Dom Post: A world leader for the new rocket science

Colin James writes in an opinion piece in the Dominion Post about New Zealand’s controversial emissions trading scheme (ETS), which many groups are trying to have delayed due to lack of  international effort to develop such schemes.

Climate change science is of importance not only to local business, but also to food production as the world population is expected to grow to 9 billion.

An excerpt: (read in full here)

“Professor Searchinger underlined the population challenge: how can enough food be produced for a population set to grow by a third by 2050 when roughly one billion of the present 6.8b are underfed? Having canvassed a wide range of options promoted as solutions, including no-till cropping, biochar and bringing undefined “other” land into production, he settled for increasing productivity.

“Professor Searchinger says climate change adds to the food problem because, the UN scientists say, it will reduce productivity. Nevertheless, he ended on an optimistic note “because there has been so little effort to solve these issues” and, if world-leading Mr Key’s global alliance scientists put their minds to it, “we can solve it, just as we built rockets”.”