by Tom Laskawy If I've hammered home any point this week, I hope it's that addressing climate change and reforming food production are pretty much the same thing. You can't do one without the other. And - as Yogi Berra might say - vice versa. The food and agriculture industries, aided and abetted by governments worldwide (not to mention by consumers), have succeeded in offloading just about all external costs involved with feeding us. Environmental issues, public health issues, natural resource utilization issues, even most economic issues related to food have all been socialized to the extent that the industry is almost totally isolated from the societal consequences of its actions. To this point few have complained as it has led to ever lower food prices in the developed world and thriving export markets in the developing world. But the costs, which for 60 years or so seemed to have been pushed back beyond the horizon, are now beginning to loom. Many of us have high hopes that the new administration can make serious progress on reform, but it's important to focus on how serious the challenge before us actually is. In this way, it's like the global warming debate was back in the 90s. The science was pretty clear even then. There were visionaries like NASA's James Hansen and, yes, Al Gore, who understood that we needed to act. But for most Americans, hearing about climate change in the 90s was like being reminded to carry an umbrella on a sunny day. Where exactly were the portents of doom?
