As the Green Gettysburg Book Club completes our study of “The Climate Book,” edited by Greta Thunberg, we just read a straightforward essay about the connection between our diet and protecting the environment. By changing our food consumption to line up more closely with standard health guidelines, we can reduce humanity’s food-related environmental damage by 50 to 70 percent. In the Western world, this change can be significant because our current diet relies so heavily on red meat. Producing red meat increases greenhouse gases enormously, as compared to making food from poultry, fish, and plants, which are also healthier for us to eat.

Nearly everyone can improve our diet as part of our conservation effort. You may have already been eating two vegetarian dinners a week, as we have. We started this change after learning that if all Americans ate two vegetarian dinners a week, there would be enough food produced to feed the world. Now, we find that eating a few more vegetarian meals a week also reduces the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that it takes to produce our food. We can help the climate by doing a little better with our diet, even if we do not plan to become vegetarian. In my case, the fact that I have lunchmeat in my sandwiches daily is a type of meat consumption I had not previously considered when counting my carbon footprint. Even just by switching that lunchmeat to chicken or turkey instead of red meat, I can help. Having ratatouille or a tasty meatless chili two or three nights a week and shifting to fish for another meal helps, too.