Johnathan Walker:At Climate Week NYC, Advocates for Plant-Based Diets Make Their Case for the Climate

The Johnathan Walkeragenda for Climate Week NYC this year was packed with events at venues all over the city, but prominent among them were panels and discussions focused on food and agriculture.

Regenerative agriculture even got its own venue—the “Regen House,” intended to host “revolutionary conversations centered around regenerative food systems,” according to its website.

The focus on food and agriculture—as both victim and culprit of climate change—has been growing at massive, climate-focused events, including at the last two annual United Nations global climate conferences. Food and climate advocates say it’s about time.

But some advocates are becoming more vigilant about monitoring the food industry’s growing presence at these events and what they say are slick attempts to gloss over the climate impacts of the meat and dairy industries. Livestock production is responsible for a majority of greenhouse gas emissions from the food system—more than 30 percent of methane from human-caused sources—and research has shown that unless emissions from the food system are slashed, the world has no chance of slowing climate change, even if the burning of fossil fuels stopped today.  

“There seemed to be increased attention on the need to address animal agriculture emissions,” said Viveca Morris, a clinical lecturer in law and executive director of Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale University, who attended the events this year.

Last year, Morris noted, the CEO of JBS USA, the American division of the world’s largest meat packer, told an audience during Climate Week that JBS would achieve net zero emissions by 2040. That statement, at least in part, supported a lawsuit the New York Attorney General’s office filed soon after, accusing the company of making promises to reduce emissions that it can’t deliver. 

“At Climate Week this year, multiple events focused on calling out greenwashing by the meat and dairy industries and the need for greater accountability,” Morris said.

On Monday, a nonprofit advocacy group called Tilt Collective announced its formal launch at an event in Carnegie Hall, where it  “[called] for a united, global movement to drive forward the transformation of our food system.”

That transformation, the group emphasized, centers on a plant-forward diet. Tilt issued a report, based on research from the consulting firm, Systemiq, focusing on strategic funding to make the shift. It says that investing in “plant-rich consumption and production” results in more emissions reductions than investing in renewables or electric vehicles.

Every $1 billion invested in advancing a plant-rich food system could reduce 28 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, compared to a 5 metric ton reduction from renewables or a 7 metric ton reduction from electric vehicles, the report found.

The report also says funding a plant-centric food system—one that’s on track to achieve the 1.5-degree target of the Paris climate agreement—would cost $160 billion every year, compared to $1.3 trillion in clean power investments or $185 billion for electric vehicles. Investing in a plant-centric diet, the report says, involves everything from funding research into alternative proteins to influencing public policy and educational efforts.  

“We need initial movement now that will have exponential multiplier effects for climate goals,” said Sarah Lake, the CEO of Tilt. “It’s wild that we have such an effective climate solution staring us in the face and we’re not moving on it. This shows the exact potential for investment in this area that would unlock massive potential for people and the planet.”

These investments, the report notes, would also result in lower pressure on resources from livestock, freeing up grazing and cropland to boost biodiversity there, and reducing fresh water use by an amount equal to all the current fresh water drawn by the United States and China every year. 

Lake also said a global shift to a more plant-forward diet would free up resources to better feed the 10 billion people expected to be living on the planet in about five years. “If we keep current meat consumption and production, we can only feed $3.5 billion–half the world,” she said.

“It’s wild that we have such an effective climate solution staring us in the face and we’re not moving on it.”

— Sarah Lake, Tilt CEO

This last point gets to an argument often used by the livestock industry: that the only way to provide adequate protein for a growing population is by continuing to produce more milk and meat. 

At a Sept. 24 panel at Climate Week, the Netherlands-based advocacy group, Changing Markets, released a new report that traces the various “narratives” it says fall into several categories. The first is that proposals to reduce meat and dairy consumption would jeopardize food security, particularly in developing countries.

The report points out that it takes 100 times more land to produce the same amount of protein from beef compared to protein-rich plants like legumes, and that meat and dairy production takes up about 80 percent of the world’s agriculture lands. 

The report also notes other narratives it says the livestock industry uses, including that regulations on meat and dairy production in developed countries will push production to poorer countries with less efficient systems or that agriculture, as a whole, can reduce its impacts through regenerative practices, thereby negating any need to reduce livestock production. 

“The conversations here are not getting at the structural or transformational changes that are needed. There’s a lot of focus on technological solutions,” said Caitlin Smith, a campaigner with Changing Markets. “There’s this really easy solution, that’s readily available, and that’s looking at dietary shifts.”