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Vox
2 days ago
- Science
- Vox
We're producing more food than ever before — but not for long
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. An aerial view shows floodwaters covering farm fields and a rural road near Poplar Bluff, Missouri. In April, thunderstorms, heavy rains, high winds, and tornadoes plagued the regions for several days causing widespread humanity is producing more food than ever, but that harvest is concentrated in just a handful of breadbaskets. More than one-third of the world's wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia, for example. Some of these highly productive farmlands, including major crop-growing regions in the United States, are on track to see the sharpest drops in harvests due to climate change. That's bad news not just for farmers, but also for everyone who eats — especially as it becomes harder and more expensive to feed a more crowded, hungrier world, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, six key staple crops will see an 11.2 percent decline by the end of the century compared to a world without warming, even as farmers try to adapt. And the largest drops aren't occurring in the poorer, more marginal farmlands, but in places that are already major food producers. These are regions like the US Midwest that have been blessed with good soil and ideal weather for raising staples like maize and soy. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. But when that weather is less than ideal, it can drastically reduce agricultural productivity. Extreme weather has already begun to eat into harvests this year: Flooding has destroyed rice in Tajikistan, cucumbers in Spain, and bananas in Australia. Severe storms in the US this spring caused millions of dollars in damages to crops. In past years, severe heat has led to big declines in blueberries, olives, and grapes. And as the climate changes, rising average temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are poised to diminish yields, while weather events like droughts and floods reaching greater extremes could wipe out harvests more often. 'It's not a mystery that climate change will affect our food production,' said Andrew Hultgren, an agriculture researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 'That's the most weather exposed sector in the economy.' The question is whether these adaptations can continue to keep pace with warming. To figure this out, Hultgren and his team looked at crop and weather data from 54 countries around the world dating back to the 1940s. They specifically looked at how farmers have adapted to changes in the climate that have already occurred, focusing on maize, wheat, rice, cassava, sorghum, and soybean. Combined, these crops provide two-thirds of humanity's calories. In the Nature paper, Hultgren and his team reported that in general, adaptation can slow some crop losses due to climate change, but not all of them. And the decrease in our food production could be devastating: For every degree Celsius of warming, global food production is likely to decline by 120 calories per person per day. That's even taking into account how climate change can make growing seasons longer and how more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can encourage plant growth. In the moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario — leading to between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 — rising incomes and adaptations would only offset one-third of crop losses around the world. 'Looking at that 3 degrees centigrade warmer [than the year 2000] future corresponds to about a 13 percent loss in daily recommended per capita caloric consumption,' Hultgren said. 'That's like everyone giving up breakfast … about 360 calories for each person, for each day.' The researchers also mapped out where the biggest crop declines — and increases — are likely to occur as the climate warms. As the world's most productive farmlands get hit hard, cooler countries like Russia and Canada are on track for larger harvests. The map below shows in red where crop yields are poised to shrink and in blue where they may expand: Some of the biggest crop-growing regions in the world are likely to experience the largest declines in yield as the climate changes. Nature The results complicate the assumption that poor countries will directly bear the largest losses in food production due to climate change. The wealthy, large-scale food-growers may see the biggest dropoffs, according to the study. However, poor countries will still be affected since many crops are internationally traded commodities, and the biggest producers are exporters. A smaller harvest means higher food prices around the world. Less wealthy regions are also facing their own crop declines from disasters and climate change, though at smaller scales. All the while, the global population is rising, albeit much more slowly than in the past. It's a recipe for more food insecurity for more people. Rice is an exception to this trend. Its overall yields are actually likely to increase in a warmer world: Rice is a versatile crop and unlike the other staples, it benefits from higher nighttime temperatures. 'Rice turns out to be the most flexibly adapted crop and largely through adaptations protected from large losses under even a high warming future,' Hultgren said. That's a boon for regions like South and Southeast Asia. Related This is how much meat and dairy hurt the climate Decreasing the available calories isn't the only way climate change is altering food, however. The nutrition content can change with shifts in rainfall and temperature too, though Hultgren and his colleagues didn't account for this in their study. Scientists have previously documented how higher levels of carbon dioxide can cause crops like rice to have lower levels of iron, zinc, and B vitamins. So the food we will be eating in the future may be more scarce and less nutritious as well. And while climate change can impair our food supply, the way we make food in turn harms the climate. About one-third of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions stem from food production, just under half of that from meat and dairy. That's why food production has to be a major front in how we adapt to climate change, and reduce rising temperatures overall.
