Mon. TKth, 2025
Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! We’re taking a minute this Thursday to go back to basics and talk about what’s probably the easiest way any person can lower their personal climate-warming potential: Eat plants. If you’ve been around here a minute, you know that we don’t like to speak in absolutes and “musts.” In this case, we get that going strictly plant-based isn’t necessarily the right move for everyone for a variety of reasons. So we asked one of our fave food writers, Caroline Saunders, to develop a menu of options for folks hoping to eat greener. —Corinne
THE MOST IMPACTFUL DIET SWAPS
By Caroline Saunders
We all need to eat, but the way we do it could use some work. The global food system is responsible for between a quarter and a third of planet-heating emissions, which means 86ing some of our foodways is key to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. The most straightforward solution experts have put on the table? Adopting more plant-rich diets, particularly in the U.S. and Western and Northern Europe, where individual “foodprints” tend to be highest.
Making a dent in your daily dietary emissions can seem daunting if you think the only effective approach is to go totally vegan—a famously carbon-busting move. But in reality, there are a number of meaningful changes and swaps you could make. “We have lots of options available to us for reducing our [dietary] carbon footprint,” says Anna Grummon, an assistant professor of pediatrics and health policy and the director of the Stanford Food Policy Lab. If your starting point is an omnivorous diet, here are the tweaks that will get you the most mileage, ranked in ascending order of potential carbon savings.
Swap your dairy or bevs
You can take a decent bite out of your emissions by just changing the types of yogurt or milk you eat. A 2023 study in Nature Food that Grummon led found that swapping regular yogurt or milk for an almond- or soy-based version would snip dietary emissions by 8%, on average. (The study didn’t examine the impact of substituting cheese, Grummon says, since people weren’t widely consuming plant-based cheeses in 2018, the latest year for which data was available.) Even if you don’t ditch dairy, swapping juice for whole fruit can have a similar impact.
Ditch (or ease up on) beef
Swapping out beef alone constitutes most of the carbon savings of adopting any climate-friendly diet. One 2020 study found that if American adults who are open to dietary change subbed beef for plant proteins, their dietary emissions would dip 40%, on average—and just swapping burgers for wings can shave 36%. Not keen to give up all your steak frites? There are proportional benefits of simply easing up on the red stuff. If folks trade just half their beef intake with plant protein, they’d cut 20% off their foodprint—or 18% if poultry was their replacement of choice.
Why is beef so much worse for the climate than, say, chicken or turkey? For one, larger animals require more land and more food, and converting ecosystems into pasture creates huge emissions. For another, cows (and other ruminants like sheep and goats) burp out the especially potent greenhouse gas methane, thanks to the machinations of their digestive systems. Replacing ruminant meat is the dietary tweak with the biggest carbon bang for your buck.
Go veggie
Going vegetarian is a majorly impactful move, says Diego Rose, a professor and the director of the nutrition program at Tulane University who co-authored a 2023 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutritioncomparing the climate impacts of six popular American diets. A veggie diet creates 48% fewer emissions than an omnivore diet, on average. Nearly all meat and seafood is more carbon intensive than eggs and dairy. Pork and farmed fish, for instance, both produce almost three times the planet-warming gases as eggs; farmed shrimp is almost six times worse. The good news? This diet still includes cheese, despite its high average planet-warming potential.
Go vegan
A fully plant-based diet has “the least footprint that we see,” says Rose. Vegan foodprints were 69% lower than the average omnivore’s, according to his 2023 study, and also lower than those of paleo or keto diets. This vast difference in climate impact boils down to livestock: Animal agriculture creates the majority of food-system emissions, despite providing just 18% of the world’s calories. The reason? You need to grow food to feed the animals, which uses up more resources and more land.
THE ROUNDUP
IN THE NEWS THIS WEEK
Pope Francis, a known climate champion, passed away at the age of 88 on Monday. Francis will be remembered for his influence on 2015’s Paris Agreement and passion for solar energy and leaves some massive shoes to fill. “The world is a poorer place this morning,” wrote Bill McKibben. “But far richer for his having lived.”
Being vocal about climate action is more important than ever, says a new study in PLOS One. The authors found that, while 77% of Americans are concerned about climate change, around two-thirds “rarely or never” discuss it with their community, creating a “spiral of silence.” Take this as a reminder to speak up, even if it’s uncomfortable; you likely have more allies in your audience than you think.
Abrupt temperature swings are becoming more and more prevalent, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. This makes handling climate disasters even trickier for communities and ecosystems since these flip-of-a-switch changes happen before residents can have a chance to prepare.
The Trump administration threatened to pull tax-exempt status from environmental nonprofits earlier this week but has since said that no such orders are in the works. At the same time, environmental groups are hitting back with lawsuits saying the administration’s actions violate their First Amendment rights.
Tesla will face tariff trouble when it comes to battery storage, which happens to be the company’s fastest growing business, writes Heatmap. While Tesla vehicles have a mostly stateside supply chain, its stationary energy storage relies heavily on lithium iron phosphate technology, which is almost entirely produced in China and therefore subject to a 156% surcharge.
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