We are in a process of going through a paradigm shift in terms of how we think
about the connections between food security, nutrition, and environment.
So traditionally, we thought of these as separate domains.
Food security, it's real, it's pressing, real people are hungry right now.
Nutrition is this crisis, everybody's gluttons, their obesity is rising.
Environment is this kind of luxury concern, let's save the whales.
And these things were not necessarily seen as connected, or
if there were connections, they weren't really the main important piece of this.
What we really want to do is get the most food to people for the lowest prices.
And there might be a benefit to food security or
nutrition from fixing the environment some place far in the future, but
it wasn't seen as essential or here or now.
And currently, as all these crises that I'm going to talk about have converged,
there's a very different understanding, we see this as now.
And I will say that in the earlier version of this lecture, where it says now,
it said happening right now in distant places, and may eventually affect us.
But when I really stepped back and thought about it, I said no,
I have to edit that and just say now because it's happening right now, and
we're seeing it right now wherever we live.
And there's a concept that technology might help us, it also might backfire,
but whatever it is, we need to do basically whatever we can and
really put in a strong and unified effort to address these linked threats.
So I'm going to start by talking about climate change,
which is an area where I've done a fair amount of work.