An Oz friend of mine accepts that there is a climate change problem but says that Oz need not bother doing anything about it because they have such a small population (round the coast) and they would make negligible impact. He explains to me that they have all this coal in Queensland (where he lives) and coal fired power stations.
I counter his attitude by saying that we all live on one planet and therefore each individual, wherever they live, should make every effort to cut waste and pollution. I have not convinced him and it is all about money to him and he does not want to spend any of his....!
1
Changing food habits is important but it's an add-on. We will not resolve Climate Change problems unless we reduce the human population. The constant increase of humans across the planet, with all its related consumption and destruction, is THE central issue here. We need to not only stop increasing the human population. We need to reduce it. Without doing this, it'll all be over with pretty soon.
7
@HappyWorld
Reducing the Human population can be done simply by limiting offspring to a single child per woman.
Women in much of the world can accomplish this one their own initiative by themselves. In the rest of the world education and emancipation will do the trick.
After one full generation the population would be 50% half its current number. After two full generations we would be at 25% of current population and much of the excesses of climate change would be addressed by a 75% reduction in human consumption of resources simply by attrition. Stop thinking about a "growth economy" and start thinking about a substantially downsized "quality of life economy" for everyone.
1
Well intentioned article. But, Im sorry to say very superficial and therefore actually dangerous. If you are going to write about food then please educate yourself about the basics of agricultural ecology. Q. For example what makes nutrient dense food nutritious. A. A diverse and abundant population of microbes in the soil, especially fungi. The first priority should be to eat food grow in this type of soil. Why? because is heals ecosystems that naturally cool the planet. Secondly eat meat from holistically managed herds. Its not about the meat its about the healthy ecosystems that such herds produce. Again ecosystem thinking. Sadly most journalists work in cities and offices and do not understand the first thing about land management and how that affects the environment. Please find someone who knows about these things to give advice about how to eat in a warming world.Anything less is morally irresponsible.
11
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants - Best advice I’ve ever read on the topic.
7
If Maine blueberries face extinction, then perhaps we all do.
3
Thanks for the "Guilt Trip." Yeah, I'm totally responsible for global warming - blame me for everything. After all I make all the decisions as to how food is grown, packaged, shipped, delivered and what winds up in the disposal bin because I don't like the way it looks. I'm also responsible for the weather, starvation, migration, and all the other maladies of the planet.
Reality says that we humans like to eat. Unless we are subsistence farmers, we rely on others to provide our food. I guess the only way to end global warming is to abandon modern life and become subsistence farmers.
Let's give a free-pass to the industrialists who love to manipulate legislatures and governments, who dump their garbage into our common air, land and water and then tax us to clean up their mess.
Let us all abandon millennia of civilization, build our own grass hut and strike it out on our own. Life will be better because few of us will survive and, after all, people are the problem and the fewer people we have the better.
1
@George N. Wells George, I hate to say it but it is precisely this kind of mind-set that will drive us, and every other creature on this planet, towards extinction. You do have a choice over what you eat and a preference over how it is packaged. A vegan diet comes with far fewer of these dilemmas, is delicious, low impact and will add years to your life. Buy dry goods, bring your own bags, shop locally. Don't buy the over-packaged stuff in clam-shells or the over-processed 'foods' from the industrialists that you disdain. We don't need to live in huts or turn our back on technology - we may instead need to embrace every smart solution that's out there. But we do need to take ownership for each and every purchasing decision that is in our hands because indirectly we impact land use and the resource economy such that we each must accept some small part of the blame for perpetuating the 'maladies of the planet'.
2
@George N. Wells you vote with your dollar. You DO decide how food is grown, packaged, and shipped every time you purchase a food item. Yes, lobbyists have more power than individual consumers regarding policy decisions. But every time you buy something grown, packaged, and shipped unsustainably, you give a "YES" vote to those unsustainable practices. As more consumers buy more sustainable products, food or otherwise, we will see the transition to sustainable production pick up in pace. You do have the power to influence the trajectory and velocity of this transition with every dollar you spend.
1
The piece that really puzzles me is packaging. I eat a very healthy (mostly) vegetarian diet. I make breads, salad dressings, grow my own sprouts and garden. I use very little that is canned. But I eat a lot of yogurt and I hate that it comes in plastic tubs with plastic lids and a layer of foil. I wish that the food industry would come up with more biodegradable packaging and use less of it in general.
14
@Jay. That's great that you make your own breads, salad dressings, etc. So why not make your own yogurt too? You can "package" it in glass storage containers or clean used glass jars.
