One of the weird disconnects about the time in which we are living is more and more acknowledgment of survival systems under serious stress, namely climate-change heat waves, fires, intense rainfall, and in other areas, water shortages wreaking havoc with agricultural production. And that’s before getting to self-inflicted high energy prices in Europe adding another level of social and political pressure.
It may seem alarmist to talk about future Arab Spring level revolts. And yours truly is not saying they are imminent. But the flip side is the direction of travel seems obvious. Enough immiseration of ordinary citizens eventually produces blowback, whether food riots (see the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2007-2008 food price spikes), regime-change attempts of the Arab Spring sort, or fuel price protests a la Gillets Jaunes.
As William Gibson said, “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed,” applies to our slow-motion polycrisis.
And because whether it is sensible to buy a burrito with a buy now, pay later loan seems more pressing than accelerating resource pressures, it seems just too distressing to consider that food riots or other forms of “I need mine” violence may be coming sooner than most would like to think. The headline for a summary of a 2025 study confirms the sense that the climate-change-induced deterioration of food systems is oddly being ignored. From Heat and drought are quietly hurting crop yields:
More frequent hot weather and droughts have dealt a significant blow to crop yields, especially for key grains like wheat, barley, and maize, according to a Stanford study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The analysis finds that warming and air dryness – a key factor in crop stress – have surged in nearly every major agricultural region, with some areas experiencing growing seasons hotter than nearly any season 50 years ago….
The study estimates that global yields of barley, maize, and wheat are 4 to 13 percent lower than they would have been without climate trends. In most cases, the losses have outweighed the benefits of increased carbon dioxide, which can improve plant growth and yield by boosting photosynthesis, among other mechanisms…
The findings echo concerns raised in a study published in March that found U.S. agricultural productivity could slow dramatically in coming decades without major investment in climate adaptation…
[Study lead author David] Lobell adds that the surprise many people express may simply be because they had been hoping the climate science was wrong, or because they underestimated the impact a 5% or 10% yield loss would have. “I think when people hear 5% they tend to think it’s a small number. But then you live through it and see it’s enough to shift markets. We’re talking about enough food for hundreds of millions of people.”
Keep in mind that wheat alone provides 20% of humanity’s food calories and protein. New Scientist chimed in with Is the climate change food crisis even worse than we imagined? in late 2024:
You have probably already noticed that the price of many of the foods in your grocery basket has risen…
What is driving prices up is complex, but one of the biggest factors is climate change. In the short term, extreme weather caused by a warming climate has had devastating consequences for growers. In northern Europe, for instance, torrential rains in spring 2024 left fields too sodden to harvest vegetables or plant new crops. Meanwhile, a drought in Morocco, which typically exports a lot of vegetables to Europe, meant there wasn’t enough water for irrigation. The result was soaring prices for potatoes and carrots…
Not only are newer climate models projecting much stronger effects, both positive and negative, but the latest crop models also suggest the impact on yields will be much greater too, says Jonas Jägermeyr, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York….
But current models also have some serious limitations. “Realistic projections probably would be a little bit less optimistic,” says Jägermeyr, noting that climate models aren’t good at projecting extreme events and that crop models tend to underestimate impact.
Another major limitation is that these models don’t consider the risk of pests and diseases. As the planet warms and becomes more humid, some pathogens will spread to areas where they haven’t been able to survive before…
So far, it is also proving harder for farmers to nevertheless increasing…via technology but also measures that amount to eating our seed corn on a planetary scale:
The other reason for rising food production is that the global area used for growing crops is expanding rapidly. This often involves turning forests into farmland, which is catastrophic for biodiversity. Clearing trees also puts a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere, adding to farming’s already large carbon footprint – about a third of our greenhouse emissions come from agriculture.
