Essay by Eric Worrall
Nothing to do with Biden and Kamala…
Rising food prices driven by climate crisis threaten world’s poorest, report finds
High cost of staples due to extreme weather could lead to more malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest
Sarah Butler
Mon 21 Jul 2025 09.01 AEST
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New research links last year’s surges in the price of potatoes in the UK, cabbages in South Korea, onions in India, and cocoa in Ghana to weather extremes that “exceeded all historical precedent prior to 2020”.
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It found food price spikes can have a wider economic impact, making it harder for economies to keep down overall inflation and so, for example, bring interest rates down. A hot dry spring in the UK this year, for example, partly drove unexpectedly high UK inflation figures published last week, dampening expectations for further interest rate cuts this summer.
The report also suggests “high rates of inflation can directly alter election outcomes in modern democracies”.
Maximilian Kotz, a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow at Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the lead author of the report, said: “It is clear the cost of living played a role in last year’s election in the US.”
He added: “These effects are going to continue to become worse in the future. Until we get to net zero emissions extreme weather will only get worse, but it’s already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world.
“People are noticing, with rising food prices No 2 on the list of climate impacts they see in their lives, second only to extreme heat itself.
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The study referenced by the article (I think);
Climate extremes, food price spikes, and their wider societal risks
Maximilian Kotz, Markus Donat, Tom Lancaster, Miles Parker, Pete Smith, Anna Taylor Smith and Sylvia H Vetter
Accepted Manuscript online 13 June 2025 • © 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Article information
Abstract
2024 was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above preindustrial climate conditions for the first time and records broken across large parts of Earth’s surface. Among the widespread impacts of exceptional heat, rising food prices are beginning to play a prominent role in public perception, now the second most frequently cited impact of climate change experienced globally, following only extreme heat itself. Recent econometric analysis confirms that abnormally high temperatures directly cause higher food prices, as impacts on agricultural production translate into supply shortages and food price inflation. These analyses track changes in overall price aggregates which are typically slow-moving, but specific food goods can also experience much stronger short-term spikes in response to extreme heat. In this perspective, we document numerous examples from recent years in which food prices of specific goods spiked in response to climate extremes. By evaluating the extremity of the associated climate conditions, we thereby build a global and climatological context for this phenomenon. We further review the knock-on societal risks which these effects may bring with the ongoing intensification of extremes under climate change. These range from increasing economic inequality and the burden on health systems, as well as destabilising monetary and political systems. We discuss challenges and priorities for research and policy to address these risks.
Read more: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ade45f/meta
The main study hilights the risk for low income households;
A catalyst for wider societal risks
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Importantly, these climate-driven food price spikes can aggravate risks across a range of sectors of society. First, rising food prices have direct implications for food security, particularly for low-income households. This can result in a) households spending the same but buying less (either going hungry or depending on sources of charity); b) spending the same but buying cheaper options (typically cutting out nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables which are more expensive sources of calories) c) spending an even higher proportion of their income on food (with knock on effects on other areas of essential expenditure). These effects can be strongly regressive given the substantial disparities in the share of income spent on food by low- and high-income households. For example, in the USA the lowest income quintile spends approximately 33% of income on food compared to 8% in the highest income quintile. The fact that larger price increases occur in hotter and typically poorer countries will further amplify these effects
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Fourth, food price inflation associated with climate-extremes may come to bear increasing political relevance. Anecdotal evidence from across history often cites food price increases as a precursor to political unrest and social upheaval (from the French and Russian revolutions of the 18th and 20th centuries, to the 2008/09 food crisis and 2011 Arab Spring). Such links are substantiated further by evidence showing a robust relationship between food prices and social unrest at monthly time-scales. Moreover, high rates of inflation can directly alter election outcomes in modern democracies. For example, high inflation reduced support for incumbent Democrats in the 2024 US election, and boosted support for extremist, anti-system and populist parties in elections held in advanced economies since 1948. These effects can be particularly strong when inflation affects real wages, as is the case with food prices.
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Read more: Same link as above
The suggestion climate change is a major driver of food inflation is absurd, given the impact climate policies in the USA and elsewhere have on farm input and food distribution prices. For example California, arguably the most extreme green state in the union, farmers and truckers pay more for diesel that pretty much anywhere else in the USA. Such prices are a consequence of California’s regulatory hostility towards fossil fuel.
These higher input prices, driven by state regulations, also appear to be impacting food prices in California, along with all the other environmental regulations California inflicts on farmers. California with its benign climate and fertile farmlands should have the cheapest food prices in the union, but that isn’t the case.
Obviously diesel prices aren’t the only factor, California’s overregulation of industry and radical minimum wage policies also play a part. But diesel prices are important to farming and shipping of produce.
California governor Gavin Newsom appears to have belatedly realised his administration could be the next victim of climate policy inflation voter backlash, if California does not change course.
And of course there is the fact that overall global farm yields are rising, a direct contradiction of Kotz’s claims that global warming is harming food production. Farming has always been susceptible to weather. Temporary shortages caused by individual weather events are blips which have no long term impact on rising global agricultural productivity.
Extended crop yield meta-analysis data do not support upward SCC revision
Scientific Reports volume 15, Article number: 5575 (2025) Cite this article
Abstract
The Biden Administration raised its Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimate about fivefold based in part on global crop yield decline projections estimated on a meta-analysis data base first published in 2014. The data set contains 1722 records but half were missing at least one variable (usually the change in CO2) so only 862 were available for multivariate regression modeling. By re-examining the underlying sources I was able to recover 360 records and increase the sample size to 1222. Reanalysis on the larger data set yields very different results. While the original smaller data set implies yield declines of all crop types even at low levels of warming, on the full data set global average yield changes are zero or positive even out to 5 °C warming.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-90254-2
But let’s say I’m wrong. Lets play a thought experiment – what if climate driven food price inflation is a major factor?
Kotz admits that in a climate ravaged world, the most important factor in whether people get to eat regularly is personal wealth. Instead of gambling your nation’s future on an elusive global climate agreement, the safest solution to such a threat is to implement aggressive pro-growth policies, to lift as many of your own people as possible out of poverty.
There has never been and will never be a meaningful global climate agreement, so it is futile to hope the future will be any different. No nation would choose mass starvation over cheating on any future climate agreement.
Past agreements, implemented at great cost to those nations which took them seriously, had no impact on the global rise of global CO2. There is no reason to believe future agreements will be any different.
Lifting your own people out of poverty regardless of CO2 emissions would shield your own people from any climate disruption. And of course, if all nations followed the same strategy, and focussed on economic growth and boosting agricultural productive capacity rather than smashing their economies with carbon quotas, there would be more than enough global wealth to take care of any remaining poor people. Everyone would have enough to eat.
This is only a thought experiment. The claim we face an agricultural climate crisis is absurd, there is no evidence global warming and CO2 has had any negative impact on agriculture. Even NASA has repeatedly admitted the world is visibly greening.
My point is, Kotz’s claims fail on multiple levels. Not only is his claim that climate change is damaging agriculture not supported by the evidence, Kotz’s suggested remedy of attempting to achieve Net Zero also does not make sense. And while food price inflation did cause a drop in support for Democrats, that food price inflation was because of Democrat policies, not because of climate change.
The only safe solution, as always, is to maximise economic growth, to maximise our capacity to deal with whatever the future throws at us.
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