Rising Levels of Carbon Dioxide: It’s personal.

When you think about climate change, the first images, for me anyway, are uncomplicated—a sad polar bear floating on a piece of ice, a melting glacier, a severe storm, (with news crews grasping microphones as large objects whip by their heads).

The images are visceral and  important. They serve as warnings for human behavior that, unless changed, will lead to climate uncertainty and social disruption. But they are also illusory, they show pictures of the “other,” of animals and places that few of us have encountered, let alone experienced.  Often it is entertainment, the thrill of watching an accident in real-life, a way of experiencing our fears without doing real harm to ourselves. 

A large majority of people, even in the United States, recognize climate change as real, but the percent who are actively changing their lifestyle, aggressively fighting to prevent climate change is much smaller. Why?

Pushing back is personal.  If we experience something firsthand it can affect our outlook, or psyche, in ways that cause us to fight back, to try and make a difference. But, sadly, for many of us, climate change is impersonal, something that is happening away from where I live, and while I may be concerned, I am not motivated to prevent it. Real, personal harm is not involved. Yet there is another aspect of climate change, a fundamental feature that affects you directly, whether you live near an ocean, or a polar bear.  It is a characteristic that is basic, and essential to your life, to your well-being.

And I doubt you have ever heard of it.

If you have read anything about climate change, then it is not news to you that carbon dioxide, CO2, is recognized as the primary global warming or greenhouse gas. The concentration of CO2 has already increased by about 30% since the 1960s and will increase another 50% by century’s end.  Adding billions of tons of it to the atmosphere each year results in a rapidly warming world and an uncertain climate. 

But CO2 does something else as well, something directly.  It is a resource for plants—the more CO2, the more plants will grow.  

And while that may seem, well, good, it’s more complicated. Because it turns out that plants growing faster doesn’t mean they are growing better.  There is mounting consensus that  rising CO2 will affect plant chemistry, and not always in a good way. Numerous scientists and nutritionists are showing that more CO2 will result in less protein, and a dilution of elements such as zinc and iron in plant tissues.

So what?  If polar bears are removed from peoples experience, are plants any better?  Would a city dweller (most of the world’s people live in cities), care what CO2 might be doing to plants?  It’s not like they are living on a farm or in a forest. 

And yet, every city dweller must, by necessity, come into contact with plants on a daily basis.  What do we call these encounters? 

Easy. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Food comes from plants. They are necessary to human needs.  And if you mess with it, if you lower the quality, you will be affected no matter where you live.   Rising CO2 has consequences beyond climate change.  

It is the nature, the breadth of those consequences that has been the subject of my research since the 1980s.  I and others have documented that recent increases in CO2 have lowered the protein concentration of rice, a global food consumed by 2 billion people each year.  And not just rice, protein is declining in wheat, which is the basis for more food products than any other cereal, from pie crusts to Pop-Tarts, from ramen noodles to rolls.  Potatoes, oats, barley are also showing a decline in protein. 

There’s more. The decay in elemental concentration of micronutrients like zinc and iron as CO2 rises is also significant. Micronutrient deficiencies can associated with stunting, a condition associated with approximately 22 percent of children globally (~150 million); deficiencies can harm cognitive development, metabolism, obesity, diabetes, affecting health and human suffering across the globe.  

There is another aspect to the rapid increase in CO2 that will also affect diets.  If nutritional qualities decline, sugars and starches appear to be increasing.  The juxtaposition of declining quality, with increasing carbs has been called “the junk-food effect” by Irakli Loladze, a mathematical biologist at the Bryan College of Health Sciences.  And a friend.

Needless to say, this role of rising CO2 is not only directed to plants, but for those animals that consume them.  Such animals, like cattle, are also part of the human diet and will, in turn, be affected. A seminal study by USDA researchers showed that future CO2 levels will degrade the protein content of forage grasses, with substantial consequences for the rate at which cattle gain weight during the primary growing season in North America.

Plantings

Issue 1 – July 2021

Also in this issue:

How to Plant the Forests of the Future
By Lauren Oakes

How small family forests can help meet the climate challenge
by Gabriel Popkin

Mind the Gap Between Action and Impact
By Zachary Adams

A Rare Plant Conservation Success Story from Gibraltar
By Gayil Nalls

One Thing We Could All Do To Make a Difference
By Gayil Nalls and the WS/C Advisory Board