A few months ago, Micah Williams, TEDxMileHigh’s newest (and only full-time) employee, asked if I might write a blog post about climate change. I said “sure,” and then I thought about what I could say about climate change that wasn’t being said.
I used to cover the topic at the Daily Camera, and still follow it pretty closely (subscribing to The Daily Climate and Climate Progress daily emails, both great resources). But I came up blank for a couple of months. Then the Earth Policy Institute sent the Society of Environmental Journalists’ list an offer of a review copy of Lester Brown and company’s new book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. I had interviewed Brown back when I was at the Camera and have paid close attention to his books ever since. We all should.
I bit, they sent, I read, and then, as tends to happen, complementary ideas suddenly came to my attention, in particular in the form of a World Bank report and a Jeremy Grantham essay. I sent Micah a note and said I had an idea: that the great threat of global warming may well be its impact on food supplies.
The result isn’t poetry — more the product of a couple of hours of frenetic pro-bono synthesis and a modicum of editing (on my part; I think Micah did more). But it had simmered a good long while.
