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Category Archives: Climate Change

Here’s why 60 percent of the world’s saiga antelopes were wiped out in 2015

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By Alessandra Potenza  
A burial ground for dead saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan, in 2015.
 Photo: courtesy of the Joint saiga health monitoring team in Kazakhstan (Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity, Kazakhstan, Biosafety Institute, Gvardeskiy RK, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK)

In May 2015, researchers in central Kazakhstan witnessed something really strange: thousands of saiga antelopes began acting a bit weird, becoming unbalanced, and then just plopping on the ground within a few hours — dead. Over the course of just three weeks, more than 200,000 saigas died, or about 60 percent of the global population.

“I had never seen anything like it,” says Richard Kock, a wildlife veterinarian and professor at the Royal Veterinary College in the UK. “It was very concerning because it was so unnatural, outside of the realm of my experience.”

Dead saiga antelopes in the steppes of Kazakhstan, in 2015.
 Photo: courtesy of the Joint saiga health monitoring team in Kazakhstan (Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity, Kazakhstan, Biosafety Institute, Gvardeskiy RK, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK)

The saiga antelopes were later found to be infected with a bacterium that causes blood poisoning and internal bleeding, or hemorrhagic septicemia. Now, a new study shows that unusually wet and hot weather played a key role in causing the outbreak. How exactly that happened, though, remains a bit of a mystery.

Researchers analyzed historical data related to other mass die-offs of saigas from the 1980s, and found that when the outbreaks occurred, it was warmer and more humid than normal, according to a new study published today in Science Advances. That doesn’t bode well for the future of this critically endangered species. A warmer world could make such outbreaks more likely, and if that happens, the saiga antelopes could go extinct.

Saiga antelopes, whose bulbous noses recall the tauntaun creatures in Star Wars, live in the grasslands of central Asia, from Hungary all the way across Mongolia. They’ve been around for thousands of years, since the time of the mammoths, but they’re now at risk of disappearing because of hunting and habitat loss. “Extinctions took out other animals, but the saiga persisted through modern time,” says Kock, one of the authors of the study. With thick furs and unusual noses that warm up cold air before it gets to the lungs, the animals are highly adapted to extreme environments, and being able to survive harsh winters.

A saiga calf.
 Photo: courtesy of the Joint saiga health monitoring team in Kazakhstan (Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity, Kazakhstan, Biosafety Institute, Gvardeskiy RK, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK)

In 2015, as the antelopes got together in the spring to give birth, a sudden disease outbreak wiped out an enormous number of saigas in central Kazakhstan, almost 90 percent of the local population. Such die-offs aren’t unheard of when it comes to mammals called ungulates: the Mongolian gazelle, wildebeest, and white-tailed deer have all experienced mass deaths. But what happened in 2015 was unprecedented, says Kock. In affected herds, 100 percent of animals deceased — an insanely high percentage. “If everything dies, the bacteria doesn’t benefit, the host doesn’t benefit. It doesn’t make biological sense,” Kock tells The Verge.

Conservation scientist Eleanor Jane Milner-Gulland, who’s worked with saiga antelopes for 25 years, says the die-off was traumatic for field biologists. She remembers seeing photos of the lifeless animals spread over the steppes of Kazakhstan: “It was horrible,” Milner-Gulland says. The antelopes had succumbed to a bacterium called Pasteurella multocida, which lives in their tonsils. But somehow, the bacteria seemed to have proliferated to a point where the animals got sick and died.

To understand whether environmental factors were to blame, Kock, Milner-Gulland, and their colleagues analyzed troves of historical data on saiga antelopes, including satellite images and weather records. The animals had died en masse before, with symptoms similar to the 2015 event. In 1981, 70,000 saigas went heels up, or about 15 percent of the population in the Kazakh region of Betpak-Dala. In 1988, 270,000 died, or 73 percent of the regional population. The data showed that in the days leading up to all outbreaks, the humidity was higher than usual, over 80 percent, and the average minimum daily temperatures were also higher than normal, particularly in 2015.

Dead saigas.
 Photo: courtesy of the Joint saiga health monitoring team in Kazakhstan (Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity, Kazakhstan, Biosafety Institute, Gvardeskiy RK, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK)

How exactly those conditions sparked the outbreak isn’t clear, Kock says. It could be that bacteria spread when it’s hot and wet, but to be sure, more research is needed. It’s also not clear whether climate change can be blamed for the 2015 outbreak, according to Kock. Climate models aren’t precise enough to determine whether changes in climate are affecting weather in a very specific region, but the trend is obviously pointing toward the world becoming a hotter place — and that’s concerning.

Global temperatures have already increased by roughly 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) since 1880, and saiga antelopes are already being affected, Milner-Gulland tells The Verge. In the last 40 years, the areas where the animals go to give birth have already shifted north. And since there seems to be a connection between weather and the outbreaks, more die-offs are expected in the future, Kock says. “The question is, will it cause extinction?” he says. “I think that’s a risk.”

One way to protect saigas is to make sure their populations are strong and healthy, so that if there is an outbreak, more animals can survive. That means limiting poaching, and giving the antelopes enough space to migrate across the grasslands. But saigas are also “really good at recovering,” Milner-Gulland says, and their populations can bounce back quickly: females can have babies when they’re only one year old, and newborns are large enough that they can run and migrate quickly.

So, for these mythological-looking creatures, there’s hope for survival.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/17/16900590/saiga-antelope-2015-die-offs-kazakhstan-humidity-heat-climate-change

Cows exude lots of methane, but taxing beef won’t cut emissions

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https://phys.org/news/2018-01-cows-exude-lots-methane-taxing.html

January 15, 2018 by Michael Von Massow And John Cranfield,
Cows exude lots of methane, but taxing beef won't cut emissions
Cows produce a lot of methane. But there’s not much evidence a tax on beef would be effective in fighting greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Shutterstock

Will taxing meat products based on their carbon footprint reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve public health? The answer is maybe, but not notably —and it will come with significant costs.

A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change advocates applying taxes to the  of  as a means of lowering GHG emissions.

The idea is that if meat is more expensive, consumers will buy less of it. In turn, when faced with reduced consumption, farmers will produce less .

