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The race to avert a global food system meltdown with New York Times best selling author, Michael Grunwald (07-20-25)
Published 9 months, 1 week ago
Description
In this episode, iHeartradio host Phil Tower welcomes Michael Grunwald, New York Times-bestselling author.
Michael's new book is We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, from Simon & Schuster Publishing
Michael told us that humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions.
By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds.
“Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems."-Michael Grunwald
Grunwald's compelling new book explains how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land.
But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death.
Get the book: We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate
Michael's new book is We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, from Simon & Schuster Publishing
Michael told us that humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions.
By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds.
“Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems."-Michael Grunwald
Grunwald's compelling new book explains how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land.
But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death.
Get the book: We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate