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In case you missed the news, humanity spent the Earth Day week reaching another sad milestone in the history of catastrophic climate change: For the first time, measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million, aka way above what our current ecosystem can handle.
Actually, you probably did miss the news because most major media outlets didn’t cover it in a serious way, if at all. Instead, they and their audiences evidently view such information as far less news-, buzz- and tweet-worthy than (among other things) the opening of George W. Bush’s library and President Obama’s jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Such an appetite for distraction, no doubt, comes from both those who deny the problem of climate change and those who acknowledge the crisis but nonetheless look away from what feels like an unsolvable mess.
That sense of hopelessness is understandable. After all, some of the most hyped ways to reduce carbon emissions — electric cars, mass-scale renewable energy power plants, etc. — require the kind of technological transformations that can seem impossibly unrealistic at a time when Congress can’t even pass a budget.
Here’s the good news, though: The fastest way to reduce climate change shouldn’t seem impossible, because it requires no massive new investments, technological breakthroughs or long-term infrastructure projects. According to data compiled by former World Bank advisers Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, it just requires us all to eat fewer animal products.
Actually, you probably did miss the news because most major media outlets didn’t cover it in a serious way, if at all. Instead, they and their audiences evidently view such information as far less news-, buzz- and tweet-worthy than (among other things) the opening of George W. Bush’s library and President Obama’s jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Such an appetite for distraction, no doubt, comes from both those who deny the problem of climate change and those who acknowledge the crisis but nonetheless look away from what feels like an unsolvable mess.
That sense of hopelessness is understandable. After all, some of the most hyped ways to reduce carbon emissions — electric cars, mass-scale renewable energy power plants, etc. — require the kind of technological transformations that can seem impossibly unrealistic at a time when Congress can’t even pass a budget.
Here’s the good news, though: The fastest way to reduce climate change shouldn’t seem impossible, because it requires no massive new investments, technological breakthroughs or long-term infrastructure projects. According to data compiled by former World Bank advisers Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, it just requires us all to eat fewer animal products.
Would we give up burgers to stop climate change?
A new report suggests that adjusting our diet can slow global warming. Now let's see if our politics will let us
www.salon.com
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