An important story reported earlier this month (November, 2021), features the impact of climate change on the children of southern Madagascar. This is a report primarily about famine caused by climate change, not war, economic oppression or pestilence. Regrettably, the story also includes more than a trace of self-congratulations from and by ABC News Anchor David Muir.

Those of us who don’t have a phobic distaste for modern science recognize that climate change is causing world-wide land use change. Coastal communities are threatened by rising seas. Once fertile farmland is lying fallow because insufficient rain falls. Five-hundred-year floods are occurring one a decade, not twice a millennium.

It is interesting how in the United States and most other industrialized countries, increasing emphasis is placed on rebuilding and expanding its built infrastructure. When it comes to roads and bridges, an important question is largely going unasked. Where do these ribbons of concrete take us, and do their paths take into consideration how our land is changing due to climate change.

For instance, the metropolitan area of Houston, TX has been battered over the past ten years by hurricanes. Isaac devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast in August, 2012. Hurricane Harvey struck in August, 2017 and Hurricane Laura in August, 2020. Despite some enlightened leadership in the area with County Judge [Supervisor, Harris County] Lina Hidalgo and Mayor Sylvester Turner, the private sector seems to believe that nothing bad can happen again for another 500 years, and they rebuild in the areas that have been flooded and destroyed. They are aided by state-wide science deniers like Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz.

People who are homeless or starving are not the only displaced people in the world. The world’s population continues to grow, and that puts people in tighter confines with one another. We like to believe that we live in nation-states, but perhaps our second tightest bond to family is our tribes. And as the global population expands and arable land compresses, more tribes are running up against other tribes – ones whose company they would prefer not to keep.

The result is more war and violence. It may be cloaked under the guise of religious differences, or political differences, or economic disparities. In any event, it is more and more difficult for peace-loving people to find areas to live where they are not threatened by other groups of humans.

When people who don’t want to be neighbors are cramped together, anthropologically we know that peaceful resolution of problems is a hard sell. More often than not, violence is the likely modus operandi of settlement. Conflict and violence lead to displacement. Necessary relocation means refugees – often millions of people moving, often by foot, to new places where they think that they will be physically safe and will be able to find gainful work.

Frequently this traffic rapidly changes directions. In the early 2000s when the U.S. invaded Iraq for no particular reason, millions of Iraqi civilians headed west to Syria where they were welcome in many small villages. But just a few years later, Iraq was more at peace while Syria was engaged in a gruesome civil war with a external counties such as the United States and Russia adding to the mayhem and destruction. By the mid two-thousand-teens, millions of Syrians were fleeing their country, often heading east to Iraq to a land that is similar to their own.

However, in both incarnations of this Middle East refugees-in-motion, many moved toward what they saw as a better life in Europe. In some places, and in cases where the numbers were not too large, the migration to Europe worked, especially since the E.U. was looking for people to fill low-paying jobs. But as the numbers jumped into the millions, the inevitable happened. Refugees were seen as foreigners who were outsiders to their staid communities, and new conflict was born.

Just as the world needs to create new ways to find homes for local, regional, or global refugees, it needs to do the same for those who are displaced by politics as well as climate. These problems become only more severe as population growth creates more crunches. So, what options to people of the world have?

There are basically two ways to find venues where displaced people can live:

1. Find existing land on our planet which currently is largely uninhabited and has the natural resources to sustain a significant number of human beings.
2. Where arable and otherwise resourceful land does not exist, humanity needs to find ways to create new land masses where refugees can move and comfortably live, at least until they are able to find another part of the planet on which to live.

China has built three man-made islands in the South China Sea for military bases against Taiwan and other potential adversaries in the Pacific Rim. Reaction to their construction has ranged from enormous fear of expansion to mockery because there are reports that the islands are falling apart and sinking into the ocean.

Regardless, humankind, under the aegis of the United Nations, needs to find largely unoccupied places for refugees to live. These new homes can be temporary; to give political or climate factors time to reverse themselves. Equally plausible is for them to become “permanent” homes so that they can be free from the strife that caused them such misery in their most recent homes.

Countries large in area such as the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Australia, and others have room for refugee settlements. China is so residentially over-built that it literally has high-rise cities that are vacant and capable of housing literally millions of people.

However, virtually all land on Planet Earth is accounted for. It is either owned by a private enterprise or the government is holding it for recreation, environmental protection or future development.

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Acknowledging human’s contributions to climate change is pretty easy to understand, at least for 60% of the American population.

