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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dragon SpaceX, go for launch. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In a world with many problems, one problem reigns supreme. The climate emergency. The stakes have never been higher. The odds of bipartisan agreement on this issue have possibly never been lower. But there's a new president in town, and he's hot for science. We've already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can't wait any longer. It's Earth Week at Today Explained. We're going to talk about what's in store for this planet. The future of our future. Welcome to Earth Week on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was Monday. Sean Ramos-Furham woke up. Skipped breakfast. I think I'll have a cup of tea. Opened his closet door and prepared to tape another socially distant episode of Today Explained. But this was not just any Monday. When Sean looked around, he did not see his microphone, nor his headphones, nor his MacBook. What in Sam's hell? He did not see any of these things, because he was not at home. The ground beneath him was no longer carpeted. It was made of bamboo tiles. Above him, the singular light bulb that once illuminated his closet was replaced with what looked like a thin blue laser. The laundry that was normally piled up in front of him was gone. A bar with stools stood there instead. The closet door behind him was no more. There was now a glass door with the words Scorched Earth Diner pasted across it. The only thing that hadn't changed was that there were still very few people around, save for an elderly couple sitting at a booth, and the restaurant staff, Sean, was alone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why isn't anyone wearing a mask in here? After realizing that the couple in the back was staring at him, Sean decided to blend in. He seated himself at the bar. Before our host could even look for a menu, he noticed what seemed to be a hologram of the weatherman. Don't let the lovely spring weather fool you. We'll hit a high of about 60 degrees on this sunny April day, but the floodwashed continues. President Buttigieg announced that he is prepared to send FEMA to Maine if severe flooding occurs. Residents are advised to take caution and be prepared. Make sure your electric car's batteries are charged up. If you're still using one of the old guzzlers, make sure you grab some gas and plant police. Keep clean water. Keep clean water. Keep clean water. Keep clean water. Dammit, the projector broke down again. Say what? Oh, sorry. Hi. Welcome to Scorched Earth Diner. My name's Halima. Can I get you started with a drink or any appetizers?
--:-- Halima: Uh, water? Also, what year is it? Um, it's 2050. Great Scott! That's a Back to the Future reference. Did you get it? No. Sorry. Let me get you that water. You look kind of pale. Maybe I should, um, eat something. Could I get like a salad? Sorry, we're not doing salads anymore. We already had two lettuce recalls and management just decided to take it off the menu to be safe. But if you are feeling something fresh, I recommend the tossed seaweed and jellyfish bowl. I'm sorry, the what? The tossed seaweed and jellyfish bowl. It's great and you can add on some shaved truffles for an extra $7.
--:-- Halima: Um, how about like a burger? Do you have a burger or something like it? Yeah, but we are cutting back on beef right now. So you could either do the Impossible Burger or the Squid Burger. And we'll add some shaved truffles to that too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ugh, what is up with this place and the truffles? What do you mean? People love them. But how do you guys afford to put truffles on everything? I mean, like, black truffles cost, like, I guess they used to cost over $1,000 a pound back in the day.
--:-- Halima: Well, the world has changed a lot in 30 years. I mean, back then, President Buttigieg looked like a Boy Scout. And I still had a job as a journalist. And people only imagined being able to have truffles with every meal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you're saying like people saw this coming. They sure did. I mean, I remember reporting on it back in 2021. And I talked to this food writer at Eater. Her name was Jaya Saxena. And back then, truffles were mostly just growing in Mediterranean regions like southern France, Italy, Spain.
--:-- Halima: I don't even think I had a truffle at that point. But Jaya warned me that that was about to change. Truffles are a really really sort of finicky crop. They only grow in really specific regions that have really specific you know rain patterns and weather patterns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But because of global warming, the regions around the world where those patterns may be found are expanding. And back in 2021, the best truffles, like the black truffle, in all their umami goodness, were so hard to come by. Like really, really hard because there were only a handful of places with the Mediterranean weather that those truffles liked.