Alarmingly, we seem to be at the start of a vicious cycle: global warming is making it harder to grow food, so farming is becoming more emissions-intensive to keep up, leading to yet more warming. The rising temperature will also amplify other threats to world food production, including ocean acidification, groundwater depletion and soil loss, intensifying that cycle further – for instance, hotter temperatures mean farmers need to use more groundwater for irrigation.
To add to this cheery picture, droughts are part of the agricultural shortfall problem as well as being generally hazardous to living things, such as people. From the Guardian in July:
Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.
More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced.
The situation has been years in the making. One-sixth of the population of southern Africa needed food aid last August. In Zimbabwe, last year’s corn crop was down 70% year on year, and 9,000 cattle died..
In Latin America, drought led to a severe drop in water levels in the Panama canal, grounding shipping and drastically reducing trade, and increasing costs. Traffic dropped by more than a third between October 2023 and January 2024.
By early 2024, Morocco had experienced six consecutive years of drought, leading to a 57% water deficit. In Spain, a 50% fall in olive production, driven by a lack of rainfall, has caused olive oil prices to double, while in Turkey land degradation has left 88% of the country at risk of desertification, and demands from agriculture have emptied aquifers. Dangerous sinkholes have opened up as a result of overextraction.
[Founding director of the US National Drought Mitigation Center Mark] Svoboda said: “The Mediterranean countries represent canaries in the coalmine for all modern economies. The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Turkey to secure water, food and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming…”
The impacts of drought stretch far beyond the borders of stricken countries. The report warned that drought had disrupted the production and supply chains of key crops such as rice, coffee and sugar. In 2023-2024, dry conditions in Thailand and India led to shortages that increased the price of sugar by 9% in the US.
Notice that these studies on droughts focus on the effects on agriculture. They don’t consider what happens when cities and regions face a crisis, as Cape Town has and Iran may be suffering. Nor do they consider what happens when citizens have to add water to the list of things. Even in the US, a few locations with very high water or sewer charges, like Birmingham, Alabama, water affordability is already an issue. And attesting to the fact that water costs can push a financially strapped household to the brink, the US has water assistance programs for low-income households. Recall we pointed out at the inception of this site that potable water was the resources set to come first under serious stress, so expect this problem to intensify in coming years.
Healing Waters gives an overview:
Affordability in the water sector is often defined as households spending no more than 3-5% of their income on water and sanitation services. However, this metric overlooks hidden costs, including:
- Purchasing firewood or gas to boil water
- Buying purification products like chlorine tablets
- Spending valuable time collecting water
These additional expenses can drive total water costs far beyond the standard affordability threshold, forcing families into impossible choices…
The Economic Burden of Water Costs
In many regions, families spend over 10% of their income on water, with extreme cases reaching 30-50%. In contrast, the average American household spends just 2% of its budget on water, which covers all household uses, not just drinking water.
Farmers are already under stress. From the Guardian in July:
More than 80% of UK farmers are worried that the “devastating” effect of the climate crisis could damage their ability to make a living, a study has found.
Farmers have warned that global heating risks Britain’s supplies of home-grown food amid wild swings in weather conditions, in new research carried out by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
The study found that 87% of farmers have experienced reduced productivity in the face of recent extreme weather, 84% had suffered a fall in crop yields, and more than three-quarters had taken a hit to their income…
In stark contrast, just 2% of farmers had not experienced extreme weather in some form.
And on the consumer end, even in the theoretically not-food-shortage afflicted US, the majority of households feel food cost pressures. A key chart from a July AP/NORC survey of over 1.400 adults:
Hopefully readers in other parts of the world can chime in with data or anecdata about food worries in their part of the world.
Most readers know that the EU is now suffering form high energy prices thanks from its divorce from all things Russian, particularly its cheap gas:
It was not possible to get the legend into the screenshot, but as you might guess, darker = worse.
