I interviewed Jerry Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. His research career has spanned climate change and food security, as well as agriculture policy, trade and development. He is one of the world’s greatest experts on the economics of food security in an era of climate change. What he has to say on this really matters. My three top takeaways from this week’s podcast were: 

1. A very interesting idea by Jerry for uniting two very topical issues – AI and climate change. Regarding the next IPCC report, due out by 2029, Jerry made an interesting connection between the recent news that the world’s biggest AI developers have run out of internet, to train their models, with the great difficulty that IPCC authors are having, to read and curate all the world’s thousands of journal articles on climate change. He suggested the world’s academic journals throw open their doors – at present many are behind paywalls – to give AI access to these articles. In other words, to allow the AI models to get back on track with their training, in return for helping draft the next IPCC report! AI doing good!?
2. Second, regarding another of his expert areas, on the climate resilience of the food system, I asked Jerry whether he was hopeful for new, more resilient crop varieties. He said there were advances in developing more drought-tolerant crops. But the problem is heat. Cereals that evolved in the Mediterranean just don’t perform well, once temperatures exceed around 31C. And many regions where these crops are grown today will exceed 31C. We also chatted about the possible role of biochar to sequester carbon in the soil, something Jerry is researching just now.
3. And finally, when I asked Jerry about his reaction to a recent, stunning streak of global warming, with 10-straight, monthly records, through March, he said he was “scared”, partly because the relevant experts say they don’t know where the warming is coming from, implying climate change could be worse than expected, and partly because of the potential, direct consequences, for example for sea level rise.

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