Not all meat production produces the same volume of emissions. Since cows produce a lot of methane (a ), fewer cows should mean less methane, which in turn should help lower GHG emissions. Pigs and chickens don’t spew methane the way cows do, but there are also the emissions associated with feeding them, as well as with the decomposition of manure.

While it’s clear we need to proactively reduce GHG emissions globally, we believe the emissions tax approach is unlikely to achieve success.

It will likely increase food  for consumers and decrease the prices farmers charge for their products, but it’s unlikely to lower meat consumption significantly and therefore unlikely to lower GHG emissions from the livestock sector. There may be other detrimental impacts to taxation too.

Price hikes don’t usually curb consumption

Food consumption is not as strongly linked to price as one might think. Changes in consumption of food are typically much smaller than changes in the price consumers face in the grocery store. This is a phenomenon that has been recognized and measured for decades.

We would need to implement huge taxes to achieve a small decrease in consumption. As an example, the study in the Nature Climate Change journal suggests a 40 per cent tax on beef would only reduce beef consumption by 15 per cent.

Because taxes on food at the retail level tend to raise the prices paid by consumers, it’s also worth noting that any increase in the price of meat would tend to affect low-income consumers more than more affluent consumers. Low-income consumers would pay relatively more than the rich.

We also need to consider substitution effects. While a high tax on beef and other meats will lower beef consumption somewhat, it may also lead to economizing by consumers through increased consumption of lower quality or more highly processed cuts of meat.

This could actually increase the relative prices of these cuts, making the negative impact of the tax on lower-income consumers even stronger, and would undermine some of the suggested health benefits.

It’s worth noting that beef consumption is generally falling in Canada and the U.S., independent of price. Other factors are likely to be more effective at reducing beef consumption than taxation.

All cattle are not raised equally

It’s also important to recognize that different types of cattle production create different volumes of emissions.

There is a suggestion that any tax on meat should reflect the production system. Those that raise cattle on grasslands or in pastures, for example, would have lower taxes than cattle raised using intensive production systems, like those used throughout North America, which create higher emissions.

While cattle in North America spend their early life on pasture, most beef cattle are finished in feedlots where they are grouped and fed high-energy grain rations to efficiently produce the preferred texture and taste of beef.

A tax based on how cattle are raised, however, would be both politically and logistically difficult.

If grassland and pasture rearing of cattle is favoured because of lower GHG emissions, we could see significant deforestation in those countries that produce beef extensively, but not a substantial reduction in consumption as desired.

We could end up in a situation where many differences in production practices, even within countries, create different emissions estimates and therefore cattle producers would seek different tax levels.

Unintended consequences

There’s also a risk that a meat tax would reduce the incentive to initiate research and development that could help cut emissions within the sector.

Examples of such R&D include efforts to improve the feed efficiency in cattle production. At the farm level, feeding more cattle on a forage-heavy pasture diet could increase the costs of producing cattle and change the characteristics of the while eroding the incentive to adopt climate-friendlier production practices.

It’s worth noting that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has said that emissions could be reduced by 30 per cent today if current best practices were broadly implemented. This is beyond the impact of a 40 per cent tax. The incentive to adopt these best practices would be removed by the implementation of a tax.

Progress can be made

As experts in food and agriculture economics, we agree that reduced GHG emissions are important for the future of humanity. We also believe that we are likely to substitute plant or insect proteins or cultured meats for traditional meat products over time.

Even if it were possible to get broad-based agreement for a global (or even just a Canadian) tax on meat, however, it is important to look not only at whether these efforts would reduce GHGs, but also at the unintended consequences of these efforts.

In the case of the proposed meat tax, it is not only unlikely to achieve the intended outcome, it is equally likely to create a spate of unintended consequences that would negatively affect not just cattle producers, but also .

 Explore further: Eating less meat might not be the way to go green, say researchers

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-cows-exude-lots-methane-taxing.html#jCp

Saving the world with carbon dioxide removal

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The WorldPost

 Opinion
By Peter Wadhams January 8 at 12:29 PM

Steam billows from the chimney of a coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. Jan. 20, 2015. (Jim Cole/AP)

Peter Wadhams is professor of ocean physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, U.K.

CAMBRIDGE — Limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, as the countries of the world committed themselves to do under the Paris climate accord, is impossible without removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which set the Paris goals, concedes this. But the panel has neglected to suggest how to do it.

If we want to survive climate change, we must double down in research manpower and dollars to find and improve technology to remove carbon dioxide — or at least reduce its effects on the climate. We now emit 41 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. The current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to bring about a warming of more than 2 degrees after it has worked its way through the climate system, so if we want to save the Paris accord, we must either reduce our emissions to zero, which is not yet possible, or combine a significant emissions reduction with the physical removal of about 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year indefinitely.

As I outline in my book, “A Farewell to Ice,” this is because we have a carbon dioxide “stock-flow” problem: temperature rise is closely associated with the level of the gas in the atmosphere (the stock), but we are only able to control the rate at which new gas is emitted or removed (the flow). Carbon dioxide, unlike methane, persists in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, so even if we reduce our emission rate, the level of the gas will keep going up. At the moment, measurements show that this carbon level increase is exponential — it is accelerating.

Currently, the best way to save our future is to remove carbon dioxide through direct air capture, a process that involves pumping air through a system that removes carbon dioxide and either liquefies it and stores it or chemically turns it into a substance either inert or useful. Enterprising researchers have already developed systems that work by passing air through anion-exchange resinsthat contain hydroxide or carbonate groups that when dry, absorb carbon dioxide and release it when moist. The extracted carbon dioxide can then be compressed, stored in liquid form and deposited underground using carbon capture and storage technologies.

The challenge here is to bring the cost of this process to below $40 per ton of carbon removed, since this is the estimated cost to the planet of our emissions. At the moment, most methods cost more than $100 per ton, but there are dramatic developments which promise great improvement. Three companies have opened pilot plants — Global Thermostat (United States), Carbon Engineering (Canada) and Climeworks (Switzerland).

