Raül Romeva i Rueda

Seguint amb la sèrie d’articles relatius a preparar la propera Cimera sobre el Canvi Climàtic de desembre, adjunto avui una nova reflexió, aquest cop relativa a la relació entre allò que consumim (mengem) i el seu impacte en l’escalfament global. L’article forma part d’una sèrie d’Elisabeth Rosenthal, del New York Times, a la seva columna By Degrees, i explica com es troba el debat a Suècia, on fins i tot proliferen Guies de Consum responsable (new food guidelines):

By
Degrees

To
Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

By
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published:
October 22, 2009

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.  (segueix…)

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

Foto:
‘An
estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized
countries can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research in
Sweden. Font: Dean C. K. Cox for The New York Times