Daily Life and Global Warming

Daily Life and Global Warming

Gidon Eshel and Pamela MartinDepartment of the Geophysical Sciences

The University of ChicagoChicago, IL 60637

nothing I'll say here will be individually newbut - I'd dare guess - putting it all together will

basic premise:Global Warming is about energy. All we need is to simply change the way we do every last thing, to completely rethink every bit of societal infrastructure, and we should be all right.

CO

2,

ppm

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D. Keeling,SIO, UCSD

year

Energy InformationAdministration,www.eia.doe.gov

related?!

Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2003, www.eia.doe.gov

million BTU $$

so we consume more, but there's more of us…

i.e., each person consumes more

every little choice we make can make a difference

"… The food production system accounts for 17% of all fossil fuel use in the US…" [in 2002]

(Horrigan et al., Env. Health Perspectives, 110(5), May 2002, 445-456; Pimentel and Pimentel (Eds.), Food, Energy and Society, Univ. of

Colorado Press, 1996)

Heller and Keoleian, Report No. CSS00-04 of the Center for Sustainable Systems, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

us total, '99:96.7x1015 BTU

100x10.2/96.7== 10.5%

an earlier, more conservative, estimate for 1999

for comparison

i.e., food production represents a major energy sink,comparable to the other major sectors

fine, so our collective diet has a significant planetary footprint; but how about an individual?!Are some dietary choices the nutritional equivalentof driving an SUV?

let's gather the calculation's building blocks, and find out

Average miles driven per household vehicle in 1997 - 12,100 miles(sustainable Energy Coalition, www.sustainableenergy.org/resources/technologies/transportation.htm)

chapter 3, Fig. 3.5, Household Vehicles Energy Consumption Report Series: DOE/EIA-0464(94)



single-person household:'88: 10,800'94: 11,600

'05 Estimate: ~13,000

so your average adult drives ~13,000 miles a year

At 50:50 highway/city driving:

• Honda Insight: 13,000 / 63 mpg = 206 gal• Ford Focus station wagon: 13,000 / 30 mpg = 433 gal • Jeep Cherokee: 13,000 / 22 mpg = 591 gal

At 1 US gallon gasoline = 115,000 BTU(from the Oak Ridge National Lab Bioenergy Information Network, assuming the more appropriate LHV)

• Honda Insight: 2.4 x 107 BTU a year• Ford Focus station wagon: 5.0 x 107 BTU a year• Jeep Cherokee: 6.8 x 107 BTU a year

assume a reasonable 2100 Kcal/person/day

or 766,500 Kcal/person/year, or

€

766,500Kcal

person× year× 4187

JoulesKcal

1055JoulesBTU

= 3×106 BTUperson× year

According to Heller and Keoleian (Report No. CSS00-04 of the Center for Sustainable Systems, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University

of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI), efficiency of food handling and preparation is ~0.55. Thus, the food energy directly consumed by a person in a year becomes

€

3×106 BTUperson× year0.55

= 5.5 ×106 BTUperson× year

now recall that

i.e., that the efficiency ratio of food production is

€

1.4 ×1015

10.2 ×1015

€

5.5 ×106 BTUperson× year0.14

= 3.9 ×107 BTUperson× year

or 0.14

so,

socar: (2.4 to 6.8) x 107 BTU person-1 year-1 food: 3.9 +/-?? x 107 BTU person-1 year-1

That is,

nutritional choices can be just as important to one's planetary footprint as the car one drives, and there's a HUGE latitude in food choices!!

sea fishing 0.5-50

fish farming 1-10

chicken 6

milk 5

eggs 3.6

beef 2.9

range beef 10

pork 1.5

lamb 0.5

range lamb 6

Efficiency: 100 x (energy in protein output) / (energy in input)

modified from David Pimentel & Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, University Press of Colorado, 1996, Tables 8.2, 9.4

caloric efficiency?

Efficiency: 100 x (energy in protein output) / (energy in input)

Protein loss through the food chain: Another disadvantage of fish farming is that raising carnivorous fish such as shrimp and salmon requires catching wild fish to sustain them, depriving ocean fish of food and sometimes resulting in a net loss of fish from the sea. It takes 3.1 pounds of wild-caught fish to raise one pound of farmed salmon.







sea fishing 0.8-80

fish farming 1.7-17

chicken 22

milk 19

eggs 11

beef 14

range beef 13

pork 6

lamb 1

range lamb 14

Efficiency: 100 x (total energy in output) / (energy in input)

modified from David Pimentel & Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, University Press of Colorado, 1996, Tables 8.2, 9.4

average10-15%caloric efficiency

corn 250

oats 500

wheat 200

rice 210

soybean 400

apples 110

oranges 170

potatoes 160

spinach 23

sugar beet 360

tomatoes 60

Efficiency: 100 x (energy in output) / (energy in input)

David Pimentel & Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, University Press of Colorado, 1996, pages 114-134

average220% caloricefficiency

Don't worry about eating your spinach!

