One of the most striking, and widely shared, images of the recent catastrophic California fires was of a McDonald’s restaurant in Pasadena engulfed in flames. A symbol of the American Dream going up in smoke, alongside the homes of the rich and famous, showed how inescapable climate change’s worst impacts are, even for the privileged.
Indeed, scientists have since confirmed that climate change made the fires more likely.
The wildfires are now fully contained, but the enduring image of a burning McDonald’s should also act as another powerful symbol – the role the food system, in particular meat and dairy production, plays in fuelling climate change.
Food is responsible for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions but is often overlooked in emissions reduction strategies. With corporate leadership from the likes of McDonald’s, and political will, its impact could be minimized with wins for the climate and human health.
The fires are the latest in a pattern of climate impacts increasing in intensity and devastation.
And as cries for climate action from some quarters multiply, we should not overlook the huge impact that the food system plays in heating the planet. The proportion of emissions from food production will grow as emissions from energy and transport reduce in a green transition.
Livestock emissions problem
Over the past 25 years of climate action, the food system has often been forgotten – and therefore strategies to limit its impact are far behind where they need to be, despite solutions being literally on the table.
The greatest contributor to food’s climate gases is the production and consumption of livestock. According to calculations based on IPCC figures and other research, the livestock sector alone may be responsible for around 20% of all climate emissions.
The world’s biggest meat producers like JBS and Tyson Foods have emissions footprints on a par with some of the world’s fossil fuel companies. But unlike Shell and Exxon, meat companies, even fast-food giants like McDonald’s, are far less seen as the corporate face of climate breakdown.
This absence of food in the climate space has been slowly shifting in recent years. Two years ago, at the COP28 Dubai climate summit, 159 governments signed a declaration on sustainable food and agriculture. Meanwhile some companies, particularly in the retail sector, are recognising that changing what they sell could help them meet corporate climate targets.
A number of European supermarkets, including German giant Lidl, have made commitments to increase the share of plant proteins they sell, reducing products sourced from animals.
Peak meat?
Fast food giant McDonald’s, despite some forays into plant-based alternatives, is focusing its climate efforts on regenerative agriculture. This approach by itself, however, can’t provide the levels of emissions reductions required to mitigate meat and dairy’s climate impact, since even greater amounts of land would be needed for livestock farmed in this way. Greenhouse gas reductions achieved through regenerative practices would be cancelled out by higher levels of deforestation and other ecosystem destruction.
Meanwhile, governments seem reluctant to take on food in their climate strategies, afraid of social backlash and accusations of meddling in people’s food choices. However, we cannot keep ignoring this huge contributor to climate breakdown.
Last year, a survey of scientists and experts by the Harvard Law School indicated that we should be reaching ‘peak meat’ as soon as this year. While many citizens and consumers may be resistant to shifting their diets away from meat, others are not.
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According to Madre Brava’s own research, around half of consumers in Germany, France and the UK, and over a third in the US, are open to eating less meat, with many already adopting so-called flexitarian lifestyles. With more alternatives to meat readily available and improving in taste and affordability, it should be easier than ever to help consumers reduce the amount of animal-derived protein they consume.
Research suggests that shifting the food environment, i.e. making it easier to eat plant-rich foods, can begin to change behaviour. McDonald’s rival, Burger King is selling plant-based Whoppers at a lower price than meat equivalents in Europe, leading to an increase in sales. One in five Whoppers sold in Germany is now plant-based.
Tipping the balance away from meat sales can have huge impacts in terms of emissions savings. If McDonald’s replaced half its meat patties with veggie burgers (or half the meat in its burgers with other sources of protein), we calculate it would lead to the equivalent greenhouse gas savings of taking 12 million new gas-powered cars off EU roads.
Political leadership
As with the energy transition, the transformation of our food system requires both efforts by the private sector and political leadership. Governments need to create ambitious food strategies to ensure systemic changes to how we produce and consume food, incorporating metrics for health and sustainability.
These should support food being brought into governments’ Nationally Determined Contributions (concrete emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Climate agreement) and their net-zero plans.
As the embers of these latest fires fade and the political blame-game burns, it is essential that those who have shaped our food system for years recognise the urgent need to reduce its huge impact on our climate. The energy sector has shown that with private innovation, fairer market conditions and sound government policy, we can take huge strides towards reducing emissions. It is way past time the food sector made strides of its own.
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