Gas prices around the world at August 18 show Russia at 78.3 cents a liter, the US at 92.4, and the highest price countries below:
Needless to say, there are so many governments and social system in the headlight of the freight train of more resource scarcity that it’s impossible to forecast or guess all that well about how things start to break down and how citizens act. But in advanced economies, the level of dislocation will look more and more like a failure of those in charge, both institutions and individuals, to deliver on social contracts.
In atomized America, the result is more likely to continue to be random violence and quiet desperation than revolt.
Americans are breaking down, a grown woman crying because she can’t afford to live anymore
“I'm wondering if anybody else is feeling like they're drowning and they can't get out. I work overtime, and I cannot get above water. I mean, I literally have no gas for next week. It was… pic.twitter.com/tS5Io7bY91
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 15, 2025
But manh other countries have cities like Paris and London which are both centers of government and commerce, which makes for an easier target for collective action.
Again, this situation is far too fraught to make any firm calls, but it bears monitoring.
The parallels are so obvious, due to a couple of volcanoes blowing up real good in Iceland in 1783-85, harvests were pretty bad for years following, to the point where bread cost twice as much as a Frenchman’s daily wage, bonjour French Revolution!
While I can’t see that distraught young woman in the video doing much in the way of protesting ala the French women of 1789, it doesn’t take much to upset the apple cart, if women in particular were to voice their displeasure en masse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_March_on_Versailles
p.s.
Weaponry in the French Revolution always tends to revolve around pitchforks, but the long pointy pike was the most common weapon, with relatively few guns.
…our situation weaponry-wise is a wee bit different
While I appreciate your mention of the French Revolution, please read with more care. The text indicated that she was a symptom of American atomization, which means either random violence or quiet desperation. I chose her specifically to illustrate the US propensity to see untenable personal economic situations as their responsibility (as in they are at fault) as opposed to being crushed under the tank treads of rentierism.
Thanks, I get it, people are at their wit’s end and the ‘do I buy gas or food?’ question of hers spoke volumes about where a good many of our fellow citizens are at~
I would expect random violence to come via Detroit style, where you burn everything ala Devil’s Night.
Yes. It was what we call a ‘security breach’, since one of the gates at Versailles
was accidentally left open.
I often wonder whether that gate was left open on purpose by someone inside the
palace……
The ‘3rd World’ peasant classes have been made so docile, the decision has been made to copy it to the ‘1st World’ middle classes as well.
A little resistance is expected, but destruction of trade unions etc is apace.
This has been obvious since the S+L frauds, surely? The Japanification? The increases in incomes among the 1%? A genocide or three?
USA has far too many weapons. Should be quite the fireworks display. Killing random CEOs may become a hobby for those with nothing to lose?
Hopefully, no one cuts off the Opium of the masses, cheap entertainment/hypnosis. Were that to happen …
Then how did Arab Spring happen at all? And I suggest you look at food riots. This is Wikipedia’s list for this century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_riots
Wikipedia minimizes them by not listing the 2007 and 2008 food riots individually and omitting others, such as in Pakistan and Peru.
If we drift towards the 3rd World, then surely a larger power might find cause to stoke a Western Maidan or some Pinochete style instability. There are many such models. Not exactly Arab Spring, but meaningfully similar.
A few years back my local water company doubled their charges on the cited reason of replacing decades old pipes. And they are doing that if very slowly. Certainly water itself doesn’t seem to be in shortage where I live and if I put in a cistern I might not need water service at all. But being in town there’s no getting away from the sewer hookup.
Meanwhile in AZ they are having less rain than the usual not very much. It could be that AGW is redistributing the water more than taking it away. Perhaps the people will have to be redistributed too and of course migration was a big part of the so called Arab spring.
Ultimately we all caused this, not just the politicians. However it is unfortunate that in a time of crisis our politicians seem to be getting worse.
Would responsible, “tell it like it is”, politicians ever surface on the USA Dem/Repub ballot?
One statistic I read is that USA food production/delivery is not energy efficient, with an estimated 7-10 calories of hydrocarbon energy used to deliver 1 calorie of food to the USA consumer.
