My climate story is inextricably interwoven with that of my 21 year old daughter, Bella.
As an educator, I have been focused on connecting kids and nature throughout my career, so I felt the weight and urgency of the climate crisis early on. But having kids of my own added another layer. I’ve heard people say that having kids is like pulling your heart out and watching it walk around. I strongly relate to that intense desire to protect them, and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s no easy task, especially now.
I did my best to raise my kids with a strong sense of their place in the natural world – engaging in habitat restoration, watching the full moon rise over Lake Michigan and some light pagan rituals to celebrate the seasons. I homeschooled my son because I didn’t want him to spend his days indoors, under the fluorescent lights. When it was time for my kids to go to the school, I ran the garden there, making sure every kid got to spend some time outside, hands in the soil.
Through my work at a local nature center, I learned and appreciated the guideline “no tragedies before third grade,” so I did my best to shield my own kids from the realities of environmental degradation, including the climate crisis. Yet, somehow Bella tuned in. (Did I fail to protect her?) I think she was 7 when she became adamant that we get rid of the car. We would try periods of only biking, but there would inevitably be meltdowns and failed errands. I tried to assure her that we were living with care. I told her that there were many smart adults working hard to fix the situation. That was all I had.
Fast forward to 2018, Bella’s Junior year of high school. That year, my dad died in June, my dog died in July, and in August, Bella left for a year abroad in Ecuador. It was rough. Days after she left, I flew to Los Angeles for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership training, feeling a need to do everything in my power to address the source of her anxiety and to find a way to make a difference in this monolithic challenge. The training was simultaneously heartening, heartbreaking and infuriating.
When Bella returned, we went to Minneapolis where I was a mentor and Bella a trainee in Gore’s program. In retrospect, I realize that about sixty percent of his presentation consists of devastating images of people suffering from climate disasters, which I fear might not have the desired effect. However, I was happy that this training had more of a focus on climate justice. The training also provided many useful tools, not the least of which was the storytelling workshop conducted by Climate Generation, which has been formative for both me and Bella. She even used her story as a reference in a college course.
In September of 2019, soon after our Climate Reality Training, there was a Global Climate Strike. Bella and I, along with her peers and another mother/child pair, worked together to organize a highly successful strike in our town. “Peer pressure is my superpower,” Bella said as she enlisted dozens of students to help and hundreds to walk out of school. The group that worked on the strike ultimately became a Sunrise Movement Hub that is still going strong.
Students spoke to the school board about their climate stories, demanding stronger sustainability policy. The school formed a Sustainability Committee with students, teachers and community experts. I remember it as an energizing time. But Bella remembers it as a painful time. Despite the countless hours she and her peers were putting forward, she couldn’t see real progress being made. (I can now see the long term impacts of this chapter, but it’s been slow.)
Bella burned out on climate action for a while. I have to wonder if I contributed to this in my effort to support her in trying to “turn anxiety into action.” While many of her peers struggled during the pandemic, Bella’s climate consciousness added a painful layer. She has had trouble finding her place in the movement. Though she has engaged in many ways, she hasn’t found the way to have the impact she’s looking for.
As for me, I also burned out on local action for a while, driven by that sense of urgency. But I have found ways of doing this work that work for me.
I have the great fortune of working for It’s Our Future, a program supporting Chicago area high school students in their climate justice advocacy work. I reflect often on what lessons I have learned from my experience with Bella that can ease the way for the students I work with. I foster community among youth and support and mentor them in their efforts while encouraging them to take care of themselves, to celebrate wins, and to have fun.
Recently, Bella got some fringe media attention with the headline “Lone Climate Activist in an Apocalyptic Times Square.” My brother saw the video and asked if she was ok. In fact, I think she’s great. She felt her feelings, shouted her truth, and when the smoke cleared, she was out dancing -finding her joy. What a great model of how to live in this world.
The next chapter in this mother-daughter story involves mindfulness, somatics, and more of a spiritual journey. Bella works in the Religious and Spiritual life office at her school where she hosts climate grief circles. I had the opportunity to help facilitate a retreat based on Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects. Macy highlights that the pain and grief we feel is rooted in love – for other people and other species.
As we work to embrace dualities, finding ways to hold both; grief and joy, rage and determination, I am profoundly grateful for this shared chapter with Bella. While we are not together geographically, it’s an incredible gift to continue in conversation, finding ways to support each other in feeling our feelings, speaking our truths, experiencing joy, and doing our best to make an impact.
Rachel is the passionate and grateful Program Manager for It’s Our Future where she mentors young people in the fight for climate justice. She lives near the shores of Lake Michigan and the great city of Chicago in an empty nest with her husband Colin and their old dog, Bear.
The post Bella and Me: A Mother-Daughter Climate Story appeared first on Climate Generation.
Climate Change
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Global yields of wheat are around 10% lower now than they would have been without the influence of climate change, according to a new study.
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks at data on climate change and growing conditions for wheat and other major crops around the world over the past 50 years.
It comes as heat and drought have this year been putting wheat supplies at risk in key grain-producing regions, including parts of Europe, China and Russia.
The study finds that increasingly hot and dry conditions negatively impacted yields of three of the five key crops examined.
Overall, global grain yields soared during the study period due to technological advancements, improved seeds and access to synthetic fertilisers.
But these yield setbacks have “important ramifications for prices and food security”, the study authors write.
Grain impacts
Most parts of the world have experienced “significant” yield increases in staple crops since the mid-20th century.
The new study notes that, in the past 50 years, yields increased by 69-123% for the five staple crops included in the research – wheat, maize, barley, soya beans and rice.