--:-- Halima: And it takes a long time to grow them. As a fungus, it grows much differently than something like a fruit or a vegetable. You don't just plant a seed in the ground, water it, and wait for it to grow. It requires a symbiotic relationship with the roots of some specific types of oak trees, mostly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And essentially what happens is that anyone who cultivates it has to create this relationship between the root and the fungus most experts agree it takes between seven to ten years for this relationship to fully form between the root system of a tree and the truffle and then after that it takes some really precise harvesting techniques to make sure that you You don't destroy that relationship.
--:-- Halima: And even once it started, it's very delicate. And there's very little guarantee you're going to get the same exact harvest year after year. So in 2021, people were only shaving a teeny tiny bit of the best truffle onto their fanciest pasta.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But because of global warming, the Mediterranean climate is sort of creeping up into more northern Europe. There was one study done that was published in the journal Nature, which suggested there are lots of regions of the Czech Republic which could be particularly hospitable to truffle growth.
--:-- Halima: Recently, the first truffle was found and cultivated in Wales, which is clearly very outside of the traditional Mediterranean climate. So there is a possibility that this Mediterranean zone, as it gets larger and larger, could mean that truffles could be cultivated and harvested across Europe and across, you know, places around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even though having more truffles sounded good to a lot of people back then, we were never sure if things were going to pan out that way. I mean, climate change could also just make the original home of truffles, the Mediterranean, way too hot for them to continue surviving there.
--:-- Halima: Or it could mean severe weather events could become so unpredictable that growing anything would become tough, especially a crop as delicate as a truffle. But I was trying really hard to be an optimist, so I asked Jaya if there was at least a really thin silver lining here, like truffles, not just for the rich, but for the masses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe people in Wales could now earn a living off of truffle foraging. But she was not sold. Climate change is happening, and it's coming for everyone. And it's coming at the expense of all of these other livelihoods of animals and plants and our own food chain.
--:-- Halima: And so, you know, as the planet burns, you can enjoy some black truffles shaved over your pasta. Okay, so we got a lot of truffles in exchange for a warming planet? Pretty much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Huh. But why is there so much jellyfish on the menu? What happened, like, fish and shrimp? Where to even begin? I mean, we love seafood here, but we hardly see shrimp or cod anymore. We have plenty of jellyfish, though. And how did that happen? Why?
--:-- Halima: Because of the warming oceans, and the Gulf of Maine warmed faster than 99% of the oceans in the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which reminds me of another story from my reporting days. Another one? Yeah, I spoke to a woman named Marissa MacMahan, who was a marine scientist and an ex-commercial fisherman or fisherwoman, depending on how you want to look at it.
--:-- Halima: When the climate was warming back in 2021, she didn't see jellyfish on menus too often, but she did see them washed up on Maine's beaches a lot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We see that they're increasing in abundance in many parts of the world, and it appears that these increases are linked to human activities, mainly climate change, you know, like warming water, but also things like nutrient runoff, aquaculture practices, food web altercations, you know, things like fewer predators or different food sources.
--:-- Halima: That warm water is key because it allows jellyfish embryos and larvae to develop faster. They also have a lack of complex body parts, which allows them to be able to adapt more quickly. And they're also not as sensitive to decreases in oxygen, which we commonly find in areas where water is warming really rapidly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In other words, jellyfish aren't killing off the other guys or having more babies or leading longer lives. They're just a species that can adapt to ocean temperatures that a lot of others can't survive in. It's the same with squid. Squid and cephalopods in general, which include squid, octopus, cuttlefish, we see that they grow really rapidly and have a very short lifespan and also flexible development in terms of their biology.
--:-- Halima: And so all of those things make them more able to adapt to changing conditions. When the Gulf of Maine was warming back in 2021, the cod and lobsters started moving north to Canada, and shrimp became so hard to come by. Other parts of the world started seeing the same.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In general what we seeing is that shift of the cold water species to the poles and then you know seeing more tropical species or temperate species also shifting north. So on future vacations to Kennebunkport expect less popcorn shrimp more jellyfish. Contrary to the texture their name evokes I actually heard that they can be quite crunchy.
