In this guest article, Brian Austin (Laudato Si’ Animators UK) reviews a book.

IS FOOD CLIMATE?

Book Review by Brian Austin (initially prepared for Laudato Si’ Animators UK, 2024).

I was recommended to read Glen Merzer’s book ‘Food is Climate’. First, I think it is useful to understand that Glen is principally an author and an advocate of the Vegan diet. He went Vegan in the 1990’s. www.glenmerzer.com after being Vegetarian for 18 years.

The first thing that I found useful was the statement that methane has an instantaneous global warming potential 120 times that of carbon dioxide, since that is a difficult figure to find. Others use an average figure of 80 times over 20 years, as methane oxidises at about 10% per year producing CO2, but then that does not give a true reading of methane’s harmful effects. This is important, since ruminant animals, such as cows and sheep, emit methane and I agree with him that ‘only the instantaneous global warming potential is consistent with honest and responsible greenhouse gas accounting’. He concludes that ‘animal agriculture must be severely curtailed if we are to have a prayer of reversing climate change’. He goes on to point out that a 2006 UN FAO report estimated that livestock was responsible for 18% of our greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 50% more than the entire transportation sector, and cannot be ignored. (Later, he quotes that it’s not 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions, but ‘more than half and, perhaps, as much as 87%’, depending on what is included).

Another useful aspect is his use of Dr Sailesh Rao’s terminology of ‘The Burning Machine’ and ‘The Killing Machine’ as the two causes of climate change. The Burning Machine refers to all fossil fuel consumption and The Killing Machine refers to the consequences of eating animals. He goes on to point out that all our efforts are currently directed to shutting down the Burning Machine, but, even if that could be achieved overnight, that would not reverse climate change because it does not reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Meanwhile the Killing Machine would continue to add carbon into the atmosphere. ‘In short’, he says, ‘we will never reverse climate change without addressing the key climate-altering mainsprings of livestock overpopulation, deforestation and ocean destruction’.

He therefore recommends that the world should go Vegan. But, not everyone would need to do it, since if enough people do, then modern industrial animal agriculture would collapse and, together with an improvement in people’s health, the rest of the world would join, too.

He argues that ‘we need to eat only natural food: grains, fruits, vegetables, fungi, legumes, nuts and seeds. In other words, plants, grown sustainably. The only things we would have to give up are the animal foods that are killing both us and our habitat. He goes on to say: ‘As for the land area of the planet: about 37% of that is currently given over to pasture (retaining just 2% of the carbon captured in the world’s soil) and another 8% is given over to grow feed for animals, so … at least 80% of the earth’s non-ice surface could be effectively left alone if we just renounce the insanity of eating dead animals, eggs and dairy – the foods that threaten us individually with obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer …’.

In addition, he advocates planting one trillion new trees to capture CO2 (currently we have 3 trillion), which would absorb 25 billion tons of carbon a year. That would be half of the amount we need to drawdown each year. As well as that, the soil would hold more carbon when forested. Of course, without the need for grazing land or land for animal feed production, there would be plenty of locations for reforestation. To aid this, he advocates that we ‘leave the planet alone’.

Here’s his ‘simple’ formula for achieving drawdown (removal of CO2 from the atmosphere) from agriculture and land/ocean use: ‘stop meat production and consumption, stop industrial fishing, rewild grazing lands, plant a trillion trees, practice organic agriculture, reduce monoculture agriculture, and invest in marine permaculture to replace and add to the kelp forests that have been lost’.

Unfortunately, one aspect that does not receive too much attention in the book, is the part played by the oceans. Merzer does make it clear, though, that animal agriculture extends to the factory farming of fish and fishing, too, and that we need to simultaneously protect the oceans and restore sea life. He also mentions the need to “restore the kelp forests, as kelp grows exponentially faster than land-based plants, while oxygenating and cooling waters”.

I think that his argument is summed up in the quote he gives of Dr Sailesh Rao: that ‘there’s nothing, nothing that does not improve when you shut down animal agriculture. When you shut down the Killing Machine.’

A challenging and thought-provoking book.

Brian Austin (on behalf of Laudato Si’ Animators UK), May 2024