Vox
28-05-2025
- Health
- Vox
Gen Z misery, explained in one chart
The kids, it's been suggested, are not okay. For decades, established research showed that happiness and well-being levels tend to peak during youth in your late teens and 20s, drop during midlife, and rise again in old age. But this U-shaped happiness curve is now morphing, according to the results from a recent global study: Many of the world's young people are not flourishing. 'Young people — and this is a universal finding — in general, are not doing well,' says Byron Johnson, the director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University and a co-author of the study. 'That U is becoming a J. It's flattening. That's cause for concern, not just here in the United States, but it's cause for concern all over the world.' The results come from the Global Flourishing Study, a multiyear project from researchers at Harvard and Baylor that uses survey data from Gallup to measure levels of well-being worldwide. Data was collected between 2022 and 2024 from over 200,000 adults in 23 countries and territories. To measure flourishing, researchers surveyed participants in core areas such as happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Taken together, these dimensions represent the Flourishing Index Score, or how much a person is said to be flourishing. (Financial and material stability also play a role in flourishing, but were excluded when examining the relationship between flourishing and age.) In the US and many other geographically and culturally diverse countries, young people between the ages of 18 and 29 do not appear to be flourishing. In Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, flourishing increases with age. The gulf between young and old is most pronounced in the US, researchers found. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The findings are not universal. Hong Kong and Japan show the traditional U-shaped course of flourishing, while in India, Israel, Kenya, Poland, and Tanzania, flourishing decreases throughout the lifespan. In the United States, the results of the study echo other research that shows young people are struggling. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40 percent of high school students reported feeling consistently hopeless or sad in 2023, compared to 30 percent in 2013. Nearly half of Gen Z report often or always feeling anxious, per a 2023 Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey. The American Psychological Association's 2023 Stress in America survey found young people experience more stress than older cohorts. Today's young people are lonelier than previous generations, another study found. As additional waves of data are analyzed, researchers can identify what causes young people to struggle, Johnson says. Early observations have shown that religious service attendance contributes to flourishing. 'It could be that regular religious service attendance gives people purpose, maybe it gives them meaning in their life, and these are major factors in flourishing,' Johnson says. 'But maybe it also gives them support networks.' Young people's lack of engagement in group activities more broadly could be impacting their well-being, Johnson says. Despite ranking highly in financial security, countries like the US and Germany fall behind in areas like close relationships, meaning, and purpose. Meanwhile, societal emphasis on individualism may make young people less inclined to engage with and support their neighbors and peers. 'Once you really, seriously think of others,' Johnson says, 'instead of just focusing on yourself, it is, in fact, a game changer for so many people.' Social media is commonly cited as a culprit of young people's suffering, and Johnson believes it plays a role, due to the negative impacts of comparison online and forgoing in-person socializing for digital connection. But isn't the sole contributor, he says. It could also be that young people's flourishing levels improve with age, time, and change in circumstances. Researchers will continue to survey the same sample of participants over the next few years to find out, Johnson says.
CBC
19-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Alberta Utilities Commission greenlights application for waste-to-energy facility
The Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) has approved Varme Energy's application to build a waste-to-energy facility, that would use carbon capture and storage technology to convert solid waste from Edmonton into energy. The AUC, the province's independent utilities regulator, approved the application on May 2. Varme Energy CEO Sean Collins told CBC News that there has been significant progress over the past six month to get the project to fruition. "We've been spending pretty significant time on all of the key permits and approvals through the project, and [have] been making really strong progress on that front," Collins said. "One of the reasons we're so focused on Edmonton is because we have the No. 1 and No. 2 biggest CO2 pipelines in the world originating out of Edmonton." Varme Energy, a subsidiary of Norwegian-based Varme Energy AS, applied to the commission for approval to construct and operate a 19.6-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant, called the Heartland Waste-to-Energy Facility. The AUC issued the notice of application on March 7. The $300 million project will be located northeast of Edmonton in Strathcona County, seven kilometres northeast of the city of Fort Saskatchewan and five kilometres southwest of the town of Bruderheim. Starting in 2028, Varme Energy is contracted to receive 150,000 tonnes of the City of Edmonton's residential waste every year to generate electricity. "This agreement aligns with the city's objective of reducing landfill reliance by diverting waste toward other beneficial uses," Chris Fowler, the city's acting branch manager of waste services, said in a statement to CBC. The city reached an agreement with Varme Energy after a competitive bidding process, he added. Collins, of Varme Energy, said the project will see municipal garbage trucks bring solid waste to the new facility, instead of the landfill. "We'll combust the waste to extract the energy out and integrate carbon capture, to capture the emissions from the facility, so that you get a landfill-free and carbon-free solution," Collins said. Varme Energy drew inspiration from policies and technological advancements in European countries, Collins said, noting that the continent has about 500 or more operating waste-energy facilities. "The feature and innovation for us is building carbon capture from Day 1," Collins said. Amit Kumar, a University of Alberta environmental engineering researcher, told CBC News that the project holds promise, and could serve as an example for communities across Canada how to rely less on landfills. "You can avoid the landfill fee, but also now you can capture carbon and put it underground, so you have revenue generated to carbon credits," Kumar said. "Municipal solid waste is a challenge for all the communities, all the provinces — you name it. Everywhere we generate waste. So this could be one of the test cases in how successfully this is run, and it could help in implementing it across Canada." Construction on the facility is expected to begin in early 2027, then become fully operational in 2028.
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Australian dies in freak accident in Phuket after a night out with his wife
An Australian man has died in a horrific accident at his hotel in Thailand while on holiday with his wife. Sean Collins, 59, was returning from a night out with his wife, Carla Baird, 58, when it was believed he lost his footing on the stairs inside his Phuket hotel just after 1am on Thursday. Ms Baird told police Mr Collins had walked ahead of her up the stairs, reaching the third floor, while 'staggering'. She said he slipped before plummeting past her to the first floor. First responders arrived to find Mr Collins lying facedown on the tiled floor at the base of the stairwell, surrounded by a pool of blood. Medics administered CPR and rushed him to Patong Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. Mr Collins and his wife went sightseeing earlier in the day before ending the evening drinking in the Patong district of the island. They were due to check out of the hotel and return to Australia the following day. Patong Police Lieutenant Wisanu Chumee said officers collected CCTV footage from the hotel and were investigating the incident. He said the hotel's receptionist had heard a noise shortly after the couple arrived home. 'The receptionist saw them walk past,' he said. 'Five minutes later, staff heard a sound like someone falling from a height so they went to investigate. '(They) found the man lying on the floor and bleeding with his wife nearby.' One image from the scene, too graphic to publish, showed Mr Collins in a black singlet and shorts on his stomach on the ground floor. A thick puddle of blood had massed around his head at the bottom of the stairwell.
Vox
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The rising tension between India and Pakistan, briefly explained
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. India and Pakistan seem headed for a military conflict in the wake of India's worst terrorist attack in years. The question is what form that clash will take and just how far the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors could escalate. The latest crisis in the long-running tensions between the two nations began on April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people in Pahalgam, a popular tourist resort in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir. Pakistan and India each control parts of the region of Kashmir and each claim the entirety of it, a dispute that dates back to the partition of British India in 1947. The two countries have fought several wars and a number of smaller skirmishes over the territory. The attackers appear to have targeted Hindu men, reportedly asking some of the victims their names or testing if they could recite Quranic verses before killing them. A militant group called the Resistance Front has claimed responsibility for the attack. Indian authorities say the group is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which carried out 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, and which has widely reported links to Pakistan's security services. Pakistan claims Lashkar-e-Taiba has been essentially dismantled. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Amid public outrage over the attacks, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to 'raze whatever is left of the terror haven,' an implicit threat against Pakistan, which India has long accused of backing terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Pakistani government has denied any links to the attacks, and the Indian government has yet to publicly present evidence of Pakistani complicity. Late Tuesday, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X that 'Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends carrying out military action against Pakistan in the next 24-36 hours,' a claim that followed a statement from Pakistan's defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, that an Indian attack was 'imminent.' India and Pakistan's fight over Kashmir, briefly explained There has been a long-running anti-India insurgency in the parts of Kashmir that India controls, which, despite denials from Islamabad, has been widely reported to be backed by Pakistan. In 2019, after 40 Indian police were killed in a suicide bombing in Kashmir, India carried out airstrikes against militant targets on Pakistani territory. Pakistan responded with strikes of its own on Indian Kashmir, which led to an air battle and downing of an Indian fighter jet. A short time after that, India revoked Kashmir's semiautonomous status, putting it under direct control of the federal government, and pushing through a series of controversial legal changes that have stoked resentment among Kashmiri Muslims but which Modi's government credits with tamping down insurgent violence. Indian authorities have also been heavily promoting Kashmiri sites like Pahalgam, a scenic mountain area known as the 'Switzerland of India,' as tourist destinations, arguing that thanks to their reforms, the region is safe for all. Sumit Ganguly, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and expert on South Asian politics told me, that as such, India's leaders may feel their response 'will have to be something rather dramatic and visible.' How far could conflict between India and Pakistan go? One possibility is that India could send troops into the Pakistan-administered areas of Kashmir, a dramatic response but one perhaps less likely to trigger all out war than an incursion into what India considers Pakistan-proper. Strikes on alleged terrorist training camps would be one option; attacks on the Pakistani military itself would be a much more dramatic step. And as always, there's no guarantee that a limited war would stay limited. As has been the case since the 1970s, when the two countries first developed nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear war looms over the crisis. The two countries have around 170 nuclear warheads each and even a 'limited' nuclear exchange between them could kill tens of millions of people. India has a 'no-first use' policy on nuclear weapons (though some officials' recent statements have cast doubt on that commitment) but Pakistan does not. Asif, the Pakistani defense minister, said this week that Pakistan would only consider using nuclear weapons if 'there is a direct threat to our existence.' In past blowups over Kashmir, US diplomacy has played a key role in talking the two sides back from the brink. The State Department said Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had plans to speak with Pakistani and Indian leaders. But there's not much indication President Donald Trump is deeply involved. He initially issued a strong statement backing India following the Pahalgam attack, then when asked about the crisis on Air Force One on Friday, said, somewhat nonsensically, that 'There have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years. It's been the same, but I am sure they'll figure it out one way or the other.' (India and Pakistan have only existed as separate countries for 77 years.) This time around, the comment suggested, the two countries may have to find their own way back from the brink.