Climeworks is the trendsetter. After building a small plant which fed absorbed carbon dioxide into a greenhouse, they have opened a small-scale commercial plant in Iceland. This is aimed to remove 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year and pump the carbon dioxide, with water, down into basalt rocks underground, using Iceland’s abundant geothermal power as a source of energy. Here the carbon dioxide is literally turned to stone — it mineralizes rapidly because of the type of rock and the pressure. The carbon dioxide, turned to stone, is out of the planet’s energy system for millions of years. This is an enormous breakthrough.

Even in Houston, the home of the oil industry, climate innovation is taking place. In October, using an approach called the Allam cycle, a company called NET Power opened a plant that burns natural gas to produce power, but it captures all the carbon dioxide produced because the carbon dioxide is itself the working fluid — a new concept. This is not carbon drawdown but is a totally renewable energy source based on a fossil fuel.

In theory, cooling air so as to liquefy its carbon dioxide content could also be used to remove it. This could involve setting up plants on high polar plateaus such as Antarctica or Greenland but has yet to be investigated.

A compelling criticism of carbon removal is that it discourages us from even trying to reduce our carbon dioxide emission levels and instead shifts our focus to unproven “emit now, remove later” strategies. It doesn’t help that the unfortunate reality is that as a global population, especially in the West, we are reluctant to give up the comforts and conveniences of a fossil fuel world. Climate change will not wait for us to become more enlightened.

Effective and impactful carbon dioxide removal operations will need to be in place by around 2020. To keep global temperature rise within acceptable limits, we’ll need to remove half the current human emissions, which means extracting about 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, indefinitely. If we can manage this, we can save our society and our children’s futures. After all, if carbon dioxide is the chief cause of climate change, its removal would be our salvation.

This is an exciting time. The Iceland and Houston plants show us that man’s ingenuity, when turned loose on the problem of getting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, can achieve success and maybe save the world from the plight into which our misapplied technology of the past has cast us. We just need to spend more — a lot more — on helping this process along. If we don’t, then in 20 or 30 years, the world will be a different and much nastier place than it is now.

This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

A man walks on the snow covered boardwalk during a snow storm on January 4, 2018 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A 'bomb cyclone' winter storm has caused every East Coast state, from Maine to Florida, to declare at least one weather advisory, winter storm watch, winter storm warning or blizzard warning. (Photo: Mark Makela / Getty Images)A man walks on the snow-covered boardwalk during a snowstorm on January 4, 2018, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A “bomb cyclone” winter storm has caused every East Coast state from Maine to Florida to declare at least one weather advisory, winter storm watch, winter storm warning or blizzard warning. (Photo: Mark Makela / Getty Images)

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On January 2, it was colder in Jacksonville, Florida (38 degrees) than it was in Anchorage, Alaska (44 degrees, which tied a record high for that city).

What is wrong with this picture, in addition to the obvious?

Since December 27, at least a dozen people have died from Arctic-cold temperatures that have covered much of the United States, as wind-chill and freezing advisories were issued by the National Weather Service from the border of Canada down to southern Texas, and from Montana all the way across to Maine.

What’s causing the chaotic temperatures? To understand them, we need to look at the globe’s northernmost regions. The Arctic’s extremely cold air is usually trapped within a circular weather pattern known as the Polar Vortex. Prior to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), that weather pattern was intact and strong, which kept the Arctic’s freezing cold air trapped in the Arctic.

But now, thanks to ACD along with natural variability, that weather pattern is changing, and possibly for good.

What It Means

As global weather patterns are becoming increasingly disrupted by ACD, the polar vortex is being weakened, which is allowing the freezing air to flow out of that region and head south across Canada — and as far down as southern Texas this week.

The total area of global tree cover lost last year was equivalent to the area of the country of New Zealand (approximately 73.4 million acres). This was a staggering 51 percent increase over the previous year’s loss. The University of Maryland study that provided this data cited ACD-driven forest fires and deforestation as the two leading causes, and noted that the wildfires were responsible for the massive spike in coverage loss compared to the previous year.

That phenomenon used to be extremely rare, but is becoming increasingly common as ACD impacts intensify. What is also rare is how long this intense cold snap across the US is lasting — 10 days now and counting.

On Tuesday, for example, Boston tied its seven-day record for the most consecutive days at or below 20 degrees. Meanwhile, during the last week of December more than 1,600 cold temperature records were either tied or broken across the US, making it the second coldest week on record for the country.

As cold as it has been throughout many of the 48 contiguous states, Alaska and other parts of the Arctic are seeing record-warm temperatures.

In addition to the January 2 record in Anchorage, temperatures across the Arctic on that same day were more than 6 degrees warmer than normal.

A study published by the American Meteorological Society in September 2017 found that, since 1990, the polar vortex has weakened and meandered more than it had before. The study also reported that the weakening of the vortex was most likely being set in motion by a rapidly warming and melting Arctic region, which was resulting in colder winters across Europe — and occasionally the US.

Danger Compounded by Trump’s Denialism

On December 28, President Donald Trump tweeted:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Jason Furtado, a University of Oklahoma meteorology professor, told the Associated Press that it is important not to confuse weather with climate. Weather is something that occurs over a period of a few weeks or less in one region, whereas climate occurs over a period of years or decades and is global.

“A few cold days doesn’t disprove climate change,” Furtado said. “That’s just silly. Just like a couple down days on the stock market doesn’t mean the economy is going into the trash.”

Over the last year, there have been approximately three record high temperatures set across the US for every record low temperature.

Furthermore, the last for years have been the four hottest years ever recorded for the planet.

More than 97 percent of climate scientists agree that ACD is real, and that the prime driver of it is CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activity. Of the less than 3 percent of climate scientists who doubt or dispute that fact, the vast majority have been shown to be funded by the fossil fuel industry.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

DAHR JAMAIL

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

His third book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is available now on Amazon.

Dahr Jamail is also the author of the book, The End of Ice, forthcoming from The New Press.

The Meaty Side of Climate Change

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https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-meat-and-dairy-industry-impact-by-shefali-sharma-2017-12

 
by SHEFALI SHARMA
“Carbon majors,” like big oil and gas companies, have long been the focus of efforts to curb climate change and stem rising temperatures. And yet, while energy giants like Exxon and Shell have drawn fire for their roles in warming the planet, the corporate meat and dairy industries have largely avoided scrutiny.

