Can We Eat Our Way Out Of Climate Change?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Food production accounts for as much global greenhouse gas emissions as all forms of transport combined. That’s why many scientists think we can’t tackle climate change without addressing what we eat. So – in this week’s Inquiry – we’re looking at alternative climate-friendly diets and asking what it would take to move the world towards them.
Presenter: Helena Merriman
(Photo: Friends having a vegetarian meal. Credit: Shutterstock)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the inquiry with me, Helena Merriment. |
| 0:08.0 | One of the perks of this job is that every week you get to read a lot of interesting stuff. |
| 0:15.0 | Sometimes though the stuff you read isn't just interesting but it changes the way |
| 0:19.9 | you think about something. Take this sentence from a UN report about climate change. |
| 0:26.0 | Agriculture including forestry, fisheries and livestock production generate a fifth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. |
| 0:35.0 | All right, it may not sound hugely dramatic, but here's another way to think about it. The food we eat and the farming system behind it produces the same amount of greenhouse emissions as all the world's cars, planes, boats and trains put together. |
| 0:53.0 | And that got us thinking. |
| 0:56.0 | If so much of the world's greenhouse gas emissions comes from the food we eat, |
| 1:00.0 | can we eat our way out of climate change? Part 1, the Big Belch. The Big Belch. I remember |
| 1:25.0 | about the significant impact that agriculture and livestock production has for climate change. |
| 1:31.0 | And like many people, I I remember initially I found it really |
| 1:34.3 | quite hard to believe. |
| 1:37.1 | Meet Sue Bibb. She's been an environmentalist for over 30 years and like most environmentalists she |
| 1:44.4 | started out on what's long been seen as the bad boy of climate change transport. |
| 1:49.3 | Mm-my my teacher says we need to think about the way we travel because it's hurting the world |
| 1:58.0 | but gradually Sue did became aware of another problem one that that was just as big, but few people seem to know |
| 2:05.1 | about agriculture, an industry which is devastating the environment. |
| 2:10.7 | There's a number of different term gases and different ways in which agriculture contributes to that. |
| 2:16.0 | First, there's the greenhouse gases that are produced when you convert land for farming. |
| 2:20.0 | That's when the forests are destroyed or grasslands and savano or plowed up and that releases a huge amount of stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. |
| 2:31.0 | Then you've got the effects of fertilizers when they're broken down. the But those are nothing in comparison to a third gas produced by our farming system, methane. |
| 2:46.0 | It's actually cows burping. That's because they're ruminants and that's a natural part of their digestive system. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.