Fight Global Warming with Your Knife and Fork

by Elysa Hammond

This Earth Day, look no further than your plate to see how you can help fight global warming. Global warming seems big and overwhelming but we can all contribute to a healthier world by making a few simple changes in our eating habits. Eat local. Eat less meat. Eat organic.

Most of the advice about how to fight global warming revolves around things we do occasionally: insulate our homes, buy a hybrid car, switch to compact fluorescent bulbs. These are helpful steps that taken together can make a BIG impact.

But you can also make a big impact three times every day … when you eat.

Eat Local
Did you know the food you eat travels an average of more than 1,500 miles to reach your plate? Transporting food burns fossil fuels, which create tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases-the primary cause of global warming. Brian Halweil of Worldwatch found that a typical meal bought from a conventional supermarket chain uses four to 17 times more petroleum for transport than the same meal using local ingredients.

Support your regional economy, beginning with the food you eat. At home in New Rochelle, NY, I relish my weekly visits to the Friday farmer’s market. There Amish farmers sell fresh broccoli, red ripe tomatoes and juicy peaches. Further north my friend Beth has joined a CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – to share with others in a local farm’s production for the season. These local alternatives feed the soul as well as the stomach.

Eat less meat
We feed more than half the grain grown in the United States to livestock. That greatly compounds the climactic impact of our oil-dependent food system. According to noted ecologist David Pimentel of Cornell University, it takes on average 28 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of meat protein for human consumption. Grain production requires only about 3.3 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of protein. Large, confined livestock operations also generate vast amounts of manure, which releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas with 20 times the heat trapping power of carbon dioxide. [Editor’s Note: they are also inhumane, but that’s another subject].

Health experts recommend you eat more whole grains, fruits and vegetables. What better time to start than if you’re concerned about global warming. [Editor’s Note: Even if you’re on the Atkins diet you can plenty of protein from free range eggs and beans].

Eat Organic
Our industrialized food system-the collective growing, processing, packaging, shipping and cooking of our food-accounts for a whopping 17 percent of the fossil fuel energy we consume as a nation. According to the EPA, the agricultural sector alone generates almost 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Agricultural chemicals-synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides-account for more than half of all on-farm energy use. Organic farming uses no synthetic chemicals, greatly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels to produce food. As an added bonus, organic farming significantly cuts emissions of nitrous oxide, which is produced when soils interact with chemical fertilizers. An extremely powerful greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide has 310 times the heat trapping power of CO2.

What’s more, organic farming can actually help undo global warming. Soils farmed using sustainable, organic methods absorb CO2 from the air and lock it into the soil as fertile humus. This makes organic farmland a sink rather than a source of CO2. Paul Hepperly of the Rodale Institute estimates that if all the corn and soy cropland in the nation converted to organic production, some 580 billion pounds of excess CO2 could be captured from the atmosphere and stored in the soil annually.

Our world is heating up and we need to take action. Armed with our knives and forks, we wield a lot more power to affect change than we realize. Be part of the solution, three times a day. Eat local. Eat less meat. Eat organic. Not just because you’ll help fight global warming, but because fresh, locally grown, organic food is healthier and tastes better, too.

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Clif Bar Inc. is a recent recipient of a Green Power Leadership Award from the EPA and a Green Cross Millenium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership from Global Green USA. Under Hammond’s direction, Clif Bar Inc. underwrites a wind farm and reforestation project to help offset its contribution to global warming. www.clifbar.com

Join the fight against global warming and earn a free box of CLIF BARS from NativeEnergy.