Helene York, director of Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation and architect of the Low Carbon Diet program, took it upon herself four years ago to detail the food system's connection to climate change. She persuaded Bon Appetit Management Company's Foundation to develop a program to calculate the various strands of the food system's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  It was not an easy task.  Government statistics don't help much.  The EPA divides their data into three arbitrary categories - transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture - all of which are impacted by the food system.  Then, when the U.S. pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, our obligation to measure emissions ended, making the task even harder.

York persisted.  Writing at Sustainable Industries, she discusses her primary finding: "Distributed among all its component parts, the food system represents one-third of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions." 

She discusses the consumption of meat, particularly beef.  "A 2006 study released by the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization reported in detail how the livestock sector is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gases. The report used an expansive methodology, measuring, for example, forest land turned over to grazing that previously absorbed atmospheric carbon."

York addresses both consumers' unwillingness to change their personal food choices.  She says, "If all the meat eaters in North America eliminated meat one day each week, it would do more than tripling the number of vegetarians."  The same would hold true if people decreased their portions by 15%.  Personal choices matter. 

So does public responsibility. She says, "the food system is not environmentally benign . . . If our goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050", we will have to quit subsidizing cheap feed and water and ignoring animal waste. 

"Today, food seems off limits in the climate debate, not because of methodology concerns but because food is emotional stuff and we’re uncomfortable with having our personal choices questioned. But this isn’t really about personal choices; it’s about public responsibility."

Indeed.  Nice work.