--:-- Halima: Marissa told me that you might even be doing the planet a favor if you eat the right seafood. If squid and jellyfish and green crabs are what is really abundant, Those are all, you know, examples of perfectly nutritious, edible, delicious, you know, forms of seafood.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there's no reason why we shouldn't be eating them. And in fact, you know, in the case of green crabs, it's an invasive species. It actually is, you know, helping the environment to be taking them out of the ecosystem and eating them.
--:-- Halima: And that's why I really recommend the Toss Jellyfish and Seaweed Bowl or the Green Crab Bisque.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Great. Got it. Got it. Okay, but one final question, Halima. Where are the greens? Can I get some lettuce on the side or something? I'm not seeing a lot of veggies on your menu.
--:-- Halima: You can blame climate change for that, too. A reporter from Eater, her name is Jenny Zhang, told me about this like 30 years ago. Salad, like leafy greens, served raw, could be taken off the menus like more intermittently. They might just not be available as much because there could be more outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in our leafy greens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: E. coli 0157H7 and salmonella. They pretty much come from the guts of humans and animals and they can get into what we eat and they can cause sickness, hospitalizations, sometimes even death.
--:-- Halima: So not great stuff to have in our food. And E. coli and salmonella basically make their way from an animal's gut to our greens through poop, oftentimes cow poop.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That feces could contaminate sources like soil, water. You know, sometimes people use them for fertilizer. They can get into our sewage. And then from there, you know, there are multiple pathways that they could potentially reach, you know, our fields of lettuce or other greens.
--:-- Halima: Like they could be used in irrigation water. Like they could just be as a result of splash or runoff or direct contact. All these different sort of pathways that they could reach potentially our vegetables.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a lot of our lettuce and dairy comes from places like California. So that's why leafy greens are at particular risk for these pathogens.
--:-- Halima: What's worse, a warmer and more volatile climate could bring us into more contact with them. You have these, on average, like rising temperatures, humidity in certain conditions that could help the survival and the proliferation and like growth of these different sort of harmful pathogens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then on the other hand, there's going to be probably more drought and dry spells in which, you know, fecal waste builds up on land. And then maybe it's going to be followed by extreme rain and flooding in which that waste just sort of like floods across the land.
--:-- Halima: And there's like tons of runoff and stuff like that. So if you're an average person at the grocery store who just really wants some greens with dinner, you might just have to cook them. A lot of the bacteria, basically, if you get it above a certain temperature, that bacteria wouldn't survive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you don't like your greens soggy, you'll just have to stay vigilant and be prepared for recalls. Wow. Super. This restaurant's menu is just a bummer. But there are truffles, though. I mean, I don't like truffles. I can't believe that's not clear yet.
--:-- Halima: What do most people order here? Well, most people are flexitarians and a little bit more open to truffles. Flex-a-what-ians? They're flexitarians. Flexitarians? Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why don't I get you some jellyfish and we'll talk about it in a minute because you still haven't ordered anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make that a peanut butter and jellyfish, Sammy, please. Ew.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything, from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, it's Earth Week on Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for I'm back in my closet in present day Washington, D.C. to ask environmental scientist Maya Almiraz about flexitarianism and how it might become our food future.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: Flexitarian. So it's a combo of the word flexible and vegetarian. It basically means you really sort of strive. Your diet is focused on plant-based foods, but you do incorporate some meat sometimes. So really the way you eat might vary based on your values.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if the pinnacle of your values is really around animal welfare, you might opt to be vegetarian. Where if you are more interested in the impacts on the environment, you might opt for a flexitarian diet because you can dramatically reduce your carbon footprint, but still be able to incorporate some of those foods you're used to eating.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: Hmm. And do we have any idea like how many people in the United States at least are opting towards flexitarianism at this point? I recently saw a study that said about 36 of Americans are flexitarian which is huge 36?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so there's a lot of things that are fueling the changes we're seeing in the American diet. A lot of people, if they are eating meat, they're changing the meats they eat. So we are decreasing our consumption of beef, but increasing our consumption of chicken.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: A lot of the influence on that has come from partially from the health sector. Researchers studied long-term data on nearly 30,000 people and determined people who ate two servings of meat like bacon, sausage or a hot dog each week had a three to seven percent higher risk of premature death and cardiovascular disease.