Climate labeling of the world’s food system could help reduce the 2 degrees of global warming by the year 2200 as a result of the Paris Agreement
For now, climate labeling on food products remains relatively rare, and those companies that do add them tend to use positive labels that highlight low climate impacts. Legislation or regulation could be needed for the adoption of warning-style labels on a large scale.
Humans are emitting more planet-warming gasses in its quest to feed itself, as the population grows and the middle class eats more meat. A new estimate shows how much the world’s food system could contribute to warming by the year 2200. There has already been a warming of the planet by 1.1 degrees since the dawn of Industrial Age. The Paris Agreement wants warming to be limited to 2 degrees above preindustrial levels or 1.5 degrees. Agricultural emissions alone could push us past 2 degrees—and food systems are just a fraction of overall global emissions.
To try to help fill that gap, researchers conducted randomized clinical trials asking more than 5,000 adults in the US to imagine they were in a fast-food restaurant, and pick an item from a menu with options including beef, chicken, fish, plant-based meat substitutes and salads.
Identifying and Factoring in the Emissions of Food Items for a More Sustainable Development and a Climate Model to Estimate the Population Growth Rate
But, she added, these may not be the only effective design. “Other future research could be required to investigate different design options that may have a higher impact still using that positively framed label.”
Ivanovich and her colleagues gathered previous data on the emissions associated with 94 food items and came up with the estimate. The greenhouse gasses that the researchers considered were created by Producing these. The machinery that transport crops to consumers emits carbon dioxide. The methane produced by cows and goats is 80 times more potent than a greenhouse gas. Methane also comes from the practice of flooding fields to grow rice, which allows bacteria to proliferate and spew the gas as a byproduct. And nitrous oxide, which is 300 times as potent as CO2, comes from synthetic fertilizer, which farmers use to give plants the nitrogen they need to grow.
With data for so many different kinds of foods, Ivanovich’s team could then factor in population growth—basically, how many more people will be consuming these foods by the year 2100. They then plugged the emissions data into a climate model that calculated how much warming the food system alone would produce: nearly 1 more degree Celsius.