But at times, political action in support of addressing climate change can create a situation in which the commitment to environmental change is overshadowed by the irony of the tactics.

Such was the case on Friday, September 20 when student protesters in Washington, DC and elsewhere formed human barricades on major thoroughfares, bringing traffic to a halt. At first, it seems like a really good idea. It is a way of broadening the awareness to the ‘content with fossil fuels’ part of the population. The message was that their complacency will not be tolerated by most young people who will have to live with the inaction of today’s ruling class of adults.

But the problem with the tactic of blocking traffic was vividly pointed out by ABC reporter Kristen Powers, not to be confused with fellow journalist Kirsten Powers. Kristen Powers made the following observation in Twitter protesters in DC:

She points out an obvious disconnect in the protest. Some people walking by the protesters asked them why they were blocking cars that are burning fossil fuels to get their point across. The longer that the cars are stalled in traffic, the more pollutants that their vehicles emit into the atmosphere, thus contributing to further global warming and climate change.

Clearly, the protesters made their point. But they were aware of the irony of how their tactics were worsening a situation that they were trying to make better? I don’t know if it would have been better had they seen the disconnect, or not see the disconnect.

Even if the protesters had not been generating more pollution into the atmosphere, one has to wonder about the effectiveness of tactics that create victims out of people who are possibly innocent by-standers. Does pissing anyone off really help the cause? There are times when protesters of varying stripes seem to ignore that their tactics can create backlash.

None of this should detract from the remarkable work most of the protesters who are passionately trying to awaken America’s adults to the reality that climate challenges have far greater impact on today’s youth than today’s adults. Like every component of social change, protests require fore-thought and planning. Just the way in which our government would be better if there was a Department of Common Sense (perhaps instead of the Supreme Court), protesters could benefit in their planning with a few critical contrarians. All the same, mega-kudos to the protesters, and last Friday was a remarkable learning experience for all of us.

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In an emotional address to members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on April 16, 2019, sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a stark message. “I want you to panic,” she began. “I want you to act as if the house is on fire.”

Thunberg, the founder of a now-global movement of student climate activists called Fridays for Future, has become the inspiration for more than 2,000 student strikes in more than 100 countries around the world. Inspired by the walk-outs of traumatized students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where fourteen students were brutally gunned down, Thunberg saw in the students’ anti-gun tactics an opportunity to harness through similar actions the energy of young people to jolt politicians out of their complacency about the looming dangers of climate change.

See you for yourself in the video below why Thunberg’s eloquent and passionate plea for immediate climate action has both inspired legions of young people and also forced some climate-change denying politicians and fossil-fuel lobbyists to take seriously this determined young woman.

In fact, the climate deniers are taking the threat of Thunberg’s rhetoric so seriously that they’ve launched a campaign questioning her motives and casting doubt on the sincerity of her efforts. There’s a good chance those politicians and lobbyists are seeing exactly what I see: first, a young woman who poses a threat to the status quo and the fossil-fuel industry’s control of the narrative. And, second, the shocking realization that an unusually gifted sixteen-year-old might just be today’s most electrifying spokesperson for climate-change activism out there, and that there’s a fighting chance that Thunberg—and her young supporters—could succeed in convincing the global community to heed the emergency alarms, ignore the special interests, and unite to address the crisis that is climate change.

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For more than forty years, scientists and environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about climate change. In 1975 Dr. Wallace S. Broecker, who first introduced the term “global warming,” published his landmark paper that modeled  the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and temperature rise. It was also in the 1970s that ExxonMobil’s own in-house scientists conducted studies that raised red flags about fossil fuels and climate change. That suppressed report motivated ExxonMobil to launch a multi-million-dollar, multi-decade disinformation campaign—the effects of which we’re still living with today.

As the chorus of credible voices on climate change has grown ever louder over the years, scientists, environmentalists, politicians, concerned citizens, and the media have struggled to craft a compelling narrative to communicate to a skeptical American public both the short- and long-term impacts of climate change. Although nearly every avenue of communication has been tried, according to recent polling nearly fifty percent of Americans continue to reject the fact that climate change will affect them during their lifetimes.

Without a doubt, the effort to normalize climate-change denial has ramped up since Donald Trump captured the White House. Incredibly, at least twenty current appointees at major governmental agencies are climate-change deniers. Trump appointees at agencies vital to the health and safety of Americans, like the United States Department of Agriculture, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Housing and Human Development, have expressed in various ways their doubts about the human causes of climate change. Trump himself has muddied the waters by repeatedly denying and denigrating, through his off-the-cuff comments, the documented conclusions of the government’s own climate researchers, space agency, and military.