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The other influence we're seeing is the environmental movement saying that a lot of these red meat options are actually having a really large toll on our environment. And the third factor is Chick-fil-A's massive advertising campaign featuring cows saying eat more chicken.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: Yeah, I think that that is probably the biggest driver of the human diet right now. Why is there so much focus on beef in particular, especially maybe even at the expense of chickens?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Um, so beef is really important. It's actually ruminant animals in general. So that's lamb and beef. Beef is the main one that we eat. Um, it has a larger footprint on the environment for a lot of reasons.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: Um, one, we have to convert a ton of land in order to, uh, produce beef. Um, and when we convert that land from forest to pasture, we're losing a lot of carbon. In the Amazon, the astonishing rate of deforestation is largely fueled by beef production.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trees absorb carbon dioxide, but the cattle that have replaced the forest emit methane, which also warms the planet. Next is we have to produce a ton of feed to feed those animals. They also produce a bunch of manure, which can release nitrous oxide of the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: According to the authors, there has been a major growth in emissions from managed pastures due to increased manure deposition. That's right. Cow manure emits methane, which can also come from cow burps and, yes, cow flatulence. Which is a very potent greenhouse gas emission.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as we've covered on the show before, this is why people are not only opting for the chicken on the menu, but also moving to stuff like Beyond Meat or the Impossible Burgers. Introducing the Impossible Whopper with a patty made from plants. No beef. No beef. I've never had plants taste like beef before. Tastes like a Whopper. Tastes like Whopper. Tastes like a beef burger. Lies!
--:-- Maya Almiraz: What is the environmental impact of those alternatives? And does it actually shake out being better for the environment?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so there are a lot of meat alternatives out there, and they really vary in their impact on the environment. But they're all a lot better than beef as far as their carbon footprint and environmental footprint.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: We're seeing things like black bean burgers have a really low carbon footprint. The Impossible Burger has a low carbon footprint compared to beef. Lab-grown meat is something that still is not very energy efficient, so that still they need to scale and be able to reduce their emissions for that to be competitive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These meat alternatives like Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger might be something that transitions us until we are able to scale up lab-grown food. They can reduce the carbon footprint of the food that you eat dramatically. They can also reduce pressure that we put on our water resources and land resources.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: So there's a lot of benefits that come from eating this sort of diet, not just for climate, but for other aspects of the environment. That being said, even with this trend towards flexitarianism, do you think it's going to be an uphill battle to convince a bunch of people to eat meat grown in a lab?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, well, diets change all the time. And I'm pretty sure it probably took a little work to get people on board with the chicken nugget, but it happened. So we have to sort of use those tactics that we've used in the past to get people to eat certain foods in order to promote more sustainable diets.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: So part of that is sort of these partnerships between private industry and government to sort of promote healthy alternatives in diets. And also just sort of, you know, you need these market forces. So being able to drive down the price of these products so that more people are able to consume them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as this evolution transpires, do you think you'll see more people who are like, you know, swear by the beef, adopting a flexitarian lifestyle? Or is it so far as this 36% sort of like the 36% that you'd expect? Is it just like a bunch of coastal elites or something like that?
--:-- Maya Almiraz: I mean, the cool thing about diet is it's so cultural, right? Like what we eat has so much to do with our identity. And the thing about culture is that it can be transferred. So as you see, you know, your neighbors, your family members, your friends eating a certain way that might influence you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe you never tried an Impossible Burger before and you try it and you really like it. So I think that these sort of changes can, they start off slow, but have the potential to increase really dramatically.
--:-- Maya Almiraz: Maya Almoraz is a program manager for the Working Lands Innovation Center out in California. Halima Shah is a reporter producer here at Today Explained. Thanks to our friends at Eater for telling us how our plates might look a lot different in the future. They've written a whole series on it called Taking the Temperature, and you can find it out at Eater.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you can listen to a ton more about planet Earth all across the Vox podcast universe this month. Find links to all the shows at Vox.com slash Earth Month. We'll be bringing you a lot more stuff about the stakes and electric vehicles and energy alternatives and the wonder of our world on Earth Week at Today Explained.
