Fifty years ago, on this day, June 5th, 1974 we start to wonder about how food production might be affected…,
1 Stephen Schneider, “Food: The Next Crisis,” The National Observer (5 June 1974): p. 18. This article appears to have been the first time that Schneider mentioned publicly the idea of a “genesis strategy” to deal with the potential long-term effects of climate on the global food supply.
(Henderson 2014, Dilemmas of Reticence)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was some people were worrying about food running out as part of that Malthusian moment, and the Green Revolution hadn’t really kicked in. And past few years harvests had been weird, weird weather. Two months earlier Henry Kissinger had given his speech about the dangers of a change in the climate at the UN . And here’s Stephen Schneider talking about the impacts that changing climate will have. At this point, not everyone is entirely sure that the problem is going to be CO2 build up. That consensus doesn’t really start to firm up until ‘75 to ‘77. By ‘79, I think it’s fairly well accepted, except by a few idiots like Robert Jastrow and John Mason.
What we learn is that we’ve been worrying about where the food’s gonna come from, for a very long time. And it’s this sort of thing that we’ll have had Crispin Tickell pondering, ahead of his sabbatical at Harvard.
What happened next? There were more food and adaptation related issues. See The Great Adaptation: Climate, Capitalism and Catastrophe by Romain Felli for more details.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
June 5, 1990 – The Australian Capital Territory adopts the “Toronto Target”
June 5, 1993 and 2011- let’s have a march for #climate… It will make us feel good.
June 5, 2002 – John Howard says Australia won’t ratify Kyoto Protocol