www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20210211-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf?_t=1613100006
Three “levers” for crushing the current “cheaper food paradigm,” are put forward:
First: “Change dietary patterns to reduce food demand…. Continued growth in food demand exerts ever-growing pressure on land resources.” How is this to be achieved? The most “crucial element … to bring food system emissions in line with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change,” they say, is to downshift humanity away from high-value meat protein diets into predominantly plant-based diets—and to lower food consumption of that too, by reducing “overconsumption of calories.” (Americans watch out. The Royals calculate that “a switch from beef to beans in the diets of the entire U.S. population could free up … 42% of U.S. cropland—for other uses such as ecosystem restoration or more nature-friendly farming.”)
Second: Land must be taken out of farming, “protected and set aside for Nature.” Not on any small scale, either: “This will typically require significant areas of land to be left or managed for nature, primarily because the extinction risk for any species grows as its population size shrinks, and because many large animals require a large area of habitat to sustain an adequate population.”
Third: Farming must be transformed; there must be a forced reduction of the inputs used in modern farming, including of the machinery which has freed men and women from backbreaking labor in the fields.
No one “lever” will work without the others, they repeat, but “dietary change”—reducing “food demand”—is “essential in order to preserve existing native ecosystems and restore those that have been removed or degraded.”
From the last item in this week’s report: “British Empire Think-Tank Tells World, We Intend To Take Away Your Food,”
A Note To Readers
Our cover photo this week highlights a substantial part of the our report below. The crisis of the river, as both the amount of precipitation that falls in the river’s basin and the very visible decline of water storage in the two main dams and reservoirs on the river, is not only of importance to the 40 million people of the southwest who depend upon its waters, but the water that irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land that produces the food for millions more.
While the atmospheric river that hit the southwest provided some temporary relief from what we have seen over recent months of an intensifying drought, it really only paused that process. You can see that in the U.S. Drought Monitor for California below.
That is followed by an article titled, “California’s rainy season is starting a month later now than in 1960, increasing fire risk, new study shows,” highlighting one aspect of the ongoing shift of the southwest’s climate.
Again, as I have written in these pages often, the necessity of great water projects must be on the agenda once again. And, of course, the revival of the greatest of those projects should lead the way. That is the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). I shall cover the proposed project from the President John Kennedy era again here soon.
The Colorado River section of the report follows.
Next we report on both the exciting landings on Mars by the rockets from three nations in just a one week period, and some coverage of the Trump initiated Artemis Project, which at least for now the Biden administration is not going to cancel.
The final section this week is titled, “British Empire Think-Tank Tells World, We Intend To Take Away Your Food,” The item begins on page 11. And here is the first paragraph:
“The lead story on Her Majesty’s Royal Institute of International Affairs since its Feb. 3 release, is a ‘Research Paper’ laying out a strategy to systematically reduce food production and consumption worldwide. It proposes doing so by using methods similar to those being employed now to drive down energy use by banning fossil fuels—all in the name of defending ‘Nature.’”