BERLIN – Last year, three of the world’s largest meat companies – JBS, Cargill, and Tyson Foods – emitted more greenhouse gases than France, and nearly as much as some big oil companies. And yet, while energy giants like Exxon and Shell have drawn fire for their role in fueling climate change, the corporate meat and dairy industries have largely avoided scrutiny. If we are to avert environmental disaster, this double standard must change.

To bring attention to this issue, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, GRAIN, and Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundationrecently teamed up to study the “supersized climate footprint” of the global livestock trade. What we found was shocking. In 2016, the world’s 20 largest meat and dairy companies emitted more greenhouse gases than Germany. If these companies were a country, they would be the world’s seventh-largest emitter.

Obviously, mitigating climate change will require tackling emissions from the meat and dairy industries. The question is how.

Around the world, meat and dairy companies have become politically powerful entities. The recent corruption-related arrests of two JBS executives, the brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, pulled back the curtain on corruption in the industry. JBS is the largest meat processor in the world, earning nearly $20 billion more in 2016 than its closest rival, Tyson Foods. But JBS achieved its position with assistance from the Brazilian Development Bank, and apparently, by bribing more than 1,800 politicians. It is no wonder, then, that greenhouse-gas emissions are low on the company’s list of priorities. In 2016, JBS, Tyson and Cargill emitted 484 million tons of climate-changing gases, 46 million tons more than BP, the British energy giant.

Meat and dairy industry insiders push hard for pro-production policies, often at the expense of environmental and public health. From seeking to block reductions in nitrous oxide and methane emissions, to circumventing obligations to reduce air, water, and soil pollution, they have managed to increase profits while dumping pollution costs on the public.

One consequence, among many, is that livestock production now accounts for nearly 15% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. That is a bigger share than the world’s entire transportation sector. Moreover, much of the growth in meat and dairy production in the coming decades is expected to come from the industrial model. If this growth conforms to the pace projected by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, our ability to keep temperatures from rising to apocalyptic levels will be severely undermined.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, last month, several UN agencies were directed, for the first time ever, to cooperate on issues related to agriculture, including livestock management. This move is welcome for many reasons, but especially because it will begin to expose the conflicts of interest that are endemic in the global agribusiness trade.

To skirt climate responsibility, the meat and dairy industries have long argued that expanding production is necessary for food security. Corporate firms, they insist, can produce meat or milk more efficiently than a pastoralist in the Horn of Africa or a small-scale producer in India.

Unfortunately, current climate policies do not refute this narrative, and some even encourage increased production and intensification. Rather than setting targets for the reduction of total industry-related emissions, many current policies create incentives for firms to squeeze more milk from each dairy cow and bring beef cattle to slaughter faster. This necessitates equating animals to machinery that can be tweaked to produce more with less through technological fixes, and ignoring all of this model other negative effects.

California’s experience is instructive. Pursuing one of the world’s first efforts to regulate agricultural methane, the state government has set ambitious targets to reduce emissions in cattle processing. But California is currently addressing the issue by financing programs that support mega-dairies, rather than small, sustainable operators. Such “solutions” have only worsened the industry’s already-poor record on worker and animal welfare, and exacerbated adverse environmental and health-related effects.

Solutions do exist. For starters, governments could redirect public money from factory farming and large-scale agribusiness to smaller, ecologically focused family farms. Governments could also use procurement policies to help build markets for local products and encourage cleaner, more vibrant farm economies.

Many cities around the world are already basing their energy choices on a desire to tackle climate change. Similar criteria could shape municipalities’ food policies, too. For example, higher investment in farm-to-hospital and farm-to-school programs would ensure healthier diets for residents, strengthen local economies, and reduce the climate impact of the meat and dairy industries.

Dairy and meat giants have operated with climate impunity for far too long. If we are to halt global temperature spikes and avert an ecological crisis, consumers and governments must do more to create, support, and strengthen environmentally conscious producers. That would be good for our health – and for the health of our planet.

The diet that helps fight climate change

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Do we all have to go vegan to save the world?  [Well, yes.]

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/12/12/16762900/mediterranean-diet-pescatarian-climate-change
By Andy Murdock, University of California  

Ben Houlton spends a lot of time thinking about what’s on your dinner plate.

“If you take a steak and ask the question, ‘What’s been put into making that appear on my plate?’, you can trace it back all the way to the fertilizer that’s used to grow the food and then the grains which are used to feed the animals,” said Houlton.

As director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis, Houlton studies how food production affects the environment and creates greenhouse gases. Nearly every step that goes into food production has some impact on global warming, and it adds up: Agriculture and land use is responsible for nearly a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

A lot of people count calories, or try to cut carbs from their diet — the next step could be cutting carbon from your diet. Take that steak on your plate: Eating an average-sized steak for dinner has a comparable carbon footprint to driving about three miles in a standard gas-powered car. Get a large steak with some sides, and you easily double the impact.

“We have to think about the methane that’s being released from animals and rice paddies and areas where we’re growing food. And we have to consider the nitrous oxide gas that’s being produced from the fertilizers we’re feeding to the microbes that live in the soil. And you add all of that together, and you get a better understanding of global climate impacts of our food system,” said Houlton.

Houlton’s work on nitrogen modeling and the often-overlooked climate effects of fertilizers has helped improve global comprehension of just how much our food system impacts global warming, and lets lawmakers craft more targeted and effective agricultural policies.

His research has also crystallized for him that we can’t just wait for better policies and futuristic technology to swoop in and save the day: This is one area where we have the power as individuals to make a significant impact on climate change right now.

“It’s very easy to get depressed, to feel sad about all the changes that are happening and feel like you can’t contribute to the solution,” said Houlton. “Well, here is a shovel-ready opportunity.”

The power of choice

Maya Almaraz, a postdoctoral researcher who works with Houlton at UC Davis, said she wishes she had a magic wand that could make everyone understand just how powerful their food choices can be.