Listen to your stomach

What will it take to wake up doubting Americans to the greatest challenge humankind may ever face? Publication of the results of scientific studies have failed. Charts and graphs have failed. Dramatic videos of melting ice and glaciers and predictions about the coming devastation to coastal communities of sea-level rise have done little to change the minds of skeptics. Heart-rending photos of dislocated islanders abandoning their flooded homes and devastating videos of starving polar bears gain temporary traction but then are forgotten. Warnings about melting ice caps fall on deaf ears. Climate-disaster blockbuster movies fail to translate into real-life perceptions. Appeals to deniers’ better angels and the oft-repeated religious belief that Earth is a god-given gift to humanity that must be cared for and stewarded with care seem to yield only temporary concern. Entreaties about the responsibility to pass on to children and grandchildren a rich and diverse world—all have failed to break through the psychological barrier of denial.

If science, religion, ethics, love of family, or scare tactics have failed to convince doubters of the reality of climate change, what will? Could the answer to that question be that the disappearance due to climate change of some of our favorite comfort foods will do the trick? In other words, is the way to climate deniers’ minds through their stomachs?

Foods at risk

Some of America’s favorite comfort foods and kitchen staples may either be on the edge of extinction within the next few decades or their availability and affordability threatened by rising growing costs due to the effects of climate change, like changing seasonal weather patterns, drought, or temperature rise. It may be time to remind climate-change doubters that we might be looking at a world in which favorite foods like apples, avocados, bananas, chocolate, coffee, corn, beer, wine, honey, and much more may no longer be available or may end up becoming affordable only to the wealthiest among us.

Here are a few of the predictions:

Apples

The trees on which America’s favorite fruit grows need a certain period of winter chill to produce economically viable yields. Rising temperatures are disrupting the apple-growing season and causing apple trees to bear their fruit sooner. Rising winter temperatures will most likely force apple farmers to breed new cultivars that require lower chilling temperatures, which might affect yields and taste.

Avocados

90% of avocados grown in the U.S. come from California, and 79% of avocados in the U.S. are imported from Mexico. One pound of avocados requires 72 gallons of water to grow. Due to drought and increased costs of water, the cost of growing has increased significantly. Predictions are that the cost of avocados will continue to rise as water supplies become less predictable.

Bananas

The Cavendish banana, which is the commercially grown version sold in supermarkets, has been under a devastating attack by the Panama disease,  which taints the soil in which banana trees are grown. The fungus is rapidly spreading throughout Africa and Asia and could spread more rapidly as climate change encourages spread of the pathogens. According to experts, if the fungus spreads to South America, banana lovers can say goodbye to this staple unless scientists succeed in breeding a new, pathogen-resistant variety.

Cocoa

In the early 1990s, the fungal disease called witch’s broom knocked out 80% of Brazil’s total cocoa output. Today, scientists fear that fungal diseases could send the cocoa bean into extinction because of the plant’s limited genetic variation. The projected higher temperatures in West Africa also pose a significant threat.

Coffee

Researchers predict that by 2050, up to 80% of the land area suitable for growing coffee—particularly in Brazil and parts of Central America—could become unsuitable for growing due to higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, all of which would pose a risk to the global coffee supply chain.

Corn

As global warming progresses, corn yields in the U.S. (now at 300 million tons produced each year in the U.S. alone or 30% of farmland) could decrease by 30 to 46 percent and even up to 63 to 82 percent if faster warming rates occur. Corn is everywhere in the American food chain. From feed for beef, chicken, and pork to ingredients derived from the corn kernel that are used in a multitude of processed foods—Ingredients like corn syrup, corn oil, corn starch, ascorbic acid, acetic acid, citric acid, and more.

Honey

The documented decline and large-scale disappearance of honeybees linked to pesticide use and climate change points to the decline or total loss of honey production in the future.

Beer

Water and hops, the main ingredients in beer production, are under threat by the changing climate. Warming winters are producing earlier and decreased yields of hops. The National Resources Defense Council warns that between 2030 and 2050 the difficulty in accessing freshwater is “anticipated to be significant in the major agricultural and urban areas throughout the nation.”

Wine

Studies are beginning to show that temperatures in California’s wine-producing regions, like the Napa Valley and Sonoma, are becoming too high to grow wine grapes. Predictions of production loss in California over the next fifty years come in as high as a potential 85% decrease. In France, extreme weather, like hailstorms, drought, and heavy rain, are threatening the viability of some of the country’s most iconic wine producers.

