Understanding Your Carbon Food-print

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Credit Rick Harrison / Flickr

Beef has one of the highest carbon footprints of any food.

While conversations about climate change typically focus on cars or power plants, the food we eat is a major factor that often flies under the radar. Food - it's production, processing, and transport - accounts for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The irony is that putting a dent in that portion of our carbon footprint could be fairly simple. If everyone in the U.S. avoided meat and dairy one day a week for a year, it would be the carbon-cutting equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road. On the other hand, since transportation actually accounts for just 2% of food-related emissions, eating locally may not be the climate panacea some have made out.

The Diet-Climate Connection is a new two-hour documentary from David Freudberg, host of Human Kind. It sorts through the environmental impacts of our food system and highlights a variety of individuals and groups working to reduce their food-prints. David and his team have also produced a booklet, The Climate-Friendly Food Guide, with facts and tips for reducing your carbon food-print.

Would you reduce meat consumption for the sake of climate change mitigation? What else have you or would you do to cut your carbon food-print?