And like the possibilities of making a better future are always exciting. I really, really recommend checking out his book. It's a great read. And if you are in the UK, then I also highly recommend checking out a screening of the National Emergency Briefing, which Paul was a speaker in and you'll find him in the film. Going to a screening of the People's Emergency Briefing is a great way to A, learn about the science of all of it. And that's economy, health. climate, weather, water, all sorts of things. And it's also a great way to connect with people in your local area who also care about these things. So it's a really great way to start organizing within your own community and making connections that will allow you to be part of the solution. All right, I'm going to be back with another episode of the podcast in another three weeks. And otherwise, I'll see you for another video next week. All right, ciao.