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10 Ways (and a Bonus 11) to Take a Bite Out of Climate Change
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1. Choose Real Food
Walk into any supermarket and the shelves are lined with products full of trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, and multi-syllabic additives. Each of these products takes enormous energy to create—from the chemical fertilizers used to grow those sweeteners to the synthetic compounds used to ensure those Twinkies stay moist. Choosing real food—fresh, whole foods with minimal packaging—is choosing energy-efficient food that’s good for your body and the planet.
www.eatwellguide.org | www.eatlowcarbon.org | www.coolfoodscampaign.org
2. Finish Your Peas… the Ice Caps are Melting
Of all the food raised in the United States, nearly half of what’s ready for harvest doesn’t end up in our bellies; much of it ends of “feeding” landfills instead, leading to big-time greenhouse gas emissions. You can take a bite out of climate change by ensuring you eat those leftovers, waste less, and compost your food scraps.
www.lovefoodhatewaste.com — inspiration from across the pond
3. Meatless Mondays… or Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays
The livestock industry is responsible for nearly one-fifth of all global greenhouse gas emissions— more than the entire transportation sector. Choosing organic, sustainably produced meat from small-scale family farms can help reduce your emissions impact. Or, try cutting out meat or dairy for one meal a week, or more. There’s no need to worry about missing out on protein: non-meat sources abound. Plus, the typical American consumes twice as much protein as the government recommends, anyway, and since our bodies can’t store protein, it’s all wasted.
www.meatlessmonday.org | www.eatgrub.org
4. Live La Vida Loca(l)
Support your local food economy: visit your locally stocked supermarkets, check out your nearest farmers market, or even become a member of a farm through CSA, or community-supported agriculture. If we don’t support our nearby networks of small-scale farmers, we won’t have any climate-friendly food to choose from!
www.localharvest.org | www.foodroutes.org
5. Don’t Panic, Go Organic
Organic farms are not only good for the birds and the bees they’re good for the climate, too. By building healthy soil, organic farms emit as much as half the carbon dioxide as chemical farms. Organic farms also use much less fossil fuel energy than their conventional counterparts, in many cases one-third less. Organic farms also provide an effective carbon sink, storing carbon from the atmosphere. If we converted just 10,000 medium-sized farms to organic, we could win an emissions reduction similar to taking one million cars off the road.
www.organicconsumers.org | www.cornucopia.org | www.centerforfoodsafety.org
6. Get Into the Kitchen
Climate-friendly diet choices require us to do one thing that’s becoming increasingly foreign to modern homo sapiens: spend time cooking our own food. Thankfully, a slew of new cookbooks and other resources have come out recently to help you make this move with ease. And unlike some of the other prescriptions for addressing global warming, choosing a climate-friendly diet can be fun, feel good, and taste scrumptious, too.
7. Dig In
Climate-friendly farming is going to require people—real flesh-and-blood people—getting their hands in the dirt. Unfortunately, after more than half-a-century of government subsidies that encouraged large-scale farms, thousands of small-scale farmers tossed in the spade. Thankfully, new farmers are picking up their hoes and digging in. Today, in nooks-and-crannies throughout the countryside and in cities across the nation, they’re creating agricultural oases.
www.thegreenhorns.net | www.heifer.org | www.added-value.org | www.growfood.org
8. Take a Farmcation
Support climate-friendly farming by rolling up your sleeves and heading out to a farm for your next vacation. From the rolling hills of Southern Poland to the apple country of upstate New York, you can check out climate-friendly farming up-close-and-personal with a farmcation. While you’re breathing all that fresh air and getting your hands in the dirt, you’ll be helping keep farmers on the land and promoting a healthy climate, too.
www.maverickfarms.org | www.icppc.pl
9. Fight for the Forests
Deforestation releases huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. On the planet today, deforestation is rampant, especially in Brazil and Indonesia. These forests are being cleared primarily to make way for livestock grazing, feed crops, and production of crops for biofuels. Make the forest-food connection and join efforts like the Rainforest Action Network’s Agribusiness Campaign.
10. Offset This!
Thinking about reducing greenhouse-guilt by offsetting your next flight by planting a tree in a far-off forest? Wonder whether that tree will really be planted, or what difference it will really make if it is? Compared with the sequestration potential of forests, research is discovering that well-managed organic agricultural soils can provide an even more potent carbon sink, soaking up atmospheric carbon more efficiently than forests, in part because trees can take decades before they provide big sequestration benefits, while soils store carbon right now. So, next time you’re thinking about buying an offset, think about supporting an organic farmer instead – and help bury your carbon in the dirt.
www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com | www.rodale.org
And a bonus: Get Connected and Take Action
To transform our food system we can go beyond our fork, our kitchen, even our own community, and speak up for climate-friendly food and for farm policy. Check out the other resources on this site to learn about the issues and find out ways you can connect with exciting campaigns around the country and the planet.
