Book explores how food is "eating the earth"

And why aren't the solutions that are currently in place enough to fix this?

Well, look, on energy, at least, we kind of know what we need to do. We need to have an electrified global economy and clean electricity. And we're even starting to do it, despite what's happening in Washington right now. But food, we barely know what we're supposed to do, and we haven't made any progress. It's about a third of the climate problem, but it's 3% of climate finance, and it's like 1% of climate conversations. That's really why I wrote the book.

How can we fix this growing food issue? I hate to say this on July 4, but one of the big, big answers is we need to eat less beef. Beef is like 10 times worse than chicken or pork. It is the major source of deforestation. It's a huge part-- it's a huge part of our water problems, whether it's pollution or water shortages. But we also need to waste less food because that wastes the farmland, and the fertilizer, and the water we use to grow the food that we waste. So far, government really hasn't done much about it. So unlike with energy, there's not a lot of progress to roll back. But we need to start researching these solutions. Any other solutions that you include in the book that are worth mentioning? Sure. Well, what gets people upset is that I talk about how we're going to need to make more food with less land. We need to make more food per acre so that we can use fewer acres to make food. And sometimes that means heavily intensive industrial agriculture that a lot of people don't like. But these nice, twee, organic, kinder and gentler farms, if they make less food, they're going to use more land, and that means more deforestation. And if we're serious about decarbonizing the planet, we just can't keep cutting down trees. It's like trying to clean your house while you're smashing your vacuum cleaner to bits in the living room. You're making a mess, but you're also really ruining your ability to clean up the mess. All right, Michael Grunwald, thank you for being here. Good luck with the book. Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Meg.