Eating for the Future

People have a variety of motives for becoming vegan: in my first blog post I discussed how unsustainable food production practices drove me to give up meat; and in my interview with Hannah Pullman, she said she became vegan for moral reasons.

Also influential in this decision is the environmental impact of eating meat – an issue highlighted this week by the United Nation’s climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa. The UN has estimated that livestock farming accounts for about 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, with meat being the major contributor to that number (80 percent of agricultural emissions stem from meat production).

On its website, the magazine New Scientist reports that this problem is only getting worse:

This week, a major report concludes that food production is too close to the limits of a "safe operating space" defined by how much we need, how much we can produce, and its impact on the climate.

The article also quotes former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Molly Jahn, who notes that as people get richer, the demand for protein gets stronger (and emissions from livestock farming increase), which begs the question, how do you achieve food security while still accounting for climate change?

According to the New Scientist, the solution is to eat less meat, instead of no meat at all:

In 2007, Colin Butler of the Australian National University in Canberra estimated that the average person consumed 100 grams of meat a day, or about one burger (a quarter-pounder is 113 g). The rich eat 10 times more than the poor – in other words, some people get 10 burgers a day while others get none.

Butler showed that if every person in the world ate 50 g of red meat and 40 g of white meat per day by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from meat production would stabilise at 2005 levels – a target cited in national plans for agricultural emissions. That's about one burger and one small chicken breast per person every two days.

By reducing our dependency on meat, we can make a significant impact on man-made greenhouse gases, which scientists believe will lead to sea-level rise, floods, drought and famine. Indeed, changing our diet is vital considering the dismal results of the Kyoto Protocol – the treaty that bound 37 industrial nations to reduce emissions by about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The New York Times reports that from 1990 to 2009, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, rose by 38 percent (and would have been much higher had the the old Soviet bloc's economy not collapsed). Meanwhile, the U.S. – the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases – refused to ratify the Kyoto accord, and saw its greenhouse gases rise by almost 7 percent.

Still, countries like Germany and even China are investing in clean energy, and Detroit is finally producing vehicles that are more energy efficient. Not to mention, urban planners are beginning to take an interest in sustainable food systems.

On his blog, Mark Bittman – whom I’ve previously posted about – invited Nevin Cohen and Kubi Ackerman to write about the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) proposals for environmental infrastructure initiatives. (Cohen teaches sustainable food systems, environmental policy and urban planning at the New School and Ackerman is a research coordinator at the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.)

In their post, Cohen and Ackerman discuss how the DEP recently funded three new urban agriculture projects: a rooftop garden at a settlement house, a vegetable garden near the Gowanus Canal and a commercial rooftop farm atop a Brooklyn Navy Yard building. They write:

These projects are part of an innovative green infrastructure program to turn impervious roofs, vacant lots and streets into spaces that soak up the rain and prevent water pollution. Supporting urban farms and gardens as a means of keeping our waterways clean is an excellent idea, and should be dramatically scaled up.

New York has already spent billions on 14 wastewater treatment plants that handle the dry-weather sewage that flows from homes and businesses. Thanks to this technology, the harbor is cleaner than it has been in generations. But our sewers also collect rainwater, which mixes with raw sewage (called “combined sewer overflow,” or CSO) and is dumped into nearby rivers and creeks through hundreds of pipes to avoid inundating the treatment plants. Tens of billions of gallons of CSOs pollute our harbor each year, hindering the recovery of our estuarine ecosystem.

To control these overflows, the DEP has committed to investing $187 million in green infrastructure over the next four years, which Cohen and Ackerman note, “reduces air pollution, cools the city during hot summer months, increases property values and provides other ecological and quality of life benefits valued at between $139 and $418 million.”

The high potential return on investment in these projects highlights another motive for pursuing clean technology – it’s profitable. And these kinds of projects can be implemented at all levels, across most industries.

For example, Alexander Lee – who is part of the group that founded Fresh Nation – is currently working on a project to develop and apply sustainable agricultural techniques within the craft beer brewing industry.

Lee has started a page on the web site Kickstarter (an online fundraising platform) to get his project off the ground. Currently he has raised $1,500 toward his goal of $14,700, with 22 days left for people to back the project (Kickstarter projects are only funded if a project’s monetary goal is reached by a specified date).

Below he explains his sustainable food project, called Hydro Homebrew.

The idea behind his project, Lee says, is that for most agricultural companies, waste is viewed as a costly burden; but with Hydro Homebrew, every byproduct becomes a resource that can be used to reduce the environmental impact of small brewing companies.

If you’d like to donate to this project, visit the Hydro Homebrew Kickstarter page and send a couple bucks their way. Depending on how much you donate, you’ll be rewarded with anything from a Hydro Homebrew tote bag to three months worth of freshly harvested organic herbs; not to mention, the satisfaction of contributing to an environmentally friendly cause.