#293: Our diet and Climate Change

Our food has a dramatic impact on natural history at both local and national scales... and global too...

Elon Musk tweets, "Farming has no material effect on climate change."

This is wrong. If you look at the data, you find that a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are due to food production, the majority of these from farming.https://t.co/D7X9tu5Pyg

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) February 12, 2024

How high our emissions from food production are depends primarily on what we eat.

If you would like to see the data on this, you can find it
— here: https://t.co/cdxtINqHzI
— and much more here: https://t.co/nxmzE3lAVK pic.twitter.com/yoXgrtyFUR

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) February 12, 2024

What we choose to eat has an impact because of the water and energy required to produce certain items, and the amount of land that is put aside for its production.

Food should be more of a priority than it is for the government - as should water... we can get by without most things, but not food and water. 

The original draft specification for the GCSE Natural History mentioned the impact of our diet on the countryside. Choices such as organic food, vegetarian diets and alternatives to milk from cows all have an impact on the landscape...

Image: Jersey Royals, Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license