Let's compare competing diets:

caloric efficiencyof production

35%

Let's (generously) assume a 15% animal product efficiency, and a run-of-the-mill 50% of calories from animal products

such a diet requires 1.96 x 107 BTU a year

by contrast, this person's vegan counterpart

requires 0.25 x 107 BTU a year

the difference, ~1.7 x 107 BTU person-1 year-1, is similarto the difference between owning a Jeep Cherokee vs.a Ford Focus!!!

The added benefit is, of course, health % of US GDPspent on healthcare:1960: 5.1%1991: 13.4%2002: 14.9%2003: 15.3%



DOE/EIA, World Energy Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1980-2001, May 2004

OECD countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium ,Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA

weighted averages based on floor area in the U.S., Japan, Canada, France, Denmark and Sweden

kwh

m-2

and the health care sector is not particularly efficient

Krackler, Schipper and Sezgen (1998), Energy Policy, 26(15), 1137-1152



American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 73(4), 722-727, April 2001, Fig. 1

most are aware of the importance of total fat

P for trend = 0.001

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78(3), 544S-551S, September 2003

and only slightly fewer are aware of the importance of the

kind of fat ingested

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78 (3), 544S-551S, September 2003

mean+/- 95% CIs



total fat intakeand breast cancer

Int. J. Cancer,

15, 1975, 617-631

animal fat intakeand breast cancer

animal fat intake, gr/day

age-adjusted death rate per 105

but for plant fat intake vs. breast cancer - the correlation collapses!

age-adjusted death rate

per 105

vegetable fat intake, gr/day

frequency of beef consumption

Rela

tive r

isk o

f d

efin

ite f

ata

l is

chem

ic h

eart

dis

ease

95%CIs

in California Seventh-day Adventists adjusted for age, smoking, exercise, BMI, hypertension, and food preferences.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 70(3), 532S-538S, September 1999

men

most attribute such results to animal fat intake. While this is certainly important, animal protein intake is probably as important to cancer prevalence as animal fat is to CVDs.

activity of the enzyme responsible for turning ingested aflatoxin into the DNA-altering derivative

Mgbodile and Campbell, 1972: J. Nutr., 102, 53-60

enzyme activity, as expected, results in less aflatoxin binding to three elements of cell nuclei

Preston et al., 1976: Life Sci., 19, 1191-1198

foci

res

pons

e

dietary protein level20%5%

low AFhigh protein

foci

res

pons

e

high AFlow protein

Appleton and Campbell, 1982: Nutr. Cancer, 3, 200-206

Dunaif and Campbell, 1987: J. Nat. Cancer Inst., 78, 365-369

20% Protein

5% Protein

% dietary proteinfo

ci d

evel

opm

ent

adequate proteinfor body growth

foci

dev

elop

men

tDunif and Campbell, 1987: J. Nutr. , 117, 1298-1302

Dunaif and Campbell, 1987: J. Nat. Cancer Inst., 78, 365-369

6%

22%

14%

Early foci, Lifetime

20%Casein

20%Gluten

5%Casein

Protein type and foci responsefo

ci r

espo

nse

protein type% dietary casein

Schulsinger et al., 1989: J. Nat. Cancer Inst., 81, 1241-1245Youngman and Campbell, 1992: Carcinogenesis, 13, 1607-1613Youngman, 1990: Ph.D. thesis, Cornell Univ., Ithaca

Tumor development at 100 weeks

full

tum

or r

espo

nse

22%14%6%

% casein

Youngman and Campbell, 1992: Carcinogenesis, 13, 1607-1613Youngman, 1990: Ph.D. thesis, Cornell Univ., Ithaca

these results hold for actual tumors (as opposed to tumor precursors)

and another work Cheng et al. (1997) Hepatology, 26, 1351-1354

% casein

6%14% 22%

liver tumors at death (12-16 month) and animal protein intake

6-to-22at 8

months 22-to-6at 8

months

6%

22%14%

other species, other carcinogen…

Hu et al., 1997: Oncogen, 15, 2795-2801

another dimension of the problem is our export of the "American Way", complete with what is undoubtedly among the world's most awful diets





Popkin (1997), Public Health Nutrition, 1, 5-21

obesity rate of change patterns in the developing world

per

cent

Popkin (2003), Development Policy Review, 21, 581-597

Mexico88-89

Brazil74-96

Morocco85-99

Thailand91-96

China89-97

Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 22(4) (supplement) 2001, The U.N. University

men

wo

men

perc

ent

over

wei

ght

in r

ural

Ind

ia

BMI 25-29.9BMI>30

<1

1-5

5-10

10-1

5

>15

U.S

.-bo

rn

0%

20%

40%

60%

<1

1-5

5-10

10-1

5

>15

U.S

.-bo

rn

Sanghavi et al. (2004), JAMA, 292, 2860-2867

adjusted BMI of foreign-born individuals (N=4,631) by years of residency in the U.S.

% in

cide

nce

of in

dica

ted

BM

I ca

tego

ry

years of residence in the U.S.

So:

• what you choose to eat has planetary effects as big as, say, what you choose to drive or where you choose to live• eat less animal-based food

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Daily Life and Global Warming