“A lot of people feel really helpless when it comes to climate change, like they can’t make a difference,” said Almaraz. “What our research is showing is that your personal decisions really can have a big impact.”

Different foods have vastly different carbon footprints. Swap your steak for fish, for example, and you get an eight-fold reduction in emissions. And if you’re game to switch that to beans or lentils your emissions drop to near zero. It really gets interesting when lots of us start making similar changes.

“What we’re finding is that reducing your meat intake can actually offset the emissions from all of our cars and even double that,” said Almaraz. “It’s not really something that you write into the Paris climate agreement. It’s something we have to decide on every day.”

Eating our way out of climate change

But to make a dent in something on the scale of global warming, where time isn’t on our side, are drastic measures required? Do we all have to give up that steak — or (shudder) bacon — and switch to a vegan diet to save the planet?

While only around six percent of the U.S. identifies as vegan, according to one recent survey, Americans are starting to embrace some vegetarian habits: Per capita beef consumption has been declining since the 1970s, dropping off steeply in the last decade according to USDA data, and the meat alternatives industry is growing rapidly. Even so, the U.S. still has one of the highest per capita meat consumption rates in the world, and meat is deeply ingrained in American culture — in short, we’re not all going vegan anytime soon.

“We’re not saying you should go cold turkey — although eating turkey alone might be a good option, better than eating red meat,” said Houlton. “What we are saying is consider moderating the amount. Maybe, instead of having meat two times a day, have it once a day. If each of us take baby steps, we’ll find that we can go a mile pretty quickly.”

While Houlton’s climate models find that a vegan diet reduces your carbon footprint more than any other dietary choice, a Mediterranean diet is really close.

“Our studies are showing that the Mediterranean diet — which is rich in nuts and beans and has a lot of fish, maybe chicken once a week, maybe red meat only once a month — if everyone were to move toward it, it’s the equivalent of taking about a billion or more cars of pollution out of the planet every year,” said Houlton.

To put that in perspective, Houlton’s models show that global adoption of a Mediterranean diet could help reduce global warming by up to 15 percent by 2050.

The Mediterranean diet has additional benefits. Previous studies have found that a Mediterranean diet can reduce the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases. Multiple studies have linked the Mediterranean diet to increased overall longevity.

The takeaway, according to Almaraz, is that the focus should be on reduction.

“Eliminating 90 percent of your meat intake is more important than eliminating all of your meat intake,” said Almaraz.

Houlton’s advice is to feel empowered: consumer choice can change trends almost overnight. He also thinks you should feel selfish, but in a good way.

“Put your health first. Be really selfish about your health. Make healthy choices in terms of the food you’re putting into your body and watch the planet repair itself at the same time.”

Watch the video above featuring Ben Houlton and Maya Almaraz to learn more about how simple, everyday food choices can take a bite out of climate change.

Learn more about how the food we eat and the food we waste affects climate change, and what we can do about it, at climate.universityofcalifornia.edu.

New Conservative Argument: Climate Change Is So Awesome, You Guys

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http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42868-new-conservative-argument-climate-change-is-so-awesome-you-guys

Saturday, December 09, 2017By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

2017 1209 Pitt(Photo: Chase Dekker Wild-Life Images / Getty Images)

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In my worst post-apocalyptic imaginings, there is a place in my mind where a ravenous sea has encroached over every surface, ankle to knee to thigh to belly to throat. On a lone and desolate promontory clings one last living human who shrieks into the maelstrom a final defiance even as the pitiless rain clogs his throat: “In the church of climate alarmism, there may be no heresy more dangerous than the idea that the world will benefit from warming.”

His name is Jeff.

Not “may benefit,” mind you. “Will benefit.” The power of positive thinking meets the end of everything. And in conservative circles, many of the denials that climate disruption is really happening are now being seamlessly replaced with guarantees of coming greatness.

It gets better.

“Polar melting may cause dislocation for those who live in low-lying coastal areas, but it will also lead to safe commercial shipping in formerly inhospitable northern seas,” says Jeff Jacoby in his Boston Globe article titled, “There Are Benefits to Climate Change.”

Istanbul. San Francisco. Helsinki. Philadelphia. Dublin. New Orleans. Venice. Perth. Bangkok. Edinburgh. Honolulu. New York. Oslo. Lisbon. Los Angeles. San Diego. Hong Kong. Miami. Tokyo. Sydney. Washington. Copenhagen. Vancouver. Barcelona. Mumbai. Nagoya. Tampa. Shenzen. Guayaquil. Khulna. Palembang. Tampa. Kochi. Abidjan. Boston.

Low-lying coastal areas, all.

Cities, housing hundreds of millions of people, home to countless architectural wonders, each in itself a living history in mortar and stone and stucco and steel, wreathed in treasure and art of infinite value and absolutely, positively not waterproofed … all happy fodder before the prospect of new commercial shipping lanes.

One must ask: Shipping to whom? From where? All the places to park the ships will be underwater. When all those cities fall to the sea, there will be no commerce because civilization itself will be crumbling. In its stead, there will be starving wet survivors on the run to high ground and Jeff Jacoby’s boats happily puttering along plying their wares to people who died below the water line before the good news about climate change could properly cheer them.

“Shifts in climate are like shifts in the economy,” writes Jeff, as if he has seen such seismic shifts before. “They invariably spell good news for some and bad news for others.” According to him, all the new warm weather will keep people from freezing to death, which is a good thing.

Yet Jacoby somehow missed the explosion of diseases that will come with widespread excessive heat. He missed the massive ecological die-offs on land and in the ocean that will be caused by high heat. He missed the crop disasters that will be caused by high heat. He missed the population displacement that will make our current refugee crisis seem like a longer than usual walk in the park by comparison. And then there is the methane bomb waiting to detonate once the northern permafrost finally melts from all this fortunate heat.

“The effects of climate change,” concludes Jacoby, “range from the obvious (lower heating bills) to the subtle (more habitat for moose and endangered sharks). Territory formerly deemed too forbiddingly cold will grow more temperate — and valuable. Delicacies from lobster to blueberries may become more plentiful. Bottom line? Global warming will bring gains as well as losses, upsides no less than downsides. Climate science isn’t a good-and-evil morality tale. Climate discourse shouldn’t be either.”

