Future Warming from Global Food Consumption

Abstract Food consumption is a major source of greenhouse gases emissions, and evaluating its future warming impact is crucial for guiding climate mitigation action. However, the lack of granularity in reporting greenhouse gas emissions from food items and widespread use of oversimplified metrics such as CO2-equivalence has made this difficult. We resolve these challenges by developing a global food consumption greenhouse gas emissions inventory of individual gas species and employing a reduced-complexity climate model, evaluating the future warming contribution from global food consumption and potential benefits from certain mitigation measures. We find that global food consumption alone could add nearly 1°C to warming by 2100. Sixty percent of this warming is driven by methane emissions mainly from the consumption of animal products. However, over 55% of anticipated warming can be avoided from simultaneous improvements to production practices, the universal adoption of a “healthy” diet, and widespread food waste reductions.