New Book Deems Corporate Agriculture “Perpetrator of Climate Change”

Corporations and Health Watch writer Monica Gagnon recently interviewed
Anna Lappé about her new book, Diet for a Hot Planet, which describes the
agricultural industry as “not just a victim but also a perpetrator of climate
change.” According to Lappé, “Our food system indirectly and directly is responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions,” a statistic she says is “largely missing from the public conservation.” In particular, Lappé focuses on a “corporate response to the crisis” that reflects the “multifaceted” nature of the food sector, where “players don’t always have the same self-interest and use different strategies of denying or acknowledging their impact on climate.”

“What we are seeing is that lot of food companies are pushing to be their own
police, not to have government regulate the industry,” Lappé claims, turning
a critical eye on strategies like “green advertising” and urging consumers to
conduct their own research on social responsibility programs. “[S]ince we
live in a regulatory context where it’s easy for companies to greenwash their
story and hard for consumers to detect misleading claims, a healthy dose of
skepticism is always good.”