Thursday, April 4, 2019

The air we breathe

Before you switch your carnivorous diet to minimize the environmental impact of meat consumption, read this npr article and the referenced nature sustainability publication which highlight a growing externality associated with conventional agriculture.  There has been a lot of talk about the grains/oilseeds/air pollution connection, but not much with actual targets.  The article references a quantitative study which focuses on the life cycle of conventional corn, which includes a discussion with metrics concerning the human costs resulting from pollution, dispersion transport and disruption of biogeochemical cycling.  In my opinion this should be part of a true ESG measure.
More on this to come…ties into some of the broader global themes that Parag & I will be discussing in a forthcoming article.

No comments: