Ap Econ Current Event

Chester Hardaway

Mrs. Sisino-Land

AP Econ 1st

February 24, 2017

Economics Current Event #3

        For this month’s current event, I chose to go with a topic that is more relevant to us… food/agriculture. The title of the article is Climate Change Is Transforming the World's Food Supply, and it was written on February 16, 2107 by Sara G. Miller. The source I used is Live Science. The article displays a run-down of how rising CO2 emissions can, and will affect the production of crops worldwide. The author states the big three aspects what will happen to agriculture in the subsequent years, which include food quality, quantity, and the location of where food will be produced.

        The current economic unit is “Measurement of Economic Performance”, which involves the circular flow of economic activity (goods/services), and well as the measurement and calculation of Gross Domestic Product, among other topics. This article bears strong relation to this unit because, although it doesn’t say that rising C02 emission will devastate the GDP of most economies, it can be heavily inferenced. For example, in the article, Miller states that most modern day agriculture/crops are developed in tropical areas. Today, India is one of the world’s leading producers in rice, so if rising temperature were to lead to a decrease in Indian rice production, this would directly affect and likely significantly decrease India’s GDP, subsequently leading to a national recession. Although this is hypothetical, it would be likely to happen.

        I chose this article because I genuinely find it interesting because it talks about the one universally important topic…food, or more specifically, MY food. As for the article and my opinion, I agree with the author’s point-of-view that global food production will be affected by rising CO2 emissions, though I disagree with her view that this change will be catastrophic, as I believe humans will develop technology in order to curb any change to agricultural production. As the article stated, climate change due to rising CO2  emissions will affect the growth of crops, especially in tropical region as temperature increase would be greatest there. This may affect the macroeconomy of many nation, mostly tropical, as it would force them to specialize in other thing than agriculture. In order to “fix” this issue, I would recommend that the governments of nations impose a hefty tax on CO2 emissions produced by businesses and overall better regulate these businesses to somewhat reduce climate change.