The complexity of the different systems that are involved in climate change is daunting to think about. Billions of people that live downstream from glaciers that are disappearing are the most threatened by global warming and changes to the climate. The triple-inequality of the people who will be hardest hit by climate change is compounded by the inability of people in the global South to recover from a global temperature rise.
It’s very selfish of the global North to spend so much of the world’s important resources on ensuring convenience for the affluent population. The amount of energy we spend, or waste, on refrigerating and transporting our foods for long periods of time is directly contributing to climate change that will put billions of people in jeopardy. It’s especially sad that this is a known fact to many people and little, still, has been done to stop or combat the effects of climate change. If the global North were to invest some thought in localizing our food markets instead of continuing to globalize the food system we could see less energy wasted on food miles. A return to pre-industrial era agriculture techniques could serve both the global North and the South well. In the U.S., for example, localizing agriculture could create jobs, minimize energy spent on refrigeration and minimize potential threats of monocrop failures in the future. As the threat of climate change continues to grow larger. we can be sure we will find ourselves in a food crisis if we don’t reconsider some aspects of globalizing our agricultural industry. As our globalized agriculture industry functions now, we are risking food crises in the North and major threats to the climate in the South, on which billions of people’s survival hinges.