With all the other constraints: top soil degradation, water shortages, climate change, and fertilizer shortages, one might expect even more energy to be expended in future food production to compensate.
I’ll assert many aspiring politicians, around the world, are reading the handwriting on the wall.
But getting elected and doing something about our global problems is, while not impossible, seems implausible.
I agree and my only counter is “how much will pervasive surveillance and censorship prevent interested citizens organising?”
TPTB know what’s coming. I assume they have given a lot of thought to managing the angry starving mob issue. I think they will ruthlessly crush any hints of this, violently if necessary.
Like most of the elite’s thinking, that works only in the very short term. Their IBG, YBG attitude may work out to be more literal than they care for before they know it.
Ah, memory! In certain parts of the world, like the Balkans, memories of
past defeats are maintained for many hundreds of years. A military defeat
or massacre is not forgotten. An eye for an eye, as they say.
Fortunately (unfortunately?) due to the effects of mass media this is not
a problem here. Our attention spans now vie with that of houseflies.
I do not think this is entirely deliberate. I read, for example, that the plots
of Hallmark-type movies are being simplified because there are multiple
‘screens’ active in the room at the same time, cellphones, computers,
games, etc. Attention is the gold of our times. It is even the problem of
the purveyors of mass media- witness the problems of cable tv, for example.
Trump’s ‘flood the zone’ tactics IMHO will become less effective over time
as attention becomes further divided.
I just yesterday stumbled upon Johnny Harris on YouTube who picked up nicely on Yves comments above on climate and food price shocks. At ~12:00 he starts on the fragility of complex food chains and at ~12:40 he gets into climate shocks to agriculture.
Shared it with my 13 year old granddaughter.
https://youtu.be/wyo1u9WxUG4?t=723
With climate change causing chaos across the board, it is going to be bad. I do not think that it will be a matter of some places getting more drier and some wetter for example but will be more matter of violent oscillations. Thus a region may get unusual cold temperatures and then get fierce heat followed by never seen before violent winds. And it may take decades before some sort of new norm is established whether hotter, colder, wetter, etc. So how will it play out between governments and their peoples? I would guess that economic, political, social, etc. matter will devolve to a much lower level as here it would be more adaptable and resilient to the constant changes. So more decisions will be made in council and county levels as they can see local conditions. But how will governments react? I would guess that they will try to seize more power and centralize it saying that a central command structure is needed. And more use will be made of the military to enforce this power structure. It’s going to be fun.
As i’m creeping towards my golden years and decrepitude certain to follow, I feel as if i’m front and center in watching an honest to goodness turning point in history, which probably won’t be good-but shift happens.
aye, to Violent Occilations.
this year was the worst for that, yet.
deep freezes…featuring blizzard and frozen snow…then late freezes that damaged the fruit tree blooms…then a month and a half of wind from hell…featuring dust storms like Arrakis.
and then a brief reprieve of nice weather…and then inundation. 20″…reprieve…then the 30″+ mess that im still recovering from.
ive had nearly 60″ of rain this year so far…and our “average” is 27 or 28.
blossom end rot on tomatoes(costolutos are doing better)…squash bugs of varying kinds seeking higher ground in trees find my vine squashes up there.
onions rotting in the ground.
and almost no tree fruit.
6th year in a row of this sort of feast or famine and lets spin the wheel for what manner of weather destruction comes next.
havent had tornadoes or hail(touches wood)…but i think thats due to the tropical airmass that seems to have settled in to stay…thats also where all that snow came from, btw.
too much water in the air.
and! before the blizzards and frozen snow, there was a months long winter drought…dust devils in december.
if we really are heading into a semi permanent el nino…as ive seen many of the weather nerds talking about…well, we can adapt to that.
but this constant unpredictability is madness.
(and yeah…”well, thats ag”,lol…but the extremes are worse than historically)
what were the ultimate consequences of these uprisings?
