![\"\"](\"http:\/\/planetsave.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/food-prices.png\" "\\"food")
<\/a>This year has seen a great many important climate stories.\u00a0 Obviously, the continued self-destructive failure of the nation and the world to reverse greenhouse gas emission trends always deserve to be the top story in some sense:<\/p>\n
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- Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010, Chinese CO2 Emissions Now Exceed U.S.\u2019s By 50%<\/a><\/li>\n
- IEA\u2019s Bombshell Warning: We\u2019re Headed Toward 11\u00b0F Global Warming and \u201cDelaying Action Is a False Economy\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The emergence of a genuine grassroots movement following Obama\u2019s fecklessness on the environment is a major U.S. story (see \u201cA Climate Movement Is Born: Ozone Decision Spikes Total Arrests to 1,252 at White House Pipeline Protest<\/a>\u201c).<\/p>\n
And the energy story with the biggest climate implication was clearly Fukushima:<\/em><\/p>\n
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- Japan scraps plan for 14 new nuclear plants<\/a><\/li>\n
- No nukes, No problem. Germany is proving a rapid transition to renewable energy is possible<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201cWithin four decades, one of the world\u2019s leading economies will be powered almost entirely by wind, solar, biomass, hydro, and geothermal power.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But the climate story that affects the most people around the world today by far is well described in this post \u2014\u00a0Oxfam: Extreme Weather Has Helped Push Tens of Millions into \u201cHunger and Poverty\u201d in \u201cGrim Foretaste\u201d of Warmed World<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Climate Progress had been covering those who have been warning the day would come when humanity\u2019s\u00a0 unsustainable energy and agricultural policies would collide with global warming, who warned that the agricultural system we need to feed the world was built on a relatively stable climate that we are now destroying.\u00a0 Lester Brown has been our Paul Revere on food insecurity (see the 2009 post\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>\u00a0asks \u201cCould Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n
We covered the emergence of this story last year:<\/p>\n
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- The Coming Food Crisis: Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia\u2019s fires and Pakistan\u2019s floods are making a bad situation worse;<\/a>\u00a0Podesta, Caldwell: \u201cLasting gains in agricultural productivity will require \u2026 action to confront climate change.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But CP really dug in to this story starting in January, when food prices soared \u2014 see\u00a0Extreme weather events help drive food prices to record highs<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and I had lunch with Brown (see\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, Lester Brown explain how extreme weather, climate change drive record food prices<\/a>).<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s work persuaded me that genuinely destabilizing food insecurity may occur as soon as this decade \u2014 assuming 1 billion undernourished people isn\u2019t already a crisis.\u00a0 So I decided to add a new category, \u201cfood insecurity<\/a>,\u201d and began a series of posts on food insecurity and the threat of\u00a0Dust-Bowlification<\/a>, which ultimately led the journal\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0to ask me to make the case that this was the gravest threat to humanity posed by climate change.\u00a0 As my\u00a0piece concluded<\/a>:<\/p>\n
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\u201cFeeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
- No nukes, No problem. Germany is proving a rapid transition to renewable energy is possible<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201cWithin four decades, one of the world\u2019s leading economies will be powered almost entirely by wind, solar, biomass, hydro, and geothermal power.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- IEA\u2019s Bombshell Warning: We\u2019re Headed Toward 11\u00b0F Global Warming and \u201cDelaying Action Is a False Economy\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n