To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates - 生態環境討論

To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/world/europe/23degrees.html

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she
was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87
kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a
pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will
soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated
with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers,
are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet
can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as
changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific
experts say.

“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said
Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food
Administration, which was given the task last year of creating new food
guidelines giving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used
to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as
another."

Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the summer, may
seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that Swedes favor carrots
over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike carrots, the latter two
must be grown in heated greenhouses here, consuming energy.)

They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits,
because Europe’s stocks are depleted.

And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans or
chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions
associated with raising cattle.

“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are getting
environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can I eat
healthier?’ ”

Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could say
that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,” said
Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7 kilograms of carbon
dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board revealing that a chicken
sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been better for the planet.

Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say,
Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An
estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized
nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research
here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions released in their
production.

While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in checking
for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little idea of
whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the climate.

Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a
factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.

Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental costs of
transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced research shows that
the emissions depend on many factors, including the type of soil used to grow
the food and whether a dairy farmer uses local rapeseed or imported soy for
cattle feed.

Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs as well
as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to identify food
choices.

Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts
emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen,
Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on some
categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal, barley and
pasta.

Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by growing
the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times those of
little-used barley, for example.

Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and threaten
profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being circulated for comment
not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the
Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil
growers, to name a few.

“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr.
Bohman said.

Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will
start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want
to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse
tomatoes can no longer be called organic.

Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are
happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager
of climate issues for KRAV.

For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their
property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases
huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to
switch to feed crops that require no plowing.

Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels for heating. Dairy
farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the food for their herds
locally; many previously imported cheap soy from Brazil, generating transport
emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for
farmland.

The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national
environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions.
Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two
metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.

The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward
chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally
could have an enormous impact.

Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It
has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and
cars that run on gasoline by 2030.

To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide labels,
scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products. These take into
account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for harvesting machinery,
packaging and transport.

They decided to examine one representative product in each category — say,
pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus penne, or one
brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is hugely time-intensive,”
said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of sustainability.

A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the climate
challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s burger chain,
voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon footprint; 75 percent
was created by its meat.

“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do
everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to putting
emissions data on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals,
installed low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.

Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of
climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people head to
a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.

Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked
embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor table.

“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.


--