【The Economist】气候变化与食物的关系
小编点评：2050年，气候的变化会把我们的世界会变成什么样子呢？经典的图表分析为雅思作文加把力。
Climate change will affect food supply. But working out how has always been tricky. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) used two models to forecast how the world’s climate will change by 2050.
Here green shows the areas of least temperature change, orange most. In the first model, average maximum temperatures will rise across most of the world by between 2 and 3℃. Areas that will experience the least change tend to be inland, the South Central Africa would change the most. The second model predicts steeper rises of average maximum temperature particularly in Canada, Russia and Western Europe. Africa, India and China by contrast, would remain relatively stable. The first model is drier as well as cooler. Here, reds and oranges show areas with a predicted decrease in precipitation, greens and blues an increase. The model predicts the kinds of precipitation across Africa, South America and South Western Europe, and rises along parts of South America's coast, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. In the second model, most of Asia, North America and Africa would grow rainier, while Eastern South America and Western Europe will grow significantly drier.
Whatever the details, the results are the same. Crop years are much likely to fall across much of the developing world, depending on how effectively the earth can sequence the carbon dioxide. Dry land would grow too arid and floods more frequent in tropical regions. There will be fewer calories per person, and will be more expensive.
In the year 2000, most of Africa had just over 2300 calories or less available per person. South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East felt slightly better, and East Asia was approaching 3000. Without climate change, those numbers would have gone up around the world. By 2050, no developing region would have less than 2450 calories per person per day. In both models, with climate change, calorie yields will fall from the 2000 levels in both developed and developing countries,causing a rise in Child malnutrition rates. In Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia, the two regions that would mostly affected by climate change, 33 million and 75 million children under 5 years old were malnourished in the year of 2000. In the absence of climate change, by 2050, Sub-Sahara Africa's total would have risen to 42 million, and significantly fewer children in South Asia would have been malnourished. In the first model, with climate change, India and its neighbors would have around 48 million malnourished children. And Sub-Sahara Africa fells far worse than it would have drown without climate change. The second model is almost the same for Sub-Sahara Africa, but worse for India. The author of the IFPRI report argues that only a new green revolution could keep food yields high enough. The technology exists, the problem that lasts is getting into the fields.