There it is, folks. The bridge from climate change denial to acceptance, long deemed unpassable, has been traversed by none other than Boston’s own mini-Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Jacoby has dutifully hauled water for every bad conservative idea since the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, but here, he is road-testing what to do when denial and obfuscation are no longer viable tactics. It’s as if he’s deploying an evil version of the “Stages of Grief.” Last comes acceptance … but with a catch.

One can go on only so long denying the obvious before something has to give. Here, Jacoby accepts the premise that climate change is upon us, but rather than face the grim and dangerous reality of it, he chooses instead to look on the bright side. Sure, Republicans colluded with the energy industry for decades to deny the threat of climate change so their friends could get rich and now we’re all going to suffer for it, but blueberries! Heat bills! Lobster, so you can pretend to be rich!

Jacoby and other conservatives  who now accept climate change have opened a window into our future. He and the people he represents will fight as hard as they can to get what they want — which is the loot, always the loot, the loot every single time — until the moment comes when they sound foolish even to themselves. When that happens, they will turn on a dime and begin talking up the advantages to be found in the disasters they have created. Jacoby shows them the way by moving from “it’s not real” to “no big deal” in one sideways shuffle, locating the financial upside — valuable new land! — and managing to sound like a scold all at once.

When the harrowing effects of the GOP tax plan begin bleeding all over Main Street, when the true nature of Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia is revealed, when the attacks on Medicare and Social Security wreak havoc on the lives of elderly Americans, when all the lies no longer have a place to hide, this will be the new gospel, preached from the promontory by the likes of Jeff and his friends.

God help us all.

Copyright, Truthout

California’s Climate Emergency

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http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/southern-california-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-w513659
By Eric Holthaus

In the hills above the Pacific Ocean, the world crossed a terrifying tipping point this week.

As holiday music plays on the radio, temperatures in Southern California have soared into the 80s, and bone-dry winds have fanned a summer-like wildfire outbreak. Southern California is under siege.

As the largest of this week’s fires skipped across California’s famed coastal highway 101 toward the beach, rare snowflakes were falling in Houston, all made possible by a truly extreme weather pattern that’s locked the jet stream into a highly amplified state. It’s difficult to find the words to adequately describe how weird this is. It’s rare that the dissonance of climate change is this visceral.

That one of California’s largest and most destructive wildfires is now burning largely out of control during what should be the peak of the state’s rainy season should shock us into lucidity. It’s December. This shouldn’t be happening.

The Thomas fire is the first wintertime megafire in California history. In a state known for its large fires, this one stands out. At 115,000 acres, it’s already bigger than the city of Atlanta. Hundreds of homes have already been destroyed, and the fire is still just 5 percent contained.

In its first several hours, the Thomas fire grew at a rate of one football field per second, expanding 30-fold, and engulfing entire neighborhoods in the dead of night. Hurricane force winds have produced harrowing conditions for firefighters. Faced with such impossible conditions, in some cases, all they could do is move people to safety, and stand and watch.

“We can’t control it,” firefighter and photographer Stuart Palley told me from a beach in Ventura. “In these situations, you can throw everything you’ve got at it, tanker planes dropping tens of thousands of gallons of flame retardant, thousands of firefighters, hundreds of engines, you can do everything man has in their mechanical toolbox to fight these fires and they’re just going to burn and do whatever the hell they want. We have to learn that.” As we spoke, another wall of flames crested a nearby ridge, reflecting its orange glow off the sea.

The Thomas fire isn’t the only one burning right now. At least six major fires threaten tens of thousands of homes and have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee in recent days. “California fires enter the heart of Los Angeles” read one New York Timesheadline, a statement so dire it could double as a plot synopsis in a nearby Hollywood movie studio. Million-dollar mansions in Bel Air were evacuated, and the 405 freeway, one of L.A.’s busiest, was transformed into a dystopian hellscape during the morning commute. Ralph Terrazas, the Los Angeles fire chief, called the conditions the worst he’s seen in his entire 31-year career. “There will be no ability to fight fires in these kinds of winds,” said Ken Pimlott, the state fire chief. Shortly after these statements, state officials sent an unprecedented push notification to nearly everyone in Southern California, ominously warning millions of people to “stay alert.”

For years, climate scientists have warned us that California was entering a year-round fire regime. For years, climate campaigners have been wondering what it would take to get people to wake up to the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. For years, we’ve been tip-toeing as a civilization towards a point of no return.

That time is now.

The advent of uncontrollable wintertime megafires in California is a turning point in America’s struggle to contain the impacts of a rapidly changing climate. Conditions that led to the Thomas fire won’t happen every year, but the fact that they’re happening at all should shock us.

As California-based scientist Faith Kearns writes in Bay Naturemagazine, “The admission that our best efforts may not always be enough opens a small window to shift how we think about disasters.”

The sirens are wailing, the long-feared scenarios are coming true. The era that scientists have warned us about for decades is here. There’s no denying the facts anymore: What’s happening right now in California is a climate emergency.

Historically, the Santa Ana fire season in Southern California peaks in October, at the end of the long summer dry season, just as the first snows of the winter start to appear in the Sierras. With the right conditions, the dense, cold air further inland gets funneled toward the coast, warming and drying as it quickly descends toward the sea, waiting to transform an errant spark into a raging inferno.

These are the Santa Ana winds, and they’ve been happening here for millennia. What’s different now, of course, is there are millions of people living in the area, for all the reasons people want to live in Southern California. The seasons are changing, too. Increasingly, those two facts are becoming incompatible.

There’s a whole series of links between climate change and this week’s fires. Ten years ago, scientists warned of possible lengthening of the Santa Ana fire season, and the data bear that out. Fire season is more than a month longer now, and 13 of the state’s top 20 fires in history have happened since 2000. This year’s “rainy” season has also been suspiciously absent so far, with Los Angeles rainfall 94 percent below normal since October. Right now, the atmosphere over the West Coast is the driest in recorded history. There’s no rain in the forecast for at least the next two weeks – the current fires could last until Christmas. Combine that with more people wanting to live in harm’s way – more than a million more people live in Southern California compared to 2000 – and it’s no wonder wildfire seasons are becoming increasingly catastrophic.

