£18 Pints Of Beer: The Shocking Cost Of Climate Change

Posted on 30. Oct, 2009 by Ross in Climate Change, Food Production

£6.50 for a loaf of bread, £7 for a box of cornflakes and £18 for a pint of beer - these are the eye watering prices we could face in 2030 unless urgent action is taken to prevent dangerous climate change.

According to the latest figures released by Friends of the Earth (PDF), the price of staple foods is set to rocket four and a half times above normal inflation because the changing climate will put extra stress on land and resources around the world, exacerbating the existing food crisis. Yields of crops like wheat, rice and maize will fall and patterns of trade and consumption will be affected.

Spiralling costs of basics like bread, rice and pasta will mean that many million more people will struggle to buy enough food to keep healthy.

The figures have been produced by Ray Hammond, a leading expert in predicting future social and economic trends and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Institute for the Future of Humanity. He modeled the future prices of consumer foodstuffs for Friends of the Earth using previous price hikes recorded by the World Bank and projections by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Projected prices of other staple foods in 2030 include:

£6.48 for a 800g loaf of white bread (now 72p, would be £1.44 with normal inflation)
£17.91 for a 1 litre corn oil (now £1.99, would be £3.98 with normal inflation)
£15.21 for 1 kg of basmati rice (now £1.69, would be £3.38 with normal inflation)
£7.20 for 500g corn flakes (now 78p, would be £1.56 with normal inflation)
£16.02 for 24 Weetabix-style biscuits (now £1.78, would be £3.56 with normal inflation)
£18.45 for a pint of Pilsner lager (now £2.05, would be £4.05 with normal inflation)

As pressure mounts ahead of the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen, the report is a reminder that global warming will hit ordinary Britons hard, as well as causing storms, droughts, famine and floods that will affect the developing world.

In his report, Hammond echoes Friends of the Earth’s call for a strong and fair agreement in Copenhagen, in which rich countries promise to cut their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020 without carbon offsetting, and pledge sufficient public funds to enable poor nations to develop cleanly and adapt to the impacts of climate change. He also advises urgent political action to address the underlying causes of the food crisis.

Our global food production is already precarious - and climate change threatens to tip it into disaster. Rich countries must take strong and decisive action to propel us towards a strong and fair agreement in Copenhagen in December - otherwise many people in the UK will face a Dickensian struggle to afford food and millions of people in the developing world will be condemned to early deaths.

Image by spli @ Flickr