Excursion Report #2

Joshua Morrison

Event: Earth Optimism Lectures: What's for Dinner? Reconnecting Our Food With Our Climate

Event Host: Dr. Jessica Fanzo, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

The speaker, Dr. Fanzo, mentioned how one of the major problems facing humanity with regards to climate change is food. Food is both contributing to climate change and will have to be changed as humanity adapts. Also, there are still many people who are malnourished, and 40% of the global population cannot afford a healthy diet, while many others are overweight or obese. One of the ways to help solve this problem is through switching to a full plant based diet, but that isn't the only thing that has to change. Humanity is also too reliant on staples: wheat, corn, rice, and we need to diversify how we get our grain, switching to "ancient grains" like amaranth instead. Climate change is predicted to reduce yields from corn and rice, along with coffee, while only slightly increasing yields of wheat. This comes with a population that will continue to grow first before it is expected to decline. This is, of course, one of the many parts of our complex modern food system. Another part of our food system that can be improved is the efficiency of bringing food to people, and dealing with the fact that the cheapest foods are ultra-processed. The speaker suggests solutions like harnessing political momentum or helping farms in Africa and Asia, which produce 65% of the global food supply, adapt to climate change by providing tools. Other solutions proposed by the speaker include trying to mitigate conflicts of interest, continuing to research and advance technology, and trying not to miss the forest for the trees.

I agree with all Dr. Fanzo's ideas more than her solutions. Fanzo mentioned being opportunistic, and that I definitely agree with. As I said in the previous excursion report, it is a human trait to not be good at long term planning. Humans are capable of doing so, but it requires effort, so when long term planning actually happens, I agree that it should definitely be taken advantage of. It is especially difficult to cause global change amongst humanity and fight inerita. Our current system is a process that took several hundred years to form. We are a species in the middle of a mass extinction even, so making our food system resilient to and not as much of a cause of climate change basically means adapting to a mass extinction event. Mass extinction events are very hard to adapt to. And this is just related to climate change. So, changing the logistics, as Fanzo suggested, is not something that can be easily done. At the same time, as Kida points out in Don't Believe Everything You Think, one person stepping up can lead to many others stepping up as well. Raising awareness of the issue through events such as the one I attended is I think the best way to solve the problem.

I did not observe any instances of logical fallacies, however, I would like to note that Fanzo is the director of the "Food for Humanity" initiative, so it would make sense that her talk would focus on food. While our food system is definitely something that both can be improved and needs to be modified to adapt to our self-imposed mass extinction, fixing our food system is not THE solution to climate change. I think that Fanzo could have been more specific in her talk about the big picture, and at least mention that there are other problems that also need to be solved. Yes, food is an issue, but having some progress on food and some on energy is better than just progress on food, yet only focusing on food will ignore this. Water is another major concern, and so is finding shelter. Again, humans are animals too, and humans will try to migrate to more favorable climates just like everything else. We, however, are also tribalistic and don't like foreigners entering our "territory," so dealing with immigration and finding clean water are two more issues that cannot be ignored. At the same time, it is easy to use the existance of other problems as an excuse to do nothing. Making progress on food is still better than no progress at all. This goes back to being opportunistic and creating opportunities, Fanzo's main points that I agree with. Yes, other problems exist. Food is one of them, and it is a very important one, but it isn't the magic solution to climate change, because nothing is.

Click here for excursion report #3!