Considering More Than Just Carbon

I want to start off this article with a disclaimer: I work for the national Farmers Market Coalition (FMC). We are a coalition of thousands of farmers markets across the country and advocate for those markets on a federal level, produce resources for operating markets, and promote farmers markets in communities from coast to coast. In my role running the communications for FMC I have found myself in media interviews where I’m asked about the “sustainability of farmers markets” with a question that goes something like this: “Well, I’ve heard that produce grown at farmers markets actually has a larger carbon footprint than produce grown on an industrial scale, what do you have to say about that?” After taking a few deep breaths to settle my defensive rage, I usually try my best to outline the following points about how, as a society, we need to move beyond considering carbon as our one and only measure of sustainability. I make this disclaimer because I definitely have some bias towards local food systems development and fostering resilience in our economic and ecological systems with a focus on small scale solutions. While in all things Grounded Grub we try our best to follow data and remain objective, sometimes we have to sprinkle some personal opinions into this platform! I’ve had scattered thoughts about this for a while, but today I’ve decided to wrap them up into something a bit more cohesive. I believe we really need to look beyond just carbon in our understanding of the environmental impact of policy and purchases, because in our sole focus on carbon we often disregard numerous other valuable assets of our socioeconomic and ecological environment. 

First, let’s address the fact that carbon emissions fundamentally drive climate change. Climate change is already leading to extreme weather events which not only have dramatic impacts on all parts of our daily lives, but also have the very real and dark possibility of taking human life each time they strike. “Carbon footprint” has been a really important way to capture the impact of choices and communicate them to a broader public. While the carbon footprint is a valuable metric that absolutely has its place in our understanding of “sustainability,” we need a much more nuanced approach to evaluating our impact if we hope to really understand the environmental, social, and economic impacts of our actions. When we focus too much on carbon, we risk losing focus on things like safe and clean water, food sovereignty, regional resilience to traumatic events, and other essential parts of how our food system interacts with our environment and people! 

We saw this obsession with carbon in a recent article from the New York Times that my colleague Ben dissected in a piece on Grounded Grub. We saw the NYT focusing solely on the carbon impacts of single-use plastic, rather than the holistic impacts of plastic disposal in our environment. In this case, it’s easy for the New York Times to write a clickbait article about how reusable cotton bags are worse for the environment, because their audience is based primarily in the US, a place where we’re privileged enough to turn a blind eye to most of the impacts of single-use plastic. Carbon footprint is easier to focus on in the global north because we can do things like ship our garbage off and consolidate pollution in other countries. 

Our obsession with carbon in the realm of sustainability is not the only space with a data-microfocus problem. Measuring the sustainability of something simply by carbon is like measuring someone’s entire health through BMI (a metric that doesn’t consider muscle mass or health history) or a nation’s well-being through GDP (a metric that measures prison spending and other “negative” activities as positive for economic health). We often focus on things like carbon, BMI and GDP because as humans we like simple data to tell a story. In a fast moving society with a focus on output, a simple data point like carbon footprint is attractive to tell a “punchy” story quickly, but more nuanced metrics and holistic understanding would do what global superpowers and corporations fear: hold them accountable. With the focus on carbon, companies can more easily greenwash products, pat themselves on the back, and move on to their next plan to increase value for shareholders. In many cases, these carbon offsets contribute to land grabs across the globe. In fact this singular focus on carbon at one point in time is one of the reasons why ethanol developments have led to more harm than good. Rather than looking at the whole picture, proponents of ethanol highlighted carbon offsets without considering the long term effects of converting forests to farmland. 

Regenerative agriculture is an interesting example of taking ecological and agroecological practices and shifting the focus on carbon. Regenerative agriculture practices aren’t new, in fact, there have been farmers farming in that way for a very long time, but it’s become a new way to collect and “brand” the practices under a new type of certification. On the one hand, some could critique this movement as just another type of greenwashing or certification aimed toward an increased price tag on the food it produces. This may be true in some cases, but a lot of regenerative agriculture is taking a really big step in the right direction AND it’s taking advantage of the public obsession with carbon. This might be a “hot-take” but I don’t care if something that is actually a good move for the environment is also aggressively marketing themselves as sustainable. That’s not actually greenwashing, it’s just taking advantage of public interest in sustainability to get the economic support that operation needs to remain functional. 

SO with this in mind, how can you shift your thinking to consider more than just carbon in the equation of sustainability. Honestly, this is a tough one. It often feels like the personal decisions that we make are being loaded up with even more variables to consider every day. As someone who is pretty much constantly thinking about how to reduce my impacts and how to bring nuance into my decision making, this can all get really overwhelming. Lately, I’ve been opting for sustainable options whenever possible, but to simplify my thinking, I’ve really just been focusing on less. Unfortunately so much of our society is built around consuming things and we are taught from birth that adding more and buying more will solve our problems. Despite what greenwashing may want us to think, every action we take has an impact. I’ve found that, personally, always opting for a #UseItUp mindset in everything from my pantry to my clothes has given me more space in my brain (and wallet) to take the time to make choices that I’m really proud of and excited about. I’ve noticed that if I reduce the number of purchases I’m making, I make less of an impact without thinking too hard about it, and I take more joy in researching options and considering nuance, rather than getting frustrated and grabbing the most convenient thing. As we all know, there’s no shame in grabbing what is convenient, but I’ve found that by focusing on making the most out of what I already have (I’m looking at you cotton tote bags!) I can think more deeply about the new things I want to bring into my life. This little bit of extra brain space gives me just enough wiggle room to consider more than just carbon footprint and take a more nuanced approach to consider the things like food sovereignty, individual economics, local economies, and investing in the holistic change I want to see in the world.