Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Jacques Diouf, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, has warned that world food prices, and shortages, are set to remain high for some time and that food riots could spread. "The problem is very serious around the world due to severe price rises and we have seen riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso," he said while on a trip to India. "There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 per cent of income goes to food," he continued.

Food prices have risen as a result of increasing oil and fuel prices, rising demand for food in Asia, conversion of cropland for biofuels, poor weather and speculation on futures markets. Grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s. The World Bank has warned that prices may stay above 2004 levels until 2015 for most crops. Fearing that the trend could reverse the recent decline in poverty levels, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said that, "as an international community, we must rally not only to offer immediate support, but to help countries identify actions and policies to reduce the impact on the world's most vulnerable."

A worldwide price on carbon and decisive policy to implement carbon capture and storage as soon as possible are the key elements of a "blueprint" energy futures scenario that would see carbon emissions peak by 2020 and then reduce to 1990 levels by the middle of the century, according to a new report, Energy Scenarios to 2050, from Royal Dutch Shell. Underpinning the scenario is a stable investment climate for clean technology and a meaningful set of international agreements to limit climate change.

In contrast, a "scramble" scenario sees nations competing for scarce oil supplies and switching to coal, without any solid international emissions framework. "Regardless of which route we choose, the world’s current predicament limits our room to manoeuvre. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to rising population and economic development," commented Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer. van der Veer has called on the European Union to subsidize carbon capture and storage because it "adds costs and yields no revenues." He considers that "government action is needed to support and stimulate investment quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been overly optimistic in assuming that, without intervention, new technologies will reduce growth in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a commentary in the journal Nature. "Not only is this reduction unlikely to happen under current policies, we are moving in the opposite direction right now. We believe these kind of assumptions in the analysis blind us to reality and could potentially distort our ability to develop effective policies," said report co-author, Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado.

The commentary's authors do not question that technological innovation is necessary to curb global warming, but they accuse the IPCC of playing "a risky game in assuming that spontaneous advances in technological innovation will carry most of the burden of achieving future emissions reductions, rather than focusing on creating the conditions for such innovations to occur." They cite the recent upward trend in carbon intensity, which contradicts the assumptions made by the IPCC, and note the significance of the development process in nations such as China, where carbon emissions are increasing rapidly.