(article, Culinate staff)
Accompanied by record high temperatures, the worst drought in decades is currently ravaging America's crops. As Bloomberg News recently noted, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared July 11 that more than 1,000 counties in 26 states are natural-disaster areas, the biggest such declaration ever." And it's not getting better anytime soon. That means prices — not just for produce, but for livestock feed such as corn and soy, and in turn livestock products such as beef and dairy — will go up. (And if you thought salmon was already pricey, just wait till it's gone for good, as a recent PBS report documented. Or coral reefs, which are also heading for extinction.) As Elizabeth Kolbert (in the New Yorker) and Bill McKibben (in Rolling Stone) raged, maybe this overheated summer will finally push Americans to admit that climate change is real. Those Americans, however, don't seem to include the current Presidential candidates, which, in this election season, bothers both writers no end. As Kolbert wrote, "Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have chosen to remain silent on the issue, presumably because they see it as just too big a bummer."