It was once assumed that when the impacts of climate change hit the western world, people in wealthier countries would act. The wildfires in Los Angeles prove this will not be the case.
Recrimination and misinformation have been the prevailing reactions, with President Donald Trump and other Republicans blaming California’s Democrat governor Gavin Newsom and LA’s mayor Karen Bass for the fires, and for the failure to extinguish them rapidly. LA has received only a tiny amount of rain in recent months, and scientists agree that climate change makes wildfires more likely. Yet, little connection is being made between a warming world and the death and destruction seen in the city.
Wildfires, along with other extreme weather events such as heatwaves and floods, are all evidence of climate change. They are already impacting our lives and livelihoods, and indeed the food we eat. But while the loss of Paris Hilton’s LA home is front page news, the insidious effects on global food production and security are barely mentioned.
Data from the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs shows that England’s wheat harvest in 2024 was 20 per cent down on the previous year, after record-breaking rain reduced yields. According to scientists at the World Weather Attribution initiative, climate change made storm rainfall in the UK 20 per cent heavier—and the volume of rainfall four times more likely.
A similar phenomenon can be seen the world over. In France, wheat farmers have also been battling heavy rains. In Spain, drought reduced olive oil production by more than 40 per cent in the year ending 2023, compared to previous years. As a result, the price of olive oil in the EU was 50 per cent higher in January 2024 than it was 12 months earlier. Extreme heat has slashed tea production in India, while unusually high temperatures and a lack of rainfall in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, which together account for 60 per cent of the world’s cocoa production, has devastated crops.
Yet, while energy security has been part of political and public discourse since Russia invaded Ukraine, food security rarely gets mentioned. This is despite reduced food production pushing up prices, and that worse is yet to come.
“We are in the foothills of climate-related disruption, but extreme heat in the summer of 2022 added nearly 0.7 per cent to food price inflation in Europe,” says Dustin Benton, managing director of sustainability at Forefront Advisers, a risk consultancy. He predicts that further warming by 2035 could see food inflation rising by 30 to 50 per cent.
Earlier this month, the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record, with the average global temperature 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels. Under the 2015 Paris agreement, governments committed to aiming to keep global warming below 1.5°C to avoid the worst impacts. If we continue as we are, the non-profit Climate Action Tracker estimates that warming will be at least 2.7°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050.
Once local temperature increases by 3°C, all crops are affected, no matter their location, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But it is not just crops that will suffer. Research shows thousands, if not tens of thousands, of animals such as pigs and chickens die when temperatures peak, particularly while being transported. And diseases like bluetongue, which can cause weakness, deformity, stillbirth and premature death in lambs and calves, are likely to propagate as the planet warms. Bluetongue is an example of a virus which has spread as temperatures have increased. It originated in Africa but is now prevalent in Europe as midges have moved across the Mediterranean.
While the world as a whole is warming, climate change is disrupting planetary systems. This could perversely lead to Britain becoming much colder for months on end. The North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG), part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which essentially transfers warmth from south to north, has been weakening. Benton warns that if emissions levels continue to rise, there is an equal probability the SPG could collapse by 2050, according to some assessments. If this were to happen, the UK’s average temperatures could fall by 3°C, meaning colder winters and longer summer heat waves.
This collapse can’t be reversed on human timescales. “In a worst-case scenario,” he adds “the UK would see widespread crop failure at the same time as the US maize crop failed, causing severe food price spikes.” Some scientists believe that “the weather that caused the crop failure would have a 5 per cent chance of happening every year thereafter”.
This may sound apocalyptic, but Benton insists it could be “partly mitigated” via hardier crops, ensuring trade continues amid potential crises in the food supply, and further reducing meat consumption. Currently, around half of the grain grown in Britain is used to feed animals, rather than humans.
But thinking simply in terms of production seems overly reductive in a world where Donald Trump is in the White House, and far-right populist and protectionist parties are on the rise.
The term “food security” is generally used “very loosely, to describe if supermarket shelves are full; not in terms of national security”, says Tim Benton, an academic at the University of Leeds. “In a calm and stable world, you would grow what you can and import what you can’t.”
But today this is far from being the reality. The idea that the world can rely on open trade and transport networks is misguided, he says. As potential blockers to moving food across borders, Benton cites climate change and broader geopolitical risks, such as Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on various countries and commodities and to take control of the Panama Canal—to say nothing of “Houthis shooting across the Red Sea” and China’s potential invasion of Taiwan.
In lieu of a secure global supply chain, governments need to boost domestic food production—with more diverse crops, improved storage, and less focus on imports and exports—as well as reduce emissions. But Benton is pessimistic about policymakers facing up to the links between climate change and food any time soon.
“Things are getting bleaker and bleaker,” he says. As is happening in LA, where the wildfires have fallen victim to Republican politicking, the “lived reality” of a warming world will be subverted by the likes of Elon Musk, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán. Benton adds: “As during World War Two, we will slowly blunder off a cliff and fall before we see that society is not working.”
We might already be there. Analysts estimate that the insured losses of the LA fires will reach $30bn, a figure that does not take into account the human and environmental trauma of a city going up in smoke. Exactly what it will take to get a critical mass of people to understand the costs of failing to reduce emissions, including on the food we eat, is an open question. At least 25 people killed and over 12,000 homes, schools and businesses destroyed by fire is apparently not enough.