This year was the most expensive wildfire season in U.S. history, but money isn’t really the issue here. It’s the daily terror that fills residents as they look up and see a blood red sky and wonder if their home will make it through the night. It’s the rush on breathing masks as air pollution values spike above the top of the scale. It’s the realization that what you thought was normal, isn’t anymore.

In Houston, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles, Americans are feeling the urgency of climate change not in weather data and distant news reports, but in their pulse rate.

Climate change is no longer some abstract concept, some line on a graph, some strongly-worded scientific consensus statement. Climate change is terrifying. It’s families fleeing a fire with only a moment’s warning to collect their photo albums. It’s single mothers using an axe to break a hole in the roof of their house as floodwaters rise into the attic of their home in the backyard of the oil industry’s capital city. It’s an entire island destroyed and forgotten, buried in a frenetic news cycle.

A new study this week that examines the recent performance of climate models, provides a hint that the ones showing the quickest rise in global temperatures have generally been the most accurate so far. Increasingly, that rise will accelerate, say the models, unless the world institutes a sharp reduction in emissions. Should we continue on a business as usual pathway, the new findings show a 93 percent chance that global warming will exceed what was previously considered a worst-case scenario by 2100.

A baby alive today has a good chance of living to the year 2100. The people of the future are real people, you can already meet them. Their climate futures are increasingly tangible. That climate change is now a California emergency doesn’t necessarily fate the region to uninhabitability, it provides an opportunity for a radical rethink. If we bungle this opportunity, all indications are that things can definitely get a lot worse.

Animal agriculture is choking the ​Earth and making us sick. We must act now

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/04/animal-agriculture-choking-earth-making-sick-climate-food-environmental-impact-james-cameron-suzy-amis-cameron

Cows at a farm in western Taiwan.
 ‘Raising livestock for meat, eggs and milk generates 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.’ Photograph: David Chang/EPA

 and 

Our collective minds are stuck on this idea that talking about food’s environmental impact risks taking something very intimate away from us. In fact it’s just the opposite. Reconsidering how we eat offers us hope, and empowers us with choice over what our future planet will look like. And we can ask our local leaders – from city mayors to school district boards to hospital management – to help, by widening our food options.

On Monday and Tuesday, the city of Chicago is hosting a summit for the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy to discuss climate solutions cities can undertake. Strategies to address and lower food’s impact should be front and center.

Animal agriculture is choking the Earth, and the longer we turn a blind eye, the more we limit our ability to nourish ourselves, protect waterways and habitats, and pursue other uses of our precious natural resources. Raising livestock for meat, eggs and milk generates 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the second highest source of emissions and greater than all transportation combined. It also uses about 70% of agricultural land, and is one of the leading causes of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water pollution.

On top of this, eating too much meat and dairy is making us sick, greatlyincreasing our risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, several major cancers (including breast, liver and prostate) and obesity. Diets optimal for human health vary, according to David Katz, of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, “but all of them are made up mostly of whole, wholesome plant foods”.

So what gives? Why can’t we see the forest for the bacon? The truth can be hard to swallow: that we simply need less meat and dairy and more plant-based options in our food system if we’re to reach our climate goals.

Still from Avatar.
Pinterest
 ‘The Avatar movie set had plant-based menus.’ Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Everett/Rex Features

This can start with individual action. Five years ago, our family felt hopeless about climate change, and helpless to make meaningful change. But when we connected the dots on animal agriculture’s impact on the environment, coupled with the truth about nutrition, we took heart because it gave us something we could actually do.

To create change at the scale needed, this will take more than individual choice – we need to get climate leaders on board about the impact of food. Cities and counties have used their buying power to transition fleets from diesel to electric, and we need to do the same with how we purchase food. We have done this in our own community, moving the lunch program of Muse School, in Calabasas, California, and the Avatar movie set to plant-based menus. Scaling up initiatives like these can make a big difference: if the US reduced meat consumption by 50%, it’s the equivalent of taking 26 million cars off the road. We think that’s damn hopeful.

Decision-makers on all levels can make it easier for us to eat better, by expanding access to food options that are good for our health, affordable, and climate-friendly. Nationwide, cities and school districts have adopted food purchasing policies that include environment, health and fair labor standards. The city of Chicago is a recent adopter of this Good Food Purchasing Program, and so the solutions-focus of the summit is the perfect place to discuss how food can move us toward climate goals. In the same breath that we discuss fossil fuels, we should be talking animal ag, or we’re missing a big part of the problem – and a big part of the solution.

Yes, food is inherently personal. It’s the cornerstone of holidays, it fuels high school athletes and long workdays, and it nourishes nursing mothers and growing children. And yes, Americans love meat and cheese. But more than that, we love our majestic national parks, family beach vacations and clean air and water for our children and grandchildren.

As individuals, we can make choices on how to better nourish our families, and as citizens, we can encourage local leaders to make choices that will allow us to enjoy our land and natural resources now and in the future.

• James Cameron is a film-maker and deep-sea explorer. Suzy Amis Cameron is a founder of Muse School and Plant Power Task Force.

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UK could cut food emissions by 17% by sticking to a healthy diet

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UK could cut food emissions by 17% by sticking to a healthy diet

DAISY DUNNE

04.12.2017 | 8:00pm

PUBLIC HEALTHUK could cut food emissions by 17% by sticking to a healthy diet
 

The UK could shed close to a fifth of its greenhouse gas emissions from food production if every Briton stuck to a healthy diet based on government guidelines, a new study concludes.

The authors find that, in the UK, a switch from the “average diet”, which is rich in meat and dairy, to a nationally recommended diet, which includes more fruit, vegetables and nuts, could cause food-related emissions to fall by up to 17%.

And if other wealthy countries, including the US, Canada and Australia, swapped their current eating habits for a state-endorsed diet, their emissions could decline by between 13 and 25%.

The new research “provides a valuable indication that we and the planet could be healthier together,” a scientist tells Carbon Brief.

