When we think about winning the fight against climate change, most people concentrate on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks and other machines powered by fossil fuels. However, while these emissions sources are certainly worthy of our attention, another culprit receives far less than it deserves: our food.
Farm and food sustainability are important pieces of the climate change puzzle, but at the moment, climate-sustainable diets are not on the menu. In the developing world, about 821 million people suffer from hunger. Meanwhile, rich countries waste enough food every year to feed 750 million people.
Here is where the connection between food and climate change comes in: As people climb out of poverty — as many are — they demand more meat and dairy. This trend has grave implications for agriculture’s ecological footprint.
Animals consume more food than they produce. Cows release large volumes of heat-trapping methane, and clearing land for pasture releases carbon dioxide at a staggering rate.
If the beef and dairy industries were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only the US and China.
Fortunately, there is a solution: eat less meat, and more fruit and vegetables. Reducing red meat consumption to twice per week would reduce global farmland by three-quarters — an area equivalent in size to the US, China, the EU and Australia combined.
Doing so would also make nutritional sense. At the moment, livestock farming uses about 80 percent of the planet’s farmland, but produces just 18 percent of our calories.
Worst of all, animal farming is a threat to our water supply; the Stockholm International Water Institute says the world could run out of fresh water by 2050 unless people reduce their consumption of animal products to just 5 percent of their daily calorie requirements.
Something must change, and fast. Celebrities certainly understand this. Climate guru and former US vice president Al Gore, who comes from a family of cattle ranchers, is now vegan, as is his old boss, former US president Bill Clinton. Tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, pop singer Beyonce, and many others are also reducing their meat consumption.
Meanwhile, schools all over the world are adopting “Meat-free Mondays” to teach students about sustainability. Even McDonald’s has begun offering McVegan burgers in Scandinavia, apparently to rave reviews.
A recent study published by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) found that official policies toward sustainable food and food waste are also changing.
In 2016, for example, France became the first country in the world to prohibit grocery stores from wasting food. Italy has adopted a similar law.
Apartment dwellers in Denmark, where Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has put food waste on the political agenda, throw out 25 percent less food than they did five years ago.
The SU-Eatable Life project, a three-year European Commission initiative that I am leading in partnership with BCFN — aims to demonstrate that dietary changes can have a significant ecological effect.
Data show that by eating less meat and wasting less food, European consumers could reduce water consumption by 2 million cubic meters and lower carbon dioxide emissions by about 5,300 tonnes every year.
So, what can each of us do to support these efforts? For starters, we should consume more vegetables and grains, which would be good for the planet’s health and our own.
A French study last year found that vegetarians are often healthier than meat eaters, because they eat a more varied diet and consume fewer calories.
We should eat according to the BCFN’s Double Food and Environmental Pyramid, which recommends foods that are high in nutritional value and less damaging to the environment; plant-based proteins are the best.
In a world dominated by vegans, agricultural greenhouse-gas emissions would be 70 percent lower than they are today. That would be a welcome mouthful indeed.
Riccardo Valentini, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Tuscia, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS