Frequently Asked Questions

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• What is a carbon footprint?

  • “A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions. The average carbon footprint for a person in the United States is 16 tons, one of the highest rates in the world. Globally, the average is closer to 4 tons. To have the best chance of avoiding a 2℃ rise in global temperatures, the average global carbon footprint per year needs to drop under 2 tons by 2050. Lowering individual carbon footprints from 16 tons to 2 tons doesn’t happen overnight! By making small changes to our actions, like eating less meat, taking less connecting flights and line drying our clothes, we can start making a big difference.” - from nature.org

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• What foods produce the most carbon emissions?

  • “In general, beef and lamb have the biggest climate footprint per gram of protein, while plant-based foods tend to have the smallest impact. Pork and chicken are somewhere in the middle.” - from The New York Times

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• Will one person changing their diet really do anything to help climate change?

  • “A number of studies have concluded that people who currently eat a meat-heavy diet — including much of the population of the United States and Europe — could shrink their food-related footprint by one-third or more by moving to a vegetarian diet. Giving up dairy would reduce those emissions even further. If you don’t want to go that far, there are still ways to shrink your individual footprint. Just eating less meat and dairy, and more plants, can reduce emissions. Cutting back on red meat in particular can make a surprisingly large difference: According to a World Resources Institute analysis, if the average American replaced a third of the beef he or she eats with pork, poultry or legumes, his or her food-related emissions would still fall by around 13 percent.

  • It’s true that one person alone can make only a tiny dent in the global climate problem. It’s just a really huge problem that requires large-scale action and policy changes to address. And food isn’t even the biggest contributor to global warming; most of it is caused by burning fossil fuels for electricity, transportation and industry. On the other hand, if many people collectively made changes to their diets, that could start to add up. Scientists have warned that we’ll need to slim down agriculture’s climate impact in the years ahead if we want to get global warming under control, particularly as the world’s population keeps growing. For that to happen, farmers and ranchers will need to find ways to curb their emissions and become much more efficient, growing more food on less land to limit deforestation. But experts have also argued that it would make a big difference if the world’s heaviest meat eaters scaled back even moderately, helping to free up land to feed everyone else.” - from The New York Times

 

Here is a link for answers to more FAQs related to food and climate change: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climate-change-food-eating-habits.html