FOOD: Can We Taste Climate Change?

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2021

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s for dinner? How will we answer that question in 50 years? In this thought-provoking (and occasionally hunger-inducing) conversation, science journalist Amanda Little tells Rufus that the single biggest threat posed by climate change is the collapse of our food systems. Provisions we love, like coffee and wine, are losing their flavor. And crops we rely on, like corn and soy, are getting harder to grow. If we don’t change our agricultural practices, we won’t be able to feed the globe’s swelling population. But don’t lose hope. Amanda says that if we can combine the wisdom of traditional farming practices with radical advances in agricultural technology, we might be able to create a healthier, more sustainable, and perhaps even more delicious future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's hard to know where we're going, but we do know that the single biggest threat
0:11.2	of climate change is the collapse of food systems.
0:15.0	I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.
0:20.9	Today, why climate change is something you can taste.
0:37.2	September 2015, Maharashtra, India.
0:41.2	Amanda Little is flying in a tiny prop plane, trying not to puke.
0:46.0	It's not the rank smell of sweat and stress that's making her queasy.
0:49.3	That would probably isn't helping.
0:50.9	She's not just because this King Air B200 is headed straight
0:55.1	for a black and blue monsoon cloud.
0:57.8	A cloud that's more than 20,000 feet from nose to tail.
1:02.6	From the open cockpit, the captain chats.
1:04.7	Most pilots are trained to avoid these storm systems.
1:07.6	We're trained to enter them.
1:09.5	He turns the yoke and the plane goes sideways.
1:12.8	It's like a scene from Top Gun, but with a different soundtrack.
1:15.9	Instead of Kenny Logan singing about going to the danger zone,
1:19.4	a robot voice from the planet's control panel warns.
1:22.0	Bank alert.
1:23.8	The view outside Amanda's window goes smokey black
1:26.8	as they pass through a layer of moisture
1:28.4	along the monsoons under belly.
	...

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