Nearly Everyone Will Need to Change Their Diets by 2050 to Meet Climate Goals — Study Suggests

Nearly everyone on the planet will need to change the way they eat by 2050 to help slow the effects of climate change and, for a sizable chunk of the population, that shift needs to start immediately. Using data from 2012, a new study finds that 2.7 billion people are fueling climate pollution past the goalposts set out at the Paris Climate Convention. These surging numbers are largely fueled by meat consumption across the globe, and demand is still on the rise.

Published this month in Environmental Research: Food Systems by researchers from the University of British Columbia, the study estimates that 44% of the global population in 2012 followed diets that produced greenhouse gas emissions too high to stay below the upper 2°C of warming set out in the Paris agreement.

Once population growth is figured in, the numbers look worse. The research estimates that 91% of that same population is on track to overshoot Paris climate goals by 2050.

“What that means is that more people are implicated in reducing emissions related to food systems,” Navin Ramankutty, a global food systems researcher at the University of British Columbia and one of the authors of the study, tells Sentient. At least 40% of the global population in 2012 exceeded the per capita emissions threshold and needs to shift their diets — particularly by reducing consumption of meat, especially beef, and other animal-sourced foods — now if the world hopes to meet those climate targets, the authors say.

Who’s Eating the Planet?

The food system accounts for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Drivers for food-related emissions include methane from cattle burps, nitrous oxide from fertilizer use and deforestation.

The University of British Columbia research divided each country’s population into 10 income groups to estimate their food consumption. Emissions, they found, tend to be linked to a number of factors, including an individual’s income, dietary preferences and unequal access to food, among others.

The top 15% of emitters are responsible for 30% of all diet-related emissions — the same share as the entire bottom half of the world’s population, the study finds. The biggest contributors are not always the richest people globally, but often the wealthiest within high-emitting countries, often thanks to a diet heavy in beef and other animal-sourced foods.

Two-fifths of the world’s top 10% of emitters live in South America, where most cattle are raised on extensive pasture operations. These operations tend to be higher emissions than beef sourced from a feedlot, the study notes. Land use and deforestation come with a hefty climate emissions cost.

Twenty-three percent of the top 10% emitters are from the United States, which consumes more than any other country.

The Central African Republic was a surprising outlier. Despite widespread poverty, the country’s wealthiest 10% have some of the highest dietary emissions in the world — driven by a number of factors, including highly concentrated wealth that enables a small group of