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Economic incentives modify agricultural impacts of nuclear warA nuclear war using less than 1% of the current global nuclear arsenal, which would inject 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history and significant impacts on agricultural productivity and the economy. These effects would be most severe for the first five years after the nuclear war and may last for more than a decade. This paper calculates how food availability would change by employing the Environmental Impact and Sustainability Applied General Equilibrium model. Under a robust world trading system, global food availability would drop by a few percentage points. If the war would destabilize trade, it would magnify by several times the negative ramifications of land productivity shocks on food availability. If exporting countries redirect production to domestic consumption at the expense of importing countries, it would lead to the destabilization of international trade. The analysis suggests that economic models aiming to inform policymakers require both economic behavior analysis and biophysical drivers. Policy lessons derived from a crop model can be significantly nuanced when coupled with economic feedback derived from economic models. Through the impact on yield, farmers could shift production among crops and reallocate land use to maximize profits, showing the importance of general equilibrium effects such as product and input substitution and international trade. Although the global impact on corn and soybean production would be significant when just considering crop production, it could be considerably smaller under the economic model. However, this would be at the expense of other sectors, including livestock. In addition, the costs borne from disruptions to climate would vary significantly across regions, with significant adverse effects in high latitude regions. The severity of the shocks in the high-latitude areas would marginalize the farmers' product and input substitution ability.
Document ID
20220010031
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Gal Hochman ORCID
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States)
Hainan Zhang
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States)
Lili Xia ORCID
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States)
Alan Robock ORCID
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States)
Aleti Saketh
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States)
Dominique Y van der Mensbrugghe
(Purdue University West Lafayette West Lafayette, Indiana, United States)
Jonas Jaegermeyr ORCID
(Columbia University New York, New York, United States)
Date Acquired
June 29, 2022
Publication Date
April 19, 2022
Publication Information
Publication: Environmental Research Letters
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Volume: 17
Issue: 5
Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022
e-ISSN: 1748-9326
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: 80NSSC20M0282
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
Technical Review
External Peer Committee
Keywords
Nuclear war
soot
atmosphere
climate change
agriculture
crops
economy
Environmental Impact and Sustainability Applied General Equilibrium model
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