Newsweek fears global warming means the end of pasta. It’s just more scaremongering.

We could do much more good if we focused on allowing poor countries to use the benefits of extra CO₂ fertilization while adapting to the problems caused by higher temperatures. That means greater investment in crop research to produce more robust and higher-yielding varieties, as well as making more irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizer available.

Furthermore, even the poorest parts of the developing world will be much richer by mid-century; most people will live in cities and earn their incomes outside agriculture. As in today’s developed countries, their consumption of wheat will not depend on whether it is produced in their own country, but on global food prices and local income.

This underscores the importance of striving for free trade, thereby enabling cheaper agricultural production while increasing wages in non-agricultural sectors. Global-warming scare stories merely shift our focus to the least effective ways to help.