William H. Schlesinger is one of the nation’s leading ecologists and earth scientists and a passionate advocate for translating science for lay audiences. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has served as dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke and president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. He lives in Down East Maine and Durham, N.C. and continues to analyze the impacts of humans on the chemistry of our natural environment.
Hi Bill,
I’m a 17 year old from the UK, and I’m writing an extended piece on the effect of food on the climate. This led me to “How Green Is Your Milk?” which I foundry insightful. However I was wondering if you could briefly shed some light on a statistic you quoted.
you said:
“Per kilogram of protein ingested, however, the emissions from almond milk (0.92 kg CO2 per kg protein) are much higher than soy milk (0.12 kg/kg protein) and dairy milk (0.07 kg/kg protein).”
Surely for the “0.07” cannot be true given that there are “1.39 kilograms of CO2-equivalents to the atmosphere for every liter produced” of cows milk?
Thank you very much,
sincerely,
Tom.
Interesting point. The CO2 release per liter came from Clune et al. (2017). The CO2 release per kg of protein came from Grant and Hicks (2018). My suspicion is that one of these groups made an error with their units. I suspect that each of the values for per kg of protein should be multiplied by 1000. The relative comparison would remain the same.
Hi Mr.Schlesinger, I read your article on impact of roads and parking. I may have been reading an abbreviated version but I didn’t see a mention of the impact to temperature. It is pretty evident when you look at blacktop vs the grass next to it, but it begs the question how much in total it is impacting our environment as we plow forests for parking lots.
-Mrs. Leech