A free interactive webinar hosted by the Climate-Friendly Food Committee of the Portland Chapter of the Climate Reality Project
In this Food – Climate Connection interactive webinar, you have the opportunity to participate in a discussion regarding how our world can transition from being on a path to destruction to a world that is actually livable and sustainable. The three distinguished speakers below will present information for 10 minutes each, followed by an hour or more of Q&A and a discussion period during an interactive Zoom meeting.:
Glen Merzer – author of Food Is Climate
Dr. Sailesh Rao – founder of ClimateHealers.org
Gerard Bisshop – former principal scientist of the State of Queensland, Australia
Most cliamte activists have focused on reducing fossil fuel emissions. Yet, even if we were to completely stop burning fossil fuels today, the CO2 from past emissions will remain in the air for a very long time, and temperatures will continue to rise to very harmful levels. One of the main reasons why: over the past 10,000 years, humans have removed a third to half of the world's forests—an estimated 3 trillion of the historic 6 trillion trees. More than half of this deforestation has occurred during the last 100 years. Forests serve as a critical carbon removal and storage system. Much of the formerly forested lands—roughly 5 billion acres, an area twice the size of the United States—are now used for grazing and for growing feed for the 25 billion livestock animals now on our planet at any one time. In addition, the ruminant animals (primarily cows and sheep) produce methane and nitrous oxide gases that have more than 100 times the heat-trapping effect as CO2.
If we reforested or rewilded much of the current pastureland (rewilding means allowing land to return to its natural state by leaving it alone), the restored trees could remove enough CO2 to avoid catastrophic climate change, even if we continue to burn some fossil fuels. And because growing plants to feed people rather than animals is a much more efficient way to meet the nutrition needs of the world's people, only a small fraction of the billions of acres of current pastureland would be needed to produce enough plant-based calories, protein, and other nutrients to replace the nutrients currently supplied by animal products.
For more information and to participate in this interactive online meeting, visit https://climaterealitypdx.com/events/climate-food-connection/
Stockyard by Kettleman City, California. Photo Credit; George Wuerthner