UK’s growing appetite

Food production contributes to climate change in a number of ways. Farm machinery and transport cause CO2 to be released, crop fertilisers emit nitrous oxide and methaneis released by livestock and rice paddy fields. Agriculture also contributes to warming indirectly through deforestation.

In total, the production of food accounts for around 20% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2014 study. Across the world, agriculture accounts for close to 30% of all emissions.

Researchers have suggested a number of ways in which countries can lower their emissions from agriculture. These include eating less meat and dairy, choosing more environmentally friendly crops and cow fodder, and reducing food waste.

However, new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explores an alternative option. The study investigates how a switch from our current eating habits to a healthy diet based on government recommendations could help to lower our emissions.

Most countries offer their citizens a “nationally-recommended diet”. In the UK, Public Health England, Public Health Wales, the Scottish Public Health Network and Northern Ireland’s Public Health Agency are responsible for providing healthy eating guidelines.

Public Health England’s Eatwell Guide suggests that the average person should “eat less often and in smaller amounts”, with the goal of sticking to 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 calories a day for men. The guide also suggests we should eat less red and processed meat and consider choosing low–fat alternatives to dairy.

These guidelines are aimed at helping us eat healthily rather than lowering our environmental footprints, says the study’s lead author Professor Paul Behrens, a researcher in energy and environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Although dietary choices drive both health and environmental outcomes, these diets make almost no reference to environmental impacts. We find that following a nationally recommended diet in high-income nations results in a reduction in greenhouse gases.”

Stepping onto the scales

For the study, the researchers first gathered information on the average diet of 37 countries from the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). They then collected healthy eating guidelines from the national organisations tasked with providing dietary advice in each country.

To calculate the environmental impact of both the average and state-recommended diets, they collected data on emissions, “eutrophication” and land use from a “supply and use” database called EXIOBASE. Eutrophication is the buildup of nutrients in lakes and rivers as a result of fertiliser run-off.

The total greenhouse gas emissions (top), eutrophication levels (middle) and land occupied (bottom) as a result of different types of food production of each country studied is shown on the graph below.

Countries are organised from low-middle income (left) to high-income (right), while colour is used to identify different foods, including meat (red), fish (blue), dairy (green), grains (purple), vegetables, fruits and nuts (VFN; orange) and other types of food (yellow).

Total greenhouse gas emissions (top), eutrophication levels (middle) and land occupied (bottom) as a result of different types of food production in 38 countries. Countries are organised from low-middle income (left) to high-income (right), while colour is used to identify different foods, including meat (red), fish (blue), dairy (green), grains (purple), vegetables, fruits and nuts (VFN; orange) and other types of food (yellow). Source: Behrens et al. (2017)

The analysis shows how the emissions derived from average diets increase with income, with animal products accounting for an average 70% of emissions in high-income countries, such as the UK and the US.

Brazil and Australia are notable exceptions to this finding. This is likely due to both the amount of meat in the diet and a national taste for grass-fed beef in both countries, which has significantly higher methane emissions than grain-fed beef, Behrens explains.

To work out the environmental impact of switching to a healthy diet, the researchers subtracted state-recommended diet data from the average diet data for each country.

The results are shown on the chart below, which shows the net change (black dot) in emissions (top), eutrophication levels (middle) and land use (bottom) when this subtraction is applied. Bars above the dotted line indicate a rise in emissions while bars below the line show a drop in emissions.

Net change (black dot) in greenhouse gas emissions (top), eutrophication levels (middle) and land occupied (bottom) as a result of a change from an average diet to a nationally–recommended diet in 38 countries. Countries are organised from low-middle income (left) to high-income (right), while colour is used to identify different foods, including meat (red), fish (blue), dairy (green), grains (purple), vegetables, fruits and nuts (VFN; orange) and other types of food (yellow). Source: Behrens et al. (2017)

The chart illustrates how, in most countries, a switch to a state-recommended diet could cause a large reduction in emissions from meat (red) and dairy (green), and a smaller increase in emissions from fruit, vegetables and nuts (orange).

Emissions from a UK government-recommended diet are estimated to be 29% lower than emissions from the UK average diet. However, when the impact of food waste is considered in the analysis, this figure falls to 17%, Behrens explains:

“Food waste is over a third once you take into account production, processing and domestic food wastes. If you include all the emissions from food production, then the difference in the diets becomes smaller because you are still wasting a lot of food.”

In other high-income countries, including the US, Canada and Japan, a switch to a nationally-recommended diet could cause emissions to fall by between 13% and 25%, the analysis finds.

And in high-middle income countries, including China, Brazil and Mexico, a swap to a state-recommended diet could cause a drop in emissions of between 9% and 21%.

However, in India and Indonesia, a switch to a nationally endorsed eating plan could cause a small rise in overall emissions from food production. This is because, in both of these countries, authorities recommend including more meat in the diet. These recommendations have likely been made in response to relatively high levels of malnutrition in some communities in these countries, Behrens says.

Getting into shape

Despite the findings, it is clear that the average Briton is still far from sticking to the government’s recommended diet. In 2015, only 26% of adults ate the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, according to government statistics (pdf).

However, “we are starting to see change happening in the right places,” says Behrens, pointing to a rise in popularity of vegetarian and vegan diets. Around 2% of the UK’s population consider themselves to be vegetarian, according to a government survey. Behrens says:

“Major obstacles will be related to similar issues with any social and cultural change, and that is the inertia of existing habits. Some social issues can change very very quickly once the right conditions are in place. These sorts of diets are increasing steadily in the population, but usually these social changes reach a tipping point, when change happens relatively quickly, for example, the legalisation of gay marriage surprised many with its speed.”

The research shows that “simply eating what governments say we should for our health would reduce the food system’s impact on climate change,” says Tim Benton, a professor in population ecology at food security at the University of Leeds, who was not involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Of course, much about the food system would have to change were the world to adopt sustainable, healthy, eating patterns: the crops grown, the way they are grown, and the subsidies and economics, as well as the retail environment. Nonetheless, this paper provides a valuable indication that we, and the planet, could be healthier together.”

Behrens et al. (2017) Evaluating the environmental impacts of dietary recommendations, PNAS, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711889114

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