But crop production is increasingly threatened by climate change and extreme weather. A 2021 study projected “major shifts” in global crop productivity due to climate change within the next two decades.
Earlier this year, Carbon Brief mapped out news stories of crops being destroyed around the world by heat, drought, floods and other weather extremes in 2023-24. Maize and wheat were the crops that appeared most frequently in these reports.
Hot and dry weather is currently threatening wheat crops in parts of China, the world’s largest wheat producer, Reuters reported this month.
In the UK, wheat crops are struggling amid the “driest start to spring in England for almost 70 years”, the Times recently reported. Farm groups say some crops are already failing, the Guardian said.
As a result, global wheat supplies are “tight”, according to Bloomberg, with price rises possible depending on weather conditions in parts of Europe, China and Russia.
Food security and prices
The study uses climate datasets, modelling and national crop statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to assess crop production and climate trends in key grain-producing countries over 1974-2023, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, the EU, Russia and the US.
The researchers assess climate observations and then use crop models to calculate what yields would have been with and without these climate changes.
For example, “if it has warmed 1C over 50 years and the model says that 1C leads to 5% yield loss, we’d calculate that the warming trend caused a loss of 5%”, Prof David Lobell, the lead study author and a professor at Stanford University, tells Carbon Brief.
The study looks at two reanalysis climate datasets that include information on temperature and rainfall over the past 50 years: TerraClimate (TC) and ERA5-Land. (Reanalysis data combines observations with a modern forecasting model.)
The researchers find that yields of three of the five crops are lower than they would have been without warmer temperatures and other climate impacts in the past 50 years.
Yields were lower than they otherwise would have been by 12-14% for barley, 8-12% for wheat and 4% for maize.
The impacts on soya beans were less clear as there were “significant differences” between data sources. But both datasets show a negative impact on yields, ranging from 2% to 8%.
The effects on rice yields were inconclusive, with one dataset showing a positive effect of around 1% while the other showed a negative effect of about 3%.
The chart below shows the estimated yield impacts for each crop based on the calculations from the two climate datasets.
Given soaring overall crop yields during this time, impacts of 4-13% “may seem trivial”, the researchers write. But, they say, it can have “important ramifications for prices and food security” given growing food demand, noting:
“The overall picture of the past half-century is that climate trends have led to a deterioration of growing conditions for many of the main grain-producing regions of the world.”
Water stress and heat
The study also assesses the impacts that warming and vapour pressure deficit – a key driver of plant water stress – have on crop yields.
Vapour pressure deficit is the difference between the amount of water vapour in the air and the point at which water vapour in the air becomes saturated. As air becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapour.
A high deficit can reduce plant growth and increase water stress. The models show that these effects may be the main driver of losses in grain yield, with heat having a more “indirect effect”, as higher temperatures drive water stress.
The study finds that vapour pressure deficit increased in most temperate regions in the past 50 years.
The researchers compare their data to climate modelling simulations covering the past 50 years. They find largely similar results, but notice a “significant underestimation” of vapour pressure deficit increases in temperate regions in most climate models.
Many maize-growing areas in the EU, China, Argentina and much of Africa have vapour deficit trends that “exceed even the highest trend in models”, they write.
The researchers also find that most regions experienced “rapid warming” during the study period, with the average crop-growing season now warmer than more than 80% of growing seasons 50 years ago.
The findings indicate that, in some areas, “even the coolest growing season in the present day is warmer than the warmest season that would have occurred 50 years ago”.
An exception to this is in the US and Canada, they find, with most maize and soya bean crop areas in the US experiencing lower levels of warming than other parts of the world and a “slight cooling” in wheat-growing areas of the northern Great Plains and central Canada.
(The central US has experienced a cooling trend in summer daytime temperatures since the middle of the 20th century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are many theories behind this “warming hole”, which has continued despite climate change.)
CO2 greening
Dr Corey Lesk, a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College who studies the impacts of climate on crops, says these findings are in line with other recent estimates. He tells Carbon Brief:
“There are some uncertainties and sensitivity to model specification here – but it’s somewhat likely climate change has already reduced crop yields in the global mean.”
The study’s “main limitation” is that it is “behind” on including certain advances in understanding how soil moisture impacts crops, Lesk adds:
“Moisture changes and CO2 [carbon dioxide] effects are the largest present uncertainties in past and future crop impacts of climate change. This paper is somewhat limited in advancing understanding on those aspects, but it’s illuminating to pause and take stock.”
The research looks at whether the benefits of CO2 increases during the past 50 years exceed the negative effects of higher levels of the greenhouse gas.
Rising CO2 levels can boost plant growth in some areas in a process called “CO2 fertilisation”. However, a 2019 study found that this “global greening” could be stalled by growing water stress.
Yield losses for wheat, maize and barley “likely exceeded” any benefits of CO2 increases in the past 50 years, the study finds.
The opposite is true for soya beans and rice, they find, with a net-positive impact of more than 4% on yields.
Climate science has “done a remarkable job of anticipating global impacts on the main grains and we should continue to rely on this science to guide policy decisions”, Lobell, the lead study author, says in a press release.
He adds that there may be “blind spots” on specialised crops, such as coffee, cocoa, oranges and olives, which “don’t have as much modelling” as key commodity crops, noting:
“All these have been seeing supply challenges and price increases. These matter less for food security, but may be more eye-catching for consumers who might not otherwise care about climate change.”
The post Global wheat yields would be ‘10%’ higher without climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Global wheat yields would be ‘10%’ higher without climate change
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