Just in Time…

For Earth Day, author-activist Anna Lappe has launched a great new Website on the intersections between food and climate change, Take a Bite out of Climate Change. It’s chock-a-block with facts, ideas for action — including how and what to eat — and witty, insightful and regular blogs. (I’m happy to be on the Take a Bite Advisory Council.) Hip high-tech, high concept Wired magazine is also bringing its perspective to eating and equity. A recent Wired column encourages those of us in the wealthy world to cut back or forego meat entirely as a means of making more grain available as food (not feed) to those in the global south, millions of whom are experiencing steep and devastating food price rises and hunger.

And New Scientist reports on a really interesting study that deconstructs the food miles argument for local eating. It doesn’t debunk it — it’s valid to weigh up how far your food travelled and the resources used to transport it, especially oil. But researchers found that eating locally doesn’t cut our climate impact as much as cutting meat and dairy out of our diet would. Red meat is especially climate-heavy. “The differences between eating habits are very, very striking,” Carnegie Mellon University researcher Christopher Weber tells New Scientist. That’s an Earth Day message we could all chew on, and digest.