4
Whole Foods recycles yogurt containers ( the # 5’s)
3
@Jay Yoghurt is easy to make at home (much easier than making bread!).
1
I loved this article, and being vegan made me feel personally good in what I eat. The article however does not address the point that we in the western/industrialized nations eat and consume as a whole too much. And as we sat in the kitchen and compared the cups and plates of my childhood or my parents generation to the one that we are using now we see that everything from cups of coffee to sizes of eggs - - is bigger than ever before.
Just try to follow a cookie receipt from your grandmother from 1910 with today sized eggs and you end up with a mess.
We need to consume less and I wonder what impact eating less would have on the environment.
7
Read "Down and out in London and Paris" by George Orwell while dining at a favorite restaurant, to realize the illusion that food has become. Food is about profit with many foods barely meeting the definition. Some people who trust the industry in our country die because of it, while others suffer unknowingly as they rely on the cornucopia of poison that is represented as nourishment.
6
How to Eat in a Warming World?
Outdoors, in the spring and fall.
2
Why reduce any impact your project might have by softening your position to "you don't have to become a vegetarian", just eat less meat? Sure, eating a tad less meat can help a tad, but we're beyond needing "tads" of help climate-wise. We need drastic action - now - and eliminating meat from one's diet is an easy switch with huge impacts.
You might like to eat meat (habit?), but you don't need to eat meat. It's easy to get plenty of protein in a tasty, non-meat diet. So, here's the deal. Do you care more about that burger on your plate than about the dystopian climate future to which you're dooming your beloved grandkid? It's that simple, friends.
45 years ago, I raised cattle in PA. After I moved to CO and backpacked/hiked extensively in the Glorious Rockies. I saw the tremendous damage that Welfare Cattle do to our marvelous public lands. I learned more and more about the global environmental damage done by eating meat - especially beef - and finally became a vegetarian 25 years ago.
Sure, it took a wee bit of learning to cook w/o meat and get adequate protein, but no biggy… You can do it too - if you care enough about the future of your progeny.
What's your decision?
16
I would love to see the Times do coverage of several bills that have been introduced about climate change. They get little or no attention even though they could get things moving faster than the Green New Deal. One is in Congress, introduced by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, endorsed by over 400 groups, the
Off Fossil Fuels Act, HR 3671. A version of this bill is in several state legislatures, including New York. Another bill with weaker provisions was debated this week in the NYState legislature, but I have not seen anything about it in the Times.
9
The very best things you can do are buy locally or buy food that's been transported by sea; cook from scratch; and reject food wrapped in plastic. The last can be difficult--but you can, for example, eliminate a lot of yogurt containers by making your own yogurt (you don't even need a yogurt-maker--an old thermos does nicely). As for making food from scratch, there's no reason except corporate brainwashing for buying packaging-heavy and unhealthy processed food: many delicious and nutritious meals can be assembled in 15 or 20 minutes. Here's an opportunity to give children some life skills and genuine self-esteem and get them off their depressing devices for a while. People living in a "food desert" can get together and form a food co-op, as poor and marginalised people have done for centuries. The only reason we act as we do is culture: herd mentality. Cultures can change, and in this case ours must.
14
A vegan diet is the absolute best way to defeat climate change, although most dedicated carcass-eaters don't want to hear this. Meat-eating is an inefficient means of nutrition. It's also contributing to the global hunger epidemic, the global deforrestation problem, the scourge of antibiotic resistance and the spread of obesity in America and other countries that have adopted the "luxurious" meat-and-potatoes diet and a convenience-centric fast-food-hamburgers lifestyle.
I figured out when I was 16 that I would not die - as we'd been led to believe in the 1980s - if I didn't consume the meat-based Southern cuisine I was raised on. In fact, after 20 years of veganism, I am leaner, stronger, calmer and
healthier than a majority of my flesh-
eating peers. I am clearly retarding the aging process, based on feedback from strangers and acqaintances alike.
Nevertheless, I look forward to reportage from this important project.
14
Your giant ego and holier than thou attitude come across clearly in this post. If you are trying to persuade people to adopt your way of thinking, this is not the way to do it.
3
@clear thinker
Your points are sound, but there's also much to be said for the environmental intelligence of the traditional small mixed farm, as explored in this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize.
3
Thanks for this link, Ruth!
It would also be important to address the influence food has on our brain and our emotions. Highly processed and junk foods not only contribute to climate change but also to physical and mental diseases. Read labels, buy fresh foods and prepare at home. Looking forward to your new recipes.
5
The food revolution summit hosted by John Robbins & his son that is free and running thru May 5th speaks to how to eat in a warming world and feel better while doing it.