[A-List] Russia's agony a wakeup call to the World

[Tony B.]

Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World

By Stephen Leahy

August 11, 2010 -- VIENNA, Aug 11, 2010 (IPS) - A wind turbine on an acre of 
northern Iowa farmland could generate 300,000 dollars worth of 
greenhouse-gas-free electricity a year. Instead, the U.S. government pays 
out billions of dollars to subsidise grain for ethanol fuel that has little 
if any impact on global warming, according to Lester Brown.

"The smartest thing the U.S. could do is phase out ethanol subsidies," says 
Brown, the founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, in 
reference to rising food prices resulting from the unprecedented heat wave 
in western Russia that has decimated crops and killed at least 15,000 
people.

"The lesson here is that we must take climate change far more seriously, 
make major cuts in emissions and fast before climate change is out of 
control," Brown, one of the world's leading experts on agriculture and food, 
told IPS.

Average temperatures during the month of July were eight degrees Celsius 
above normal in Moscow, he said, noting that "such a huge increase in 
temperature over an entire month is just unheard of."

On Monday, Moscow reached 37 C when the normal temperature for August is 21 
C. It was the 28th day in a row that temperatures exceeded 30 C.

Soil moisture has fallen to levels seen only once in 500 years, says Brown. 
Wheat and other grain yields are expected to decline by 40 percent or more 
in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine - regions that provide 25 percent of the 
world's wheat exports. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a few 
days ago that Russia would ban all grain exports.

Food prices will rise but how much is not known at this point, says Brown. 
"What we do know, however, is that the prices of wheat, corn, and soybeans 
are actually somewhat higher in early August 2010 than they were in early 
August 2007, when the record-breaking 2007-08 run-up in grain prices began."

Emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 from burning fossil fuels trap more 
of the sun's energy. Climate experts expected the number and intensity of 
heat waves and droughts to increase as a result. In 2009, heat and fire 
killed hundreds in Australia during the worst drought in more than century, 
which devastated the country's agriculture sector. In 2003, a European heat 
wave killed 53,000 people but as it occurred late in the summer crop, yields 
were not badly affected.

If a heat wave like Russia's were centred around the grain- producing 
regions near Chicago or Beijing, the impacts could be many times worse 
because each of these regions produce five times the amount of grain as 
Russia does, says Brown. Such an event could result in the loss of 100 to 
200 million tonnes of grain with unimaginable affects on the world's food 
supply.

"Russia's heat wave is a wake-up call to the world regarding the 
vulnerability of the global food supply," he said.

The global climate is warming and most food crops are both heat and drought 
sensitive. Rice yields have already fallen by 10-20 percent over the last 25 
years in parts of Thailand, Vietnam, India and China due to global warming, 
new research has shown. Data from 227 fully-irrigated farms that grow "green 
revolution" crops are suffering significant yield declines due to warming 
temperatures at night, researchers found.

"As nights get hotter, rice yields drop," reported Jarrod Welch of the 
University of California at San Diego and colleagues in the Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Aug. 9. Previous studies have shown 
this result in experimental plots, but this is the first under widespread, 
real-world conditions.

With such pressures on the world's food supply it is simply wrong-headed to 
use 25 percent of U.S. grain for ethanol as a fuel for cars, said Brown.

"Ethanol subsidies must be phased out and real cuts in carbon emissions made 
and urgently," he said.