thicker leaves are worse: Marlies Kovenock and Abigail L. S. Swann, “Leaf Trait Acclimation Amplifies Simulated Climate Warming in Response to Elevated Carbon Dioxide,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 32 (October 2018), https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GB005883.
75 billion tons of soiclass="underline" Stacey Noel et al., “Report for Policy and Decision Makers: Reaping Economic and Environmental Benefits from Sustainable Land Management,” Economics of Land Development Initiative (Bonn, Ger., September 2015), p. 10, www.eld-initiative.org/fileadmin/pdf/ELD-pm-report_05_web_300dpi.pdf.
the rate of erosion is ten times: Susan S. Lang, “ ‘Slow, Insidious’ Soil Erosion Threatens Human Health and Welfare as Well as the Environment, Cornell Study Asserts,” Cornell Chronicle, March 20, 2006, http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/slow-insidious-soil-erosion-threatens-human-health-and-welfare.
thirty to forty times as fast: Ibid.
lacking credit to make the necessary: Richard Hornbeck, “The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowclass="underline" Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe,” American Economic Review 102, no. 4 (June 2012): pp. 1477–507, http://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.4.1477.
John Wesley Powelclass="underline" Richard Seager et al., “Whither the 100th Meridian? The Once and Future Physical and Human Geography of America’s Arid-Humid Divide. Part 1: The Story So Far,” Earth Interactions 22, no. 5 (March 2018), https://doi.org/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1. You can read further by finding Powell’s own text, “Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. With Maps” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1879), https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf.
less farmable land: Seager, “Whither the 100th Meridian?” https://doi.org/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1.
separating the Sahara desert: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, “The 100th Meridian, Where the Great Plains Begins, May Be Shifting,” April 11, 2018, www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/100th-meridian-where-great-plains-begin-may-be-shifting.
That desert has expanded: Natalie Thomas and Sumant Nigam, “Twentieth-Century Climate Change over Africa: Seasonal Hydroclimate Trends and Sahara,” Journal of Climate 31, no. 22 (2018).
dropped from more than 30 percent: Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises” (Rome, 2010), p. 9, www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1683e/i1683e.pdf.
Born to Iowa family farmers: Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York: Knopf, 2018).
increase global greenhouse-gas emissions: Zhaohai Bai et al., “Global Environmental Costs of China’s Thirst for Milk,” Global Change Biology 24, no. 5 (May 2018): pp. 2198–211, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14047.
food production accounts for about a third: Natasha Gilbert, “One-Third of Our Greenhouse Gas Emissions Come from Agriculture,” Nature, October 31, 2012, www.nature.com/news/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708.
Greenpeace has estimated: Greenpeace International, “Greenpeace Calls for Decrease in Meat and Dairy Production and Consumption for a Healthier Planet” (press release), March 5, 2018, www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/15111/greenpeace-calls-for-decrease-in-meat-and-dairy-production-and-consumption-for-a-healthier-planet.
“the Malthusian tragic:” Kris Bartkus, “W. G. Sebald and the Malthusian Tragic,” The Millions, March 28, 2018.
At 2 degrees of warming: Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008), p. 84.
“two globe-girdling belts of perennial drought”: Ibid.
By 2080, without dramatic reductions: Benjamin I. Cook et al., “Global Warming and 21st Century Drying,” Climate Dynamics 43, no. 9–10 (March 2014): pp. 2607–27, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2075-y.
The same will be true in Iraq and Syria: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 101.
all the rivers east of the Sierra Nevada: Ibid., p. 102.
100 million hungry: Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition” (Rome, 2018), p. 57, www.fao.org/3/I9553EN/i9553en.pdf.
The spring of 2017 brought: “Fighting Famine in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen,” ReliefWeb, 2017, https://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ep/wfp292787.pdf.
truly customized farming strategies: Zhenling Cui et al, “Pursuing Sustainable Productivity with Millions of Smallholder Farmers,” Nature, March 7, 2018.
“soil-free startup”: Madeleine Cuff, “Green Growth: British Soil-Free Farming Startup Prepares for First Harvest,” Business Green, May 1, 2018.
“We are witnessing the greatest injection”: Helena Bottemiller Evich, “The Great Nutrient Collapse,” Politico, September 13, 2017.
has declined by as much as one-third: Donald R. Davis et al., “Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999,” Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23, no. 6 (2004): pp. 669–82.
the protein content of bee pollen: Lewis H. Ziska et al., “Rising Atmospheric CO2 Is Reducing the Protein Concentration of a Floral Pollen Source Essential for North American Bees,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283, no. 1828 (April 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0414.
by 2050 as many as 150 million: Danielle E. Medek et al., “Estimated Effects of Future Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Protein Intake and the Risk of Protein Deficiency by Country and Region,” Environmental Health Perspectives 125, no. 8 (August 2017), https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP41.
138 million could suffer: Samuel S. Myers et al., “Effect of Increased Concentrations of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on the Global Threat of Zinc Deficiency: A Modelling Study,” The Lancet 3, no. 10 (October 2015): PE639–E645, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(15)00093-5.
1.4 billion could face a dramatic decline: M. R. Smith et al., “Potential Rise in Iron Deficiency Due to Future Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” GeoHealth 1 (August 2017): pp. 248–57, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GH000018.
eighteen different strains of rice: Chunwu Zhu et al., “Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Levels This Century Will Alter the Protein, Micronutrients, and Vitamin Content of Rice Grains with Potential Health Consequences for the Poorest Rice-Dependent Countries,” Science Advances 4, no. 5 (May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaq1012.
Drowning
four feet of sea-level rise: Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney, “Scientists Nearly Double Sea Level Rise Projections for 2100, Because of Antarctica,” The Washington Post, March 30, 2016.
by the end of the century: Benjamin Strauss and Scott Kulp, “Extreme Sea Level Rise and the Stakes for America,” Climate Central, April 26, 2017, www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-sea-level-rise-stakes-for-america-21387.