The next time you bite into a burger, consider this: Livestock create more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes, and other fossil-fueled modes of transportation in the world. In fact, our current food system—from industrial farming to packaging to transporting—contributes as much as one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions.Food's critical place in the climate-change equation is not common knowledge. But author Anna Lappé is doing her best to change that. Lappé cofounded The Small Planet Institute with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, author of the 1971 classic Diet for a Small Planet. And Anna Lappé's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, picks up where her mother left off nearly 40 years ago, shining a light on the dangerous impacts of our flawed food system on our fragile, warming planet. Lappé chatted with me recently from her home in Brooklyn about corporate greenwashing, what her baby eats, and how to help people find the lost connection between nature and food.
Q. Why do you think this food-climate connection hasn't really been made until recently?
A. First and foremost, it comes down to the fact that the broader climate change conversation is such a relatively new public conversation. As we began to wrap our minds around climate change, we first focused on some of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. It made sense that we would be talking about coal-fired plants in the energy sector. Now here is broader consensus that this is a crisis, and we understand that every sector needs to play a role.
The second core reason goes back to a historic disconnect between the environmental movement and food. Most of the large, mainstream environmental organizations in this country have largely been silent on the question of food and agriculture. That's why I'm particularly encouraged by groups like Rainforest Action Network talking about agribusiness.
Q. How do you think we can help people make the connection between food and nature?
A. Growing your own food or being in touch with the story of your food is one way that we're going to help people get this connection. Most people don't really think about food as part of a system, about where comes from, what was the land like that grew it, who were the farmers or farmworkers, what were the conditions for the livestock production. The different facets of the story of our food are still largely invisible to most people. In order to get people to make the food and climate connection, we have to spark our own curiosity about the story of our food. Once you start talking about that story, you see how the story of food connects to everything from the quality of our food to the quality of our water to the quality of our air to what's happening to the climate.
Q. Are there any food companies that come to mind for you that are doing it right, that are doing their part in trying to reduce their carbon forkprint?
A. Unfortunately, as I was writing the book, I was struck less by really bold, impressive, commendable initiatives coming out of the food industry and more struck by really bold, somewhat perturbed greenwashing methods coming out of the food industry. What I found though—and where a lot of my hope comes from—is a number of really successful people-driven campaigns that have really put the pressure on the food industry to step up and change their practices. You could point to some of the changes those companies have made as examples of companies doing good and going green. But I like to go back to the source of where that change came from. It wasn't from the company itself; it was from activists on the outside.
I talk in the book about the pressure that college students have been putting on [university] food service companies to go green. They've seen some movement happening within some of the biggest food service companies to source more food locally, to think about food waste, and to be more strategic around those kinds of things. The other initiative I mentioned in the book was Rainforest Action Network's agribusiness campaign, which has actually succeeded in getting companies who have contracts with Cargill for palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia to essentially tell Cargill they'll cancel their contracts until Cargill can show they are starting to source more sustainable palm oil.
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