Don't Have A Cow!

Our power to stop climate change may depend on what’s for dinner.

- Tom Philpott

In October, scientists convened by the United Nations issued a dire warning: Unless carbon emissions fall by about 45 percent by 2030, we will face a world of climate chaos—more frequent droughts and floods, decimated coral reefs, and cities swamped by rising seas. Soon after, the Trump administration quietly released a similarly terrifying report from US government scientists, who estimated climate chaos will cost the country more than $500 billion annually by the century’s end. The president’s response? “I don’t believe it.”

Frankly, all this news made me want to stress-eat a giant steak and succumb to a food coma. But a spate of new studies have argued that cutting back on meat—way back—can help our climate enormously. Americans now eat a staggering 218 pounds of meat annually per person, nearly triple the global average. Even our appetite for beef, which fell during the Great Recession, has crept back up, and we eat more of it per capita than almost any other country.