Brief Summary Of The Essay 'Why Bother'
The Thought about Food
Mankind differentiates itself from other species in its willingness to exhaust its environment in order to satisfy its immediate needs of the essential components: food and water. In order to satisfy the demands of an ever-increasing global population, we rely on an international, industrial food system. When it comes to global warming we think about how climate change will impact farming, but not how farming will impact climate change. The impact of the food system on global warming is enormous. It accounts for roughly one-third of the human-caused global warming effect (Lappé 854). Further aggravating the situation, the food we consume is processed leaving it with fewer nutrients and proteins. Anna Lappé in the essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork” and Michael Pollan in the essay “Why Bother?” explain the ongoing …show more content…
A few examples include emission created by industrial farming processes, land use change, emission produced by livestock (Lappé 854). One of the biggest factors in land use change is the emergence of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. The problem is the plantations are not sustainable and harm the environment. Palm oil is used in a wide range of foods to make them creamier and has become a staple of the industrial food system. The enormous demand for palm oil exacerbates the land depletion problem. Too often, the land used for palm oil trees comes at the expense of tropical forests. Palm oil is not the culprit, but the huge amount of land required for palm oil plantations is. Certified sustainable palm oil produced on plantations that comply with the environmental standards of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is the solution. This is not a perfect solution yet, as loopholes exist in this protocol, but it is a step in the right
Mankind differentiates itself from other species in its willingness to exhaust its environment in order to satisfy its immediate needs of the essential components: food and water. In order to satisfy the demands of an ever-increasing global population, we rely on an international, industrial food system. When it comes to global warming we think about how climate change will impact farming, but not how farming will impact climate change. The impact of the food system on global warming is enormous. It accounts for roughly one-third of the human-caused global warming effect (Lappé 854). Further aggravating the situation, the food we consume is processed leaving it with fewer nutrients and proteins. Anna Lappé in the essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork” and Michael Pollan in the essay “Why Bother?” explain the ongoing …show more content…
A few examples include emission created by industrial farming processes, land use change, emission produced by livestock (Lappé 854). One of the biggest factors in land use change is the emergence of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. The problem is the plantations are not sustainable and harm the environment. Palm oil is used in a wide range of foods to make them creamier and has become a staple of the industrial food system. The enormous demand for palm oil exacerbates the land depletion problem. Too often, the land used for palm oil trees comes at the expense of tropical forests. Palm oil is not the culprit, but the huge amount of land required for palm oil plantations is. Certified sustainable palm oil produced on plantations that comply with the environmental standards of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is the solution. This is not a perfect solution yet, as loopholes exist in this protocol, but it is a step in the right