Out of the 20 largest economies in the world, only two—India and Indonesia—have diets that stay within the planetary boundaries for climate, the limits for what the Earth can support. If the whole world ate like the other 18 G20 countries, we’d need as many as 7.5 additional Earths to support that food production.
That analysis comes from a new report called Diets for a Better Future, produced by EAT, an Oslo-based nonprofit, which calculated the carbon “food prints” of G20 countries. Though they make up only 10% of the world’s countries, they currently produce three-quarters of the total emissions from the global food system that are possible within the carbon budget. The report also looks at the emissions that are baked into each country’s national dietary guidelines and how tweaking those guidelines could help make food production sustainable, at the same time as it improves health.
