The Climate Diet

Eating and Drinking

We make choices about food more often than about any other climate change driver. It therefore makes sense to begin our climate diet with our actual diet. Though it is a complicated business assigning an overall number to the carbon footprint of food, most regulators and scientists place it within the top five sources of emissions, nationally. These emissions happen directly through the operation of farm equipment, the methane burps of cows, and the transportation of product to market, and also indirectly through the replacement of powerful carbon-sequestering wild systems like forests and grasslands with CO2-leaking monocultures like corn and wheat. Even the earth beneath our feet is diminished by present methods of agriculture. The global soil stock, the world's second largest carbon storehouse after the ocean, has lost somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of its original carbon dioxide to the atmosphere because of overtilling, overfertilization, excessive pesticide application, and other practices commonly deployed in the modern food system.

There are other important reasons to focus on fixing your food footprint. Biodiversity, water use, and exploitation of open space-key metrics in how scientists assess sustainability-are all profoundly impacted by how we grow our food. The central issue of this book, though, is greenhouse gas emissions, so I've organized this chapter around which food changes would have the largest impact on that metric. With apologies to the animal liberation movement (which I support), the approach here is not specifically vegan or vegetarian but rather what some call "climatarian"-an emphasis on the most realistic food changes that could be taken up by the largest number of people to lop the greatest possible chunk off American emissions. Here, then, is a baker's dozen of changes you can make that will lighten your emissions load in the kitchen.

1
Ease up on meat and cheese. A switch to a plant-based

Paul Greenberg is the author of the James Beard Award-winning bestseller Four Fish, American Catch, and The Omega Principle, and a regular contributor to The New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other publications. He has been a correspondent for PBS's Frontline and lectured widely on ocean issues at institutions ranging from TED to Google to the U.S. Senate. He lives in New York.

Useful and relevant. . . . Greenberg s writing is clear and concise. Each section starts with easy tips . . . then wades into bigger, trickier concepts. New York Times Book Review

Some strong and rational suggestions for reducing your personal impact here and when you're eating smart, you'll have the energy to do the movement building we need to change systems too! This book integrates the individual and the societal in a powerful way.   Bill McKibben

[The Climate Diet] will guide you from inaction to purpose . . . The book may be brief, but it's solid, practical, educational, and motivating. It stays true to the goal Greenberg professes in the introduction 'to help you get from wherever you are right now to a better place in the future.' It takes a formidable, looming crisis and breaks it down into manageable chunks that infuse the reader with a sense of hopefulness. There's profound satisfaction in doing something, rather than nothing. Treehugger

[The Climate Diet] will help get America thinking as a new presidential administration moves in with climate change as a core concern. . . . This is no cookbook but rather an accessible pocket guide to the climate-focused lifestyle and reducing one s carbon footprint. . . . The author drives home a salient point: Whatever the role of governments in curtailing carbon use, it s up to each citizen to make their own sensible choices. . . . A quick and timely read. . . . A solid manifesto for the climate-focused life. Kirkus