We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate

(Hardback)

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From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate war: the fight to fix our food system.

Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, were going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we cant feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, well keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we dont solve our food and land problems.

In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. Its an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but its also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be doneand trying to do it.

Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchingers uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generationsthrough better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.

Reviews

We Are Eating the Earthis a savory, science-salted meal of provocative thinking about food. Grunwald investigates what we eat, how we grow it, and why getting better at it is key to addressing the climate crisis. Its a wildly ambitious undertaking, but Grunwald pulls it off because hes fearless and funny and knows his stuff. If you want to save the planet, readWe Are Eating the Earth.
Jeff Goodell,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Heat Will Kill You First

Michael Grunwald never follows the crowd. Instead, he digs deep and finds actual, uncomfortable, and, yes, correct answers.We Are Eating the Earthtackles the complexity of our food and climate problems with captivating storytelling, and no agenda but our survival. Knowledge is about to be dropped. Pay attention.
Brad Meltzer, bestselling author ofThe JFK Conspiracy

The quest to feed humanitys voracious appetites is consuming ever more land around the world.We Are Eating the Earthis an indispensable guide to the thorniest problem in global economics and environmental policyan issue that most advocates ignore, but that we urgently need to face if we want to have any hope of solving it."
Matthew Yglesias, author ofOne Billion Americans

Food is now as big a climate challenge as oil, andWe Are Eating the Earthis the most vivid and inspiring reckoning with this wicked problem written in this age of climate crisis.
David Wallace-Wells,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Uninhabitable Earth

Author Bio

Michael Grunwald is the bestselling author of two widely acclaimed books, The Swamp and The New New Deal. Hes a former staff writer for The Washington Post, Time, and POLITICOand winner of the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Award for investigative reporting, and many other journalism prizes.He lives in Miami.