Rising prices of pretty much everything as a result of climate change is what the meaning of that word above is. It is no secret by now that climate change is and will be even a more significant driver of inflation in all industries across the board. However, the one major area where climate change led global warming would cause major problems would be the rising prices of food. A research study was conducted by Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and European Central Bank, which looked at monthly food price indexes between 1996 and 2021. It involved 121 countries. The result was a shocking realisation that increases in food prices are most strongly associated with the climate.
In Europe, where heat records were broken in 2022, it was found that the heat caused food inflation to rise by between 0.43 and 0.93 percentage points. The research also confirmed that in the next decade, that inflation would be 3 percentage points.
In today’s Pakistan, every time prices of any commodity go high, the reflexive explanation is that the dollar went up. Today’s youngsters are learning that as the driver behind all inflation. I grew up in a different time. Back then, and perhaps some still use this standard, inflation usually used to be blamed on higher petroleum prices. Every time food or something else went up in price, the answer was always about the rise in petroleum prices. The self-labeled experts never hesitated to explain that bringing the vegetables and fruits from the farm to the market and the flour and the cooking oil from the factory to the market are all done via vehicles, which run on petroleum. Petrol goes up, the cost of bringing consumer commodities to the market goes up. Needless to say, the cost of rising electricity for the industries was also mentioned as a side show.
Here is a sad reality to ponder over: today the food prices are also going high because of the petroleum but in a different and more sinister way. The more we use gasoline powered cars and generate electricity using petroleum, the more we ensure that our world would be warming at an exponential rate. And that in turn ensures that agriculture would become difficult in many places. The yields would decline and the places where crops could be grown today would also see their fertility go down before eventually disappearing. This time around, the relationship is inverse. The cheaper the gasoline prices become, the more it will increase in use, which would cause an inflation in food due to excessive heat.
I guess it is quite right when scientists predict that we humans will eventually destroy our civilisation with the advances we are making in science. The more we use the tools we have made to make our lives easier, the closer we inch toward that apocalypse. Our very human habits such as needing food, driving cars, giving birth to more children, migrating toward greener fields, traveling, using advanced devices, and so forth are all contributing toward the destruction of our civilisation. Climate change will continue to encroach upon more and more land denying it for humanity’s use. More people will migrate toward the north globally. Less land for food growth, for people to live in habitable conditions, for the resources that we consume, for the right temperature required for all of the above will only make things worse and make the impact exponential in scale and intensity.
Pakistan being the fourth or fifth most vulnerable state, depending on the week you are reading about it, will see its citizens indulge in extreme acts just to put food on the table due to climateflation. And while incompetent governments have been responsible for citizens’ declining lifestyles, climate change will do quite a number on food prices too. It would be a double whammy, all made by rich nations and delivered to the poor citizens through their local goons.
