I realize that if you live anywhere between New York City and St. Louis, where the temperature is headed for triple digits, your immediate concern is avoiding heatstroke.
But give some thought to things that can't come inside for a blast of AC and a drink: food crops. Specifically, grains. Staff of life, and all that.
Yeah, I know: the media are churning out the standard "crops are wilting in the fields" stories that you always see during heatwaves. For nonfarmers, these stories have no relevance to daily life: the bakery shelves in stores are still piled with loaves of bread.
But let's consider this in the context of global warming. Most global warming stories focus on the potential for spectacular disaster, like the Amazon rainforest dying. This, though, is a more slow-motion, boiling-the-frog type situation.
Follow me below the fold for the frog legs entree...
The beauty of a global food system is that if the harvest is bad in one place, you make up for it with grain raised somewhere else. But with global warming--and the climate chaos that it brings--you can expect disruption of growing conditions across the globe (duh). For example: the current heat waves is crisping crops not just in the US, but in
Europe.
World grain stocks have dropped to 57 days of consumption, (anything below 60 days is considered bad). And, Economics 101: lower supply means higher prices. Here:
...the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projected in its June 9 world crop report that this year's wheat prices will be up by 14 percent and corn prices up by 22 percent over last year's...
This price projection assumes normal weather during the summer growing season. If the weather this year is unusually good, then the price rises may be less than those projected, but if this year's harvest is sharply reduced by heat or drought, they could far exceed the projected rises.
For now, of course, no problem, since food isn't included in the inflation index. </snark> Over time--well, remember that second horseman of the apocalypse.