Change your diet, change the world

I remember the day I stopped eating dairy. I was in my second year of law school, taking every class I could on environmental policy and more or less a vegetarian (less when there was fish on the menu). There was this girl in my class. An Activist. You know the type: always going on about animal rights and sharing graphic posts about mistreatment of livestock.  On this particular day, she had set up a table in one of the main hallways and was trying to convince students to go vegan. And me? I like a fight.

"So I get not eating meat, but what's wrong with dairy?" I asked. "You can't say that dairy is murder. What if it's from a local farm and the cows are well treated?" 

She looked at me. "What do you care about?"

"Climate change". Duh.  I was the socially awkward kid annoying everyone with warnings about climate change long before it was cool.

And then this classmate showed me a chart.  It looked something like this:

Well, shit.  No more cheese for me.

What do you think?  Silly, right?  Wasn’t I naive to think that changing one person’s diet could change the world?  I don’t think so (clearly).  Individual choices can make a huge difference.  You just need enough individuals.  If everyone in the world shifted to a plant based diet, we could cut food emissions in half [1] and reduce land use by over 75%[2]. If Americans ate just 50% less meat, we could save 224 million metric tonnes per year[3], the same as removing 48 million vehicles from the roads, almost half of all passenger cars in the US.

But we shouldn’t have to make the change, right?  Climate change is caused by big greedy corporations, and it’s not fair to put the burden on little people like me and you to fix it.  Here’s the thing about big greedy corporations: they’re greedy.  And how do they get money to fill their greedy greedy little pockets? By selling things to all the little people like me and you.  As consumers, we decide what to buy and that gives us a lot of power.  And the big greedy corporations are taking note.  Since 2015 sustainably-marketed products have accounted for over 50% of the growth in consumer packaged goods[4]. Meaning: the big greedy corporations see that consumers want sustainability and are trying to provide it.

But what about the government?  Aren’t government regulations the real solution to climate change?  Well, sure!  I’d trade my brother for a universal carbon tax (don’t tell Lucas).  But the fact is, we don’t have the regulation we need.  Given the current state of politics, who knows if we ever will.  Are you really willing to wait?  I’m not.

That’s why we founded Jellyfish. Because individuals can make a difference. But first we have to know what to do. Remember me back in law school? As much as I cared about climate change, I had no idea that cheese was worse than chicken. More than that -- different sources tell you different things -- how do you know what to believe? The science is there, but it’s confusing and hard to find. We’re going to change that.

[1] Mbow, C., C. Rosenzweig, L.G. Barioni, T.G. Benton, M. Herrero, M. Krishnapillai, E. Liwenga, P. Pradhan, M.G. Rivera-Ferre, T. Sapkota, F.N. Tubiello, Y. Xu. (2019). Food Security. In: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat, E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley, K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, J. Malley, (eds.)]. In press.

[2] Ritchie, H. (2021). If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares. Our World in Data.

[3] Heller, M., Keoleian, G., and Rose, D. (2020). Implications of Future US Diet Scenarios on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. CSS Report, University of Michigan: Ann Arbor 1-24.

[4] Kronthal-Sacco, R., Whelan,T. (2021). Sustainable Market Share Index. NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business.