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Sometimes it takes just one person to spark a movement. Swedish student Greta Thunberg is one such person. In August 2018 the then fifteen-year-old sat down to protest for the first time in front of the Swedish Parliament House in central Stockholm. For three weeks during every school day, Thunberg skipped her classes and sat down to protest the Swedish government’s lack of meaningful action on climate change.

One month later, Thunberg made the decision to stay out of school every Friday and to continue to demonstrate weekly until the government of Sweden committed to take action on policies to cut carbon emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015.

As word of her strike spread via Twitter and Instagram, Thunberg’s solitary act of dissent became a global student movement, called Fridays for Future, that spread to countries on five continents.

In cities across Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Latin America, Africa, and India tens of thousands of students have responded enthusiastically to Thunberg’s call to walk out of their classrooms and join the worldwide fight for the future.

On March 1, addressing thousands of students in Hamburg, Germany, the now sixteen-year-old activist rallied her followers. “Yes, we are angry,” she began. “We are angry because the older generations are continuing to steal our future right now. For way too long the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer. We will continue to school-strike until they do something.”

Thunberg’s success in rallying students worldwide has given her the platform to expand her message even to world leaders. At the 2019 Davos conference in January, Thunberg explained how the responsibility to act on climate change falls on young people because “their future is at risk, and they need to get angry and then transform that anger into action.” Later, at an EU conference in February, Thunberg urged representatives to double the bloc’s commitment to greenhouse-gas cuts. In Germany, where Fridays for Future rallies have sparked widespread support among students, Chancellor Angela Merkel felt compelled to offer her support of the rallies in a controversial podcast video. While stating her strong support for the protests and the students’ long-term goals, the chancellor offered a note of caution about the challenges Germany faces in the process to end the country’s reliance on coal and coal-fired power plants.

For students interested in getting involved and voicing their concerns about climate change, Thunberg urges them to demonstrate every Friday in front of their own local town halls and to take a picture and post it with the hashtag #Fridaysforfuture or #Climatestrike. Thunberg also urges students who might hesitate to walk out of their classrooms to think creatively about how they might find symbolic ways to “strike” and to share their tactics with the Fridays for Future community.

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Do you remember your first brush with the scientific method? For most of us, the six steps at the core of the scientific method were introduced during our formative years in elementary school. Remember the infamous lima bean experiment? I recall how curious I was when my first-grade teacher unveiled the stack of mason jars, the pile of paper towels, and the tray of beans set up on the crayon-scuffed table in the middle of the room. I’ve never forgotten the sense of wonder as I watched the emergence of the bean’s roots and shoots inside the glass jar. I’ve also never forgotten my impatience as I was reminded to color in a chart that showed that I’d faithfully followed each prescribed step. That was the moment when I, like most first graders, first became immersed in the step-by-step process that forms the basis for all science.

Everything a kid then and now needs to know about the universe of scientific inquiry— about curiosity, about logical planning, about patience, about predictability and integrity, about personal responsibility and commitment to wherever the observed facts may lead an experiment—was contained in the simple act of adding water and light to a lowly bean and observing the miracle of photosynthesis and plant growth.

What we learned in first grade

In child-friendly terms, first-grade teachers introduce the indisputable fact that the scientific method forms the basis for every transformative discovery in science and technology from the ancient world to our time. As adults, most of us understand that no matter what the area of study, the research, experimentation, and the drawing of conclusions based on observation follow the same path—a path that culminates in a set of facts. This trajectory is true for everything from the simplest discoveries—like the environmental triggers that jump start the germination of seeds that feed and sustain us—to the most complex and multifaceted—like space exploration, or identifying the causes of climate change, or the molecular signature of life, or the unraveling of the interconnections between genetics and disease.

So what went wrong in the American zeitgeist that so many first graders have grown up to be adults who seem to be casting aside what they learned about science and facts at the age of six?

Incredibly, the one third of adult Americans who identify as climate-change deniers or doubters have suppressed the lessons of their six-year-old selves and succumbed to factless, corporate-interest propaganda and wild conspiracy theories. Even worse, individuals who have been appointed to be guardians of agencies of our government are ignoring, suppressing, and, in the most extreme, censoring and altering facts promulgated by scientists faithful to the scientific method and the agencies’ science-based missions.

What we’ve forgotten

How much has science denial and suppression of fact-based research under the current president and his appointees affected government agencies and the scientists who commit themselves to fact-based policy on behalf of the health and prosperity of Americans?

