• Action Alerts
•  

As The World Warms, Food Quality Diminishes

Posted on July 25, 2005

Have you seen Neglected Sky? This flash animation short calls for the ratification for the Kyoto Protocol. Recent studies conclude there is yet another reason to be conscerned about global warming: food detrioration.

Glenn Scherer explains in hisn recent article published in Grist Magazine that global climate warming causes crops to grow faster and larger and more more water-use efficient and resistant to stress. But there's a catch: The insects, mammals, and impoverished people in developing countries who feed on this bounty may end up malnourished, or even starving.

A small but growing body of research is finding that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, while increasing crop yield, decrease the nutritional value of plants. More than a hundred studies, for example, have found that when CO2 from fossil-fuel burning builds up in plant tissues, nitrogen (essential for making protein) declines. A smaller number of studies hint at another troubling impact: As atmospheric CO2 levels go up, trace elements in plants (such as zinc and iron, which are vital to animal and human life) go down, potentially malnourishing all those that subsist on the plants.

READ the entire article, "The Food, The Bad and The Ugly

Calculate your carbon emissions with SafeClimate's Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Related Films: Neglected Sky