The climate impact of our diets, and how to reduce it
What we eat has an enormous impact on our environment: it’s estimated that one-third of human-caused global emissions are linked to food. One third!
Most of those emissions happen at the production end:
- Emissions from converting forests to farmland
- Emissions from the use of manure and nitrogen fertilizer in crop production
- Methane from the digestive systems of cattle and other ruminants
The rest come from processing, packaging, refrigeration, transportation and food waste.
We all need to eat, but as this chart* from Our World in Data shows, different foods have vastly different carbon footprints and climate impacts.
For example, the emissions from consuming one kilogram of beef (from a conventionally-raised beef herd) are equivalent to burning 26 litres of gas – enough for a 395 KM trip in a Honda Civic LX sedan. On the other hand, the emissions from consuming one kilogram of wheat and rye (the main ingredients in bread and pasta) are equivalent to burning just over half a litre of gas, or enough for a 9 KM hop in the Civic.
Clearly, our food choices make a dramatic difference in the carbon footprint of our diets. So why not consider using the above chart as a guide?
One last point: a few months back, a friend sent me a photo of the menu in a restaurant she’d visited in England with the carbon footprint of each dish next to the price – ouch. But if menu reminders work for calories, why wouldn’t they work for carbon? Research suggests they do, if done properly. As well, some companies already have carbon labels on their products or plan to do so, to help grocery shoppers make sustainable choices (and grow their market share, of course!).
*Calculating carbon footprints is very complicated and methodologies may have changed since this chart was created in 2020, but it should still serve as a reasonably accurate guide.
In the news:
A report from Canada’s Environment Commissioner concludes that Canada is still not on track to meet its Paris Climate Accord commitments; another report from S&P Global Commodity Insights indicates total emissions from Alberta’s oil sands will rise by five per cent this year.
Canada’s federal government unveils draft rules to cap emissions from the oil and gas sector; a “deranged vendetta” and a “misguided proposal”, say Alberta’s premier and the oil sands industry.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces that the UK will now aim for an 81 per cent cut in its emissions by 2035, up from the previous target of 78 per cent.
Quotable
“Maybe some language has a word for how your knees buckle watching years of love and labor and your life savings literally float down the river. But English simply fails.
Maybe you think {climate change} is not that urgent in light of work and family and the million other things that run your everyday. Maybe you look at the odds and assume a climate disaster won’t happen to you. Yeah. We thought that too.”
- Peter Conroy, Senior Writer with the Climate Reality Project, writing from his home in Asheville, North Carolina, October 15, 2024