The story of climate change is usually told through fossil fuels — pipelines, coal plants, oil companies. But there's another story that accounts for nearly a third of global emissions: agriculture. And we've barely begun to grapple with it.
In this episode of Open Circuit, we're joined by Michael Grunwald, longtime journalist and author of the new book "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate." Grunwald spent years investigating why agriculture lags decades behind energy in decarbonization, and what it would take to catch up.
First, we tackle food-based fuels. Grunwald profiles researcher Tim Searchinger, who discovered that biofuels accounting ignored land use. While ethanol was hailed as a homegrown climate solution, it was actually worse than gasoline once you factored in the "carbon opportunity cost" of using land for fuel instead of food. Why did it take so long to recognize?
This land use blindness persists today. Despite the science showing the climate impact of biofuels, the government is backing a sustainable aviation fuel program with tens of billions in new biofuel subsidies — including explicit language preventing regulators from considering land use impacts.
Then, we tackle feel-good agricultural solutions like regenerative agriculture, vertical farms, and local food systems that may have ethical benefits, but often don’t have meaningful emissions impacts.
Finally, we ask what ag tech can learn from energy's scaling playbook: How do we deploy high-yield agriculture and synthetic biology solutions in a rapid, ethical way?
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Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.