The short version is they were more like 1848 than 1789, although Egypt’s Mubarak did get turfed out.
One problem that I see is that simple accumulation of discontent is not a sufficient cause of a “Spring” moment. Someone has to incite, organize, and coordinate. Without that, all the accumulated discontent and whatever that might emerge from it will be stillborn and go nowhere in particular. It is worthwhile to think about the role played by Western intel agencies and NGOs in harnessing the Arab Spring (even in places where the regimes were Western friendly, like Egypt–I know for fact that a lot of NGO types had unhealthy delusions about what might happen after Mubarak exited the scene.) Or, we might see the “darker side” of the Spring, e.g. how Islamists and the like (existing well organized socio-cultural groupings) took over Egypt (and earlier, Iran) amidst all the chaos.
The former, I don’t see as too likely. I’m somewhat skeptical of the latter–there aren’t that many sociocultural groupings like that in the West, even in the US (the closest thing are the Evangelicals, but I don’t know even they are as powerful as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were–Egypt was and still is basically a largely religious society, if only in appearances. United States, on the whole, is not–although there are quite a few parts that are probably comparable to Egypt.) The more likely scenario, if a “Spring” happens in the West, will probably be a lot of chaos and nothing else.
The X comments below the post are also depressing. MAGA blames illegals and Dems being communists for all of her problems.
yeah.
i overhear that sort of idiocy a lot.
but hey…even people who should know better, like Thiel, use that sort of framing: Dems=Woke Socialism, etc.
This is a problem without a solution.
World population was 2.5 billion in 1950 and is 8.25 billion today. During that period planetary carrying capacity has remained fixed, although extraction and exploitation have increased dramatically. Hoarding and rationing are justified by the neoliberal “free” market.
As we saw with the 2020 BLM and Jan. 6 riots, Americans are not competent at forming an organized resistance against their growing exclusion from economic life. Traditional policing was impotent and the state responded with militarized violence. The dispersed mobs have devolved into atomized acts of vandalism, looting, and turf violence, much of which goes unreported, while others have adopted a learned hopelessness.
Both are forms of nihilism in the face of the insoluble problem of over-population.
The first time I realised that food production would be one of the main problems with global warming was when I read Gwynn’s Dyer’s “Climate Wars” about 15 years ago.
https://archive.org/details/climatewarsfight0000dyer/mode/2up
I remember one of the hair raising points he made was that when the average temperature rises by 2 degrees the temperate bands of the planet in both hemispheres where all the wheat is grown (Ukraine/Russia/US mid west in the north, Australia and probably somewhere else in the South) would no longer able to grow wheat which is, apparently, very temperature sensitive.
That was very disturbing to read. Especially as 2 degrees extra is already certain. Was already certain back then for all but the insanely optimistic.
But, it is not just extra heat. The extra rain also does not help. I read recently (probably here but maybe not) that the agricultural harvest of all crops in Lithuania this year will be 60% (!) lower than last year because of all the heavy rain there.
None of it looks good.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/lithuania-declares-agriculture-emergency-after-crops-damaged-by-rain-2025-08-13/
Corn production has also taken a hit and the crucial difference between corn and wheat is that roughly 45% of the corn crop is used to feed animals. For those who like meat, eggs, and dairy products the supply will become unreliable and the cost will surely rise.
Please do not forget that one of the major problems here in the West is
real or potential water shortage, vis. the Colorado River. Alfalfa for animals
is one of the drivers, since alfalfa requires lots of water and there are several
harvests a year.
Also, as Yves was touching on gas prices I thought I would share this article which somebody at work sent me the other day.
It touches on another problem, that of the rising energy cost of energy which has been discussed here before.
An expert in this article says that four fifths of Australian gas is used by the gas industry itself! That equals thirteen times the gas that is used by the manufacturing sector in this country (such as it is).
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australian-gas-industry-is-the-biggest-user-of-australian-gas-says-new-report/