A survey of more than 63,000 federal scientists working in sixteen government agencies paints an alarming picture. The survey, conducted in the fall of 2018 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, reveals that

• 80 percent of the survey’s respondents reported workforce reductions through staff cuts, hiring freezes, and failures to replace staff who quit or retired.
• 87 percent reported that budget and staff reductions undermined their ability to fulfill their scientific missions.
• 50 percent across the sixteen agencies confirmed that political interests are currently hindering the agencies’ ability to base policy solely on scientific findings.
• 76 percent of National Park Service respondents and 81 percent of respondents at the EPA reported that political interests have become an obstacle to fact-based policy.

Survey respondents also confirmed the dysfunction and corruption of mission that outside observers have been reporting since the election of 2016. These are shocking numbers.

• 70 percent agreed or strongly agreed that leaders of the agencies plucked from the industries agencies are supposed to be regulating are inappropriately influencing the agencies’ decision making.
• And the most extreme type of interference—actual censorship—is insidiously undermining agencies’ science-based missions, with nearly 35 percent (or approximately 150) of scientists working in the EPA reporting that they’d been asked to censor the phrase “climate change” from their reports;
• Another 30 percent indicate that they had avoided working on climate change or using the phrase “climate change” without “explicit orders to do so.”

Here’s what one anonymous EPA scientist revealed,

“The current administration sees protecting industry as part of the agency’s mission and does not want to consider action that might reduce industry profit, even if it’s based on sound science [emphasis added]. We are not fulfilling our mission to protect human health and the environment as a result.”

The scientists who responded to the survey and were courageous enough to send out an S.O.S. are without a doubt imploring us to take action before the pollution of science and the diminishment of a fact-based world goes beyond our ability to rein in the chaos.

Back to the future

Here’s the first step. Let’s send Donald Trump and his unqualified agency appointees back to their first-grade classrooms for a two-year remedial course on science and the true meaning of the word “fact.” Then, while they’re playing around with their lima beans and mason jars, those in our government who believe in fact-based policy can get on with the work of allowing scientists to provide us with the evidence to create policies that protect and enhance our lives, the lives of our children, and the world.

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At the annual gathering of The American Geophysical Union in fall of 2016, more than twenty-three thousand earth and space scientists from around the globe met to present their research and to share with one another the latest discoveries, trends, and challenges in their respective fields. The meeting was the largest international gathering of climate and space scientists to date.

The American Geophysical Union is a century-old organization dedicated to the generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge and the free exchange of ideas and information. Its stated mission is “respect for a diversity of ideas and approaches, accountability to the public, and excellence and integrity.”

During the gathering a videographer asked participating climate scientists to articulate a message to then-candidate Trump about the role of science in meeting the challenges of global climate change. Seven scientists came forward to warn the Republican candidate about the folly of dismissing facts, the scientific data, and even the scientists themselves.  Incredibly, one speaker felt compelled to point out what should have been obvious to any individual running for the most powerful office in the world—that “our entire civilization is based on science.”  The range of messages in the video run the gamut from guardedly hopeful to cautious to sounding the alarm about the very real possibility of suppression of scientific data by the then-incoming administration. The scientists featured in the video are male and female. They are young, and they are old. Each, in his or her own way, articulates a sincere and heartfelt call to reason at a time when unreason and willful ignorance were well on their way to sabotaging our national political dialogue.

Below are some highlights. The full video is well worth a listen. You can bet that the admonishments—and wisdom—of those who know the most about the science of climate change will continue to be dismissed by now President Trump and the climate deniers in his administration. For the rest of us, these warnings should serve as a rallying cry.

“A thermometer isn’t Democratic or Republican. It doesn’t give us a different answer depending on how we vote.”

“The challenge is not fighting about the science. The challenge is how are we going to respond to the real threat, the real risks that climate change poses.”

“It [the earth] gives us the air that we breathe. It gives us the food that we eat. It gives us the water we drink. It gives us the place where we live.”

“I truly believe that just about every single person on this planet has the values they already have in their heart to care about climate change. We just have to connect the dots.”

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“Don’t let anybody tell you we’re going to get on rocket ships and live on Mars. This is our home.”

Eleven years after “An Inconvenient Truth” shocked the world with its warnings about the effects of climate change, former vice-president and climate activist Al Gore is set to release a sequel to his Oscar-winning first film. “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” the second installment in Gore’s climate-change documentary project, seeks to educate the viewer about the accelerating effects of climate change while highlighting hopeful advances in the technology of sustainable, green energy.

