Pod of The Last Word on the Environment, with Matt Cooper on Today FM, as broadcast on Thursday July 24th is below. We discussed the landmark International Court of Justice ruling on climate, plus a new study on the ‘boiling frog syndrome’, which may explain why public reaction to ever worsening extreme weather events remains so muted. We also looked at sharp rises in global food prices driven by climate-fuelled weather disruption.
Transcript is below:
Matt Cooper: John Gibbons is with us for a weekly last word in the environment. And for all the people who give out about you every week, you know, saying the impact of climate change is nothing like you say. I wonder how they feel about the realisation that it’s making their food more expensive.
John Gibbons: Yeah, I think food prices are something that everybody can agree on. They’re going up.. We’re seeing it dramatically here in Ireland. But a new study has tracked this trend globally. And what we’re finding, it’s not exactly a shocking conclusion, but this has really been laid down in clear measurements, is the direct correlation between the sharp rise in extreme weather events in recent years and food prices, because I guess food production, as anybody involved in agriculture knows, happens within very, very tight margins. The difference between a fertile field and a drought ridden field, or indeed a waterlogged field – these are fine margins. We’ve seen that, for example, recently in England. They had, I think, the wettest autumn in probably 50 to 100 years, with the result, of course, that the harvests are depressed the following year and so on and so forth. But to give you a few examples. This study tracked how the price of vegetables rose in California and Arizona, in the US in 2022 by 80% as a result of extreme heat and water shortages. They tracked similarly olive oil prices in Europe in 2024 rose by 50%, following a prolonged drought in Italy and Spain in 2023. Rice prices soared by almost 50% in Japan during 2024, again, as a result of a heat wave. Moved down to Africa, we saw Ghana and the Ivory Coast. These are big global producers of cocoa, and we saw prices, cocoa bean prices rise by 280% in 2024.
Matt Cooper: So fluctuation. So it’s the supply issue. The reason the price goes up is if the supply is damaged in interruption to the production of the crops, then the lower supply means higher prices.
John Gibbons: That’s one part of it for sure. So extreme weather hits yields, no question about it. The second thing, of course, is that supply chains are also vulnerable to climate impact. So the supply chains that get food in good condition from the field to the fork, the ability to store food, the ability to transport it, and then to move it in good condition, maybe halfway around the world. With extreme weather, what we’re getting is more spoiling of food, more food being lost and discarded along the way. So it’s a dual pressure, but the single greatest pressure, undoubtedly, is extreme weather conditions, be they drought, be the heat waves. And for example, it’s very difficult to farm in the traditional way if your field is under a foot of water. This is basic stuff and we’re seeing it, again, torrential downpours that are making farming incredibly difficult. We’ve seen it here in Ireland in very recent times. The inability, for example, of farmers to get crops out of the fields when they’re waterlogged. This summer, on the other hand, as somebody who grew up in a farm, I don’t think I’ve ever seen wheat fields, mature, ready to cut wheat fields, probably in late June in Ireland and into early July, at least a month ahead. So again, that gives you a sort of a bounce that obviously meant a very good season for cereals in Ireland, but it’s the luck of the draw, it’s the spin of the bottle and the roll of the dice as to whether you get that positive effect. But what we’re seeing is that for every positive effect, we’re seeing 10 or 20 negative effects. So the net effect is declining food, food production, declining reliability of food production. And, of course, that knocks over into rapidly rising food prices, commodity prices.
Matt Cooper: Okay, tell me about what’s causing the boiling frog effect.
John Gibbons: I suppose, people will be familiar with the analogy of the frog sitting in the pan, and it gradually warms and the frog adjusts to the warmth and eventually the frog boils. Now, I’m happy to report, by the way, that this is indeed a myth. Frogs, if you put them, and I’m sorry, somebody’s actually tested this out. If you put a frog in a pan and you slowly warm it up, it’ll jump out before it boils. So it’s a bit of a bit of a myth. However, the analogy applies far better to humans than to frogs. We’re very susceptible to what’s called the shifting baseline syndrome. And what that means is we tend, it’s maybe one of our most successful characteristics as a species, is our incredible adaptability. Humans adapt to the circumstances around them. So what this study looked at is that there’s useful adaptability and there’s not so useful adaptability. And what they’re finding is that humans are adapting to extreme weather conditions by normalising it and by believing that it’s always been like that. And what’s really incredible, and this came out of this study is how quickly people normalize the weather. For example, even in the length of time this slot has been on the air, which is less than five years, global climate and weather systems have changed in that time. Yet, for all the time, Matt, that we’ve been talking about that, we’ve been talking about extreme weather pretty much on a weekly basis. That would lead your listeners to believe that extreme weather is a normal fact of life, that you get these droughts, you get these heat waves, because we’re getting them year after year after year. And what the study found is that in periods as short as two to eight years, even two years is enough for people to reframe their idea of normal. And if I can give an example of this one that I came across in a book by a historian of science called Jared Diamond. He had lived, he grew up in the American Midwest and he moved away from the Midwest for about 30 years. And then he came back, all those decades later. And the first thing he noticed was that he lived on the foothills of the Rockies and he was saying to people in his local town, what happened to the snowcaps? And they said, what snowcaps? And he said, but, you know, when I was a kid, the Rockies were snow covered and now it’s just the tips. And they said, no, no, that changes every year. So he went back and did the analysis. And sure enough, in certain years, they went up, in certain years, they went down. But over the 30 years, the snow cover steadily disappeared. But the locals didn’t notice because they were the frogs in the pan. They failed to notice the change because they were seeing it every year. And of course, within the climate and weather systems, as we know, we get a lot of variability from season to season and from year to year. And that variability makes it very hard, unless you’re looking at this through a scientific lens, it’s incredibly easy to be misled about the underlying pattern. So I guess that’s what science does. It looks at the underlying patterns to try and distinguish them against the noise of sort of short term variability. And the key finding, I suppose, that this study, in terms of applying it in a practical way, they’re saying that science communication that shows people charts that are slowly rising, is having no effect at all. So their advice to climate communicors is to show it in much more binary terms. In other words, show first, for example, an ice covered lake, then a picture of, as it was, say, 50 years ago, now a picture as it is now, to show people the dramatic change that’s happened over that time. And then, apparently, that registers and that gets people to realise that in fact, these changes are happening because they’re creeping up on us.
Matt Cooper: Okay, tell us about a judgement this week, in the International Court of Justice.
John Gibbons: This is probably, legally speaking, the biggest story of the year, I would say, with regard to climate change, without a doubt. So this is a ruling from the International Court of Justice. Now, the International Court of Justiceice is empowered by the United Nations, and every country on Earth who signed up to the United Nations, is supposedly bound by the International Court of Justice. Now, I appreciate that that some nations at the moment are taking a rather, shall we say, laissez faire approach to international law. But essentially, this is where we make international law. And what the court has ruled this week is that the failure of states to take strong action to protect climate systems from emissions may constitute what they describe as an internationally wrongful act. So what there’re essentially doing about is, I guess they’re putting sort of legal language and legal context on the climate emergency and saying that it’s no longer simply an individual discipline for countries to sort of do as they will on climate change. And how does this play out in practical terms? Let’s take a country like Ireland, that’s a huge per capita emitter. It is quite possible under the ICJ ruling, that another country that’s taking strong climate action could sue Ireland for saying, you guys are climate laggards and we’re going to sue you because the damage that you’re doing is affecting us. So there’s huge scope here, by the way, for countries in the global South to take legal action against countries, high polluting countries like Ireland, in the global North, for our failure, our absolute failure to act on the science.
Matt Cooper: Do you really think anything is going to happen as a result of this? I see the likes of Greenpeace are saying that this ICG advisory opinion marks a turning point for climate justice, as it is clarified once and for all the international climate obligations, the states, and most importantly, the consequences for beaches of these obligations. The message of the court is clear the production, consumption, and granting of licenses and subsidies for fossil fuels could be breaches of international law. John, nobody’s going to enforce that, are they?
John Gibbons: Well, the question is, because the ICJ is the highest court at a global level, they’re now allowing a framework to exist that they’re essentially saying that states have now got codified legal duties to protect against climate harm. I agree with you, Matt. There’s an issue with enforceability here. However, this opens the door for victims of harm to exercise a right of redress, and they’ve given them the framework or what they describe as the legal momentum. So it’s now considered to be legally possible, actionable, and ultimately enforcible. This, of course, will play out through the courts. Now, it won’t play out in the courts in the US any time, since they’re no longer functioning in the normal sense of the word. But the reality is, Matt, the world is a lot bigger than the US and normal law and the enforcement of law is continuing in many other parts of the world, specifically here in the EU. So we can expect this is a foundational ruling that sets down the international and the intergovernmental obligations on climate change. In a sense, if you think of the IPCC, the intergovernmental panel and climate change, that’s the scientific advisory. This now is the legal system coming along and saying: we’ve looked at the scientific advice, and we’re now saying this has profound legal implications for states, but also not just for states, maybe for sectors, maybe for companies, maybe high pollution companies like RyanAir, like CRH, who could be taken to task and legally challenged for their pollution, or maybe an organisation like Dublin Airport Authority, driving higher and higher emissions.
Matt Cooper: Okay, well, the United States is a member of the International Court of Justice, but it has withdrawn from its compulsory jurisdiction, and it often just ignores what the ICGACI says. So I think you can take it that in Trump’s America, it ain’t going to be taking any notice of this.
John Gibbons: I completely agree, but I do think it’s incredibly important, however depressing everything that comes out of America is, to understand that the rest of the world, by and large, is still operates in a lawful way and isn’t governed by felons. So we have to assume that the rule of law will continue to apply there. So I’m not inclined to shrug this off and and think that it’s just going to go away, in the same way that I’m not inclined to shrug off the fact that there’s tens of billions of EU fines coming in the direction of Ireland for our non-compliance with climate targets.
Matt Cooper: We’ve got to leave it there. John Gibbons, thank you.
