| I became a vegetarian five years ago after learning about the link between global warming and meat. When researchers at the University of Chicago published their study "Diet, Energy, and Global Warming" shortly thereafter, saying that a vegan diet causes the lowest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, I figured that it was now obvious to everyone. Then there were more headlines, like Scientific American's "How Meat Contributes to Global Warming" and E Magazine's "The Case Against Meat - Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health." So how could anyone remain ignorant of this obvious fact?
Well, why not ask Al Gore? In fact, in 2008, I did. My question, posed directly to Al Gore in front of a large audience, caused a newspaper headline calling Gore a "Meat-Eating Carbon Machine," which included this report:
Our favorite question: If meat causes more carbon emissions than cars, what should we do?
Al said, "It is true that it would be healthier for us as if we consumed less meat." How come that hasn't been a more prominent? "I myself am a meat eater and perhaps that has something to do with it." We've got to walk before we run, Al said. "None of us are perfect."
So even Al Gore - after his Oscar AND his Nobel Prize, both related to the climate crisis - could only come up with a stuttery half-answer to the question. Yikes. Maybe a book on the subject IS a good idea.
Diet for a Hot Planet is full of all of the clever puns and witty language you'd expect from Lappe, but it's also full of facts. Facts are kind of a novel thing in the climate debate, because too many of the loudest voices either ignore them or make them up. I often struggle to explain the full carbon-emitting lifecycle of our food because even after hours and weeks of researching and numerous trips to farms across the country, I still don't have the facts I need to fully depict every source of greenhouse gas emissions in our food system and then tell how they stack up against other sources of greenhouse gases. Given my own efforts and failures at this, I was surprised and thrilled at what Lappe pulled together. She backs up her arguments with stat after well-sourced stat, illustrating them with easy to understand charts, graphs, and tables. Finally, I've got the reference I've needed to communicate exactly how food relates to the climate crisis (and why the EPA's estimate that agriculture is only 6 percent of the problem (PDF) is a bogus number).
In one of my favorite passages, she says:
It [the climate-intensive food system] grows from the wild assumption that we can go on indefinitely using finite fossil fuels, and that we could radically disrupt nature's regeneration - degrade and erode soil, pollute water, deforest land, and emit ever-increasing amounts of planet-heating gases - without dire consequences. It grows from rules we humans have created - often called "policies," which can sound so boring that we too often ignore them. In making these rules, global corporate wealth and power have overwhelmed the voices and values of citizens so much that we as taxpayers have even subsidized key pieces of our own undoing.
-p. 38
(In this respect, Haney Armstrong of Roots of Change compares us to cartoon characters who rapidly run off a cliff, not realizing they've done so, only to look down at the ground far below them in a moment of terror before they fall. We're on our way off that cliff, and the larger society certainly hasn't looked down yet to realize how far we can fall.)
Next, Lappe educates her readers about corporate spin. I bookmarked the page where she explains the corporate instruction manual to show to my friend Michele Simon, author of Appetite for Profit: How the food industry undermines our health and how to fight back, because it's the exact playbook she details and debunks in her book (only for nutrition instead of climate).
The Playbook
Play 1: Advertise the new you
Play 2: Spin the story
Play 3: Deploy front groups and fig leaves
Play 4: Exaggerate your transformation
Play 5: Be your own police
Play 6: Reward yourself
- p. 90
And that, my friends, is how some of the world's most polluting businesses and industries actually get awards for being green (often from themselves or each other). Lappe, who works with spin-busting The Center for Media and Democracy, is no stranger to corporate spin... or to unspinning it to reveal the truth. She not only provides examples of corporate polluters masquerading as friends of the environment, she also arms her readers with tools to do so themselves.
In the last section of the book, called "Hope," Lappe entered into territory I am intimately familiar with. She vividly and scientifically shows how sustainable agriculture not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to industrial ag, it actually sequesters carbon into the soil, reversing the climate crisis. And she deals with each of the criticisms that sustainable, climate-friendly agriculture often receives (usually from industries that would go out of business if too many of us figured out the truth). Lappe's sources here are impeccable. She uses each of the best reports, studies, scientists, examples, etc, to prove her points. I found myself cheering her on as I turned each page and saw mentions of the UN and World Bank-sponsored IAASTD report, Genetics and Molecular Biology professor Jack Heinemann, the study proving that organic food can feed the world and even increase food production by Catherine Badgley, and the Rodale Institute's findings that organic agriculture, done right, can provide a significant part of the solution to the climate crisis. The work of these people and organizations are ideas I've attempted to communicate for months (and in some cases, years) while being shouted down by a corporate propaganda machine claiming that only industrial agriculture (translation: only the products they sell) can feed the world. Now let's only hope that the very same policymakers who believe the corporate lies (and yes, I do mean the Obama administration, all the way up to its highest levels) actually read Lappe's book.
Lappe ends with an action kit for readers, telling them how to eat in a climate-friendly manner and where to get more information on the subject going forward. What she does not do is delve into the politics behind the very concepts she just related. Unfortunately, while Lappe and her readers know the truth behind agriculture and climate, the U.S. government, by and large, is listening to the same people Lappe and her sources debunk. That said, I don't bring this up as criticism, as the very idea that diet and the climate crisis are related is a new one for many people, and the book does its job to inform them and help them see through the lies. With luck, Lappe will get the publicity she deserves for her brilliance, bringing her ideas into the mainstream so that people can see for themselves that the government is not doing what it should on this issue. By sticking to the facts and remaining politically neutral, Lappe is able to appeal to all readers, not just those of one political stripe or another. Now let's just hope she gets invited on Oprah, because this is an important book and it needs to be treated as such. Diet for a Hot Planet is 100% worthy of it's name, which is obviously a play on her mother's classic, Diet for a Small Planet. This is the 21st century's Diet for a Small Planet, and Lappe should feel proud that she's so brilliantly followed in her mother's footsteps. |