The timing of the film’s release couldn’t be better. It follows fast upon the signing by the Trump Administration of a reckless and fact-defying executive order curbing enforcement of climate-related regulations and deep cuts to the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Judging from the newly released trailer, “An Inconvenient Sequel” features a fighting-mad yet guardedly optimistic Al Gore. Here is Gore, pleading with us to wake up before it’s too late.

“The next generation will be justified in looking back at us and thinking, ‘What were you thinking? Couldn’t you hear what the scientists were saying? Couldn’t you hear what Mother Nature was screaming at you?’ “

The film, directed by Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen, opens in cinemas July 28, 2017.

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“Climate change is not just about statistics. Climate change is not just about science. Climate change is about human rights.”

– Ursula Rakova, Founder and Director of Tulele Peisa

Behold the ravishingly beautiful Carteret Islands—an atoll of six low-lying islands not far from Papua, New Guinea, in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The Carteret Islands are more than eight thousand miles away from where I sit as I write this post, and, incredibly, some of them are disappearing. Not long ago a distance of thousands of miles would have made it easy to overlook the human and environmental tragedy unfolding on Carteret—but not anymore. The age of information sharing has made it possible to witness firsthand the stories of how people’s lives are being upended by the effects of global warming and climate change—even in the most remote of places like Carteret.

The Carteret Islands have been inhabited for more than one thousand years. But now, as the land is being swallowed by the rising sea, the islands’ communities are grappling with an uncertain future.

It’s been said that the Carteret islanders are the world’s first official climate-change refugees. Through no fault of their own, they have become the first wave in what scientists predict will become a tidal wave of global dislocations and humanitarian crises caused by global warming and environmental degradation.

Forced to abandon their ancestral homelands due to food shortages, rising sea levels, sinking shorelines, and the dangers of storm surges and king tides, the islanders face life-altering choices resulting from economic and political decisions beyond their control. In the video below, their anger and sadness is heartbreaking. The choice for them is clear. They can stay and watch the islands shrink and slowly disappear. Or they can evacuate, “leaving their values and conscience behind,” and try to rebuild their community on mainland Bougainville. Either way, the islanders bear a deep burden of loss.

In “Sisters on the Planet: Carteret Islands,” a video produced by Oxfam New Zealand, we meet Ursula Rakova, hero and founder of Tulele Peisa, a community organization supported by the Carteret Islands Council of Elders. With little to no government funding, Ms. Rakova decided to develop and implement an evacuation plan for Carteret’s three thousand inhabitants. As of the filming of the video, Ms. Rakova had managed the successful migration of one thousand seven hundred of her fellow islanders, even while continuing the essential work of documenting the history and traditions of the vanishing islands of the Carterets.

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Halfway between Norway and the North Pole in the chilly waters of the Arctic Ocean lie the Svalbard Islands. On one of the largest, called Spitsbergen, sits a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to one of the most urgent undertakings for today’s warming world: ensuring the future of agriculture for the global community.

That little-known facility is called The Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It is owned and operated by the Norwegian government and supported by The Crop Trust, an international group dedicated to the protection of global food security. The scope of The Seed Vault’s mission is staggering: that is, to conserve the diversity of agricultural crops worldwide and to prevent diversity extinction due to climate change, natural disaster, or war.

The Seed Vault’s underground storage facility, tunneled 394 feet into the rocky layer beneath a permafrost-covered field, has the distinction of housing the world’s largest collection of seeds. Just this past February, 50,000 were deposited for safekeeping. With a storage capacity of up to 4.5 million crop samples, the vault is on the path to becoming the world’s largest repository for conservation ex situ of worldwide plant diversity. According to the organization’s website, “the seed vault offers fail-safe protection for one of the most important resources on earth.”

In the emotionally powerful video below, narrator and plant-diversity conservationist Cary Fowler takes us on a journey into the history of agriculture and then urges us to reconsider and reset our priorities in terms of food production.

Setting those priorities in the right direction has never been more controversial nor more urgent now that Donald Trump is enthroned in the oval office. Trump’s take on security and Fowler’s are worlds apart. Think about it. Will Trump’s proposal to increase the military budget by $54 billion create a more secure world? Will we truly be more secure when one takes into account the human cost and negative impacts of paying for Trump’s boondoggle with decreased funding for foreign aid, food programs, and climate-change research?

Or will we be more secure if we acknowledge the reality of climate change and take the necessary steps now to protect the world’s most fundamental resource: our food supply. Watch this extraordinary video and learn that the answer to that question is unequivocal.

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