Today we begin to look at how and where we as individuals fit into the work of eliminating global warming. To do this, we’ll dig just a bit into agriculture, which accounts for 19% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually, according to Bill Gates in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster*. As we start, we should remember three points.

We truly are all connected. Atmospheric warming can’t be eliminated by or for Seattle, Washington state or the US alone. We can and should take steps that help local conditions, and we can be confident that these measures contribute to the bigger solutions needed. But despite our best efforts, we will feel some negative impacts of global warming in Seattle, the Northwest, the US—and in the northern hemisphere—until climate problems are addressed globally. It should also be stated that the global majority will face more severe consequences of global warming, first.
Global climate solutions must pair with global equity solutions. Effective, lasting climate solutions must be robust enough to work for a growing world population (the Pew Research Center estimates it at 10.9 billion in 2100), supporting higher living standards and expanding economies that enable increasing worldwide consumption of goods and energy. We have a mandate to act, from both a climate and a social justice perspective: no (social) justice, no (climate) peace.
Game-changing climate solutions will require global scale. Carbon taxes, solar and wind farms, transition to “clean” steel and cement, carbon capture technologies …. These and many other initiatives will be essential to the elimination of GHG emissions. And they will require investments, technology advances and legislative actions exceeding by orders of magnitude the contributions any one of us alone can make. Does this make our individual efforts pointless? Absolutely not! Our actions can help make a direct difference. Here, for example, are three actions we as individuals could take right now that have the potential to reduce GHG emissions in the agriculture sector:
- Waste less food. Americans throw away something like 40%** of the food they buy—twice the percentage of Europeans and some other populations. As wasted food rots in the landfill, it releases GHGs—3.3 billion tons each year. So we can help reduce global warming simply by shopping for food more carefully and making sure we use everything we buy.
- Modify our diets. Raising livestock for food is a major source of GHG emissions in the agriculture sector. Reducing the amount of meat we eat thus makes a direct, if gradual, contribution to GHG elimination. Consider also that our reduced consumption here will help compensate for other parts of the world where improving standards of living support increased meat consumption. Can our meal planning include a few meatless (or “engineered” meat) entrées each week?
- Get smart about fertilizing our gardens. As they are used, fertilizers can release nitrogen, which ultimately leads to GHG emissions and water pollution. Yet plants—including those in our Union Gardens—benefit from fertilizing. The challenge is to fertilize just enough. A wealth of information on this topic can be found here and elsewhere online.

Intentional acts like the three noted above produce direct benefits and confirm the value our individual roles, in this case as consumers and savvy gardeners. But they do more: they signal the food industry, agribusinesses, corporate farmers and livestock producers, and other organizations that our requirements, and thus our shopping behaviors, are changing. And to continue to enjoy success in the marketplace, these major corporations and other businesses will have to change their behaviors as well, by changing product offerings or raising smaller herds, for example, or growing food grains instead of livestock feed.

Climate change is truly global. But even so, we do fit into the work of eliminating global warming—by our actions on a personal scale, and by our influence on regional, national and global-scale players.

* How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates, page 55. The formal title for this category is actually “agriculture, forestry and other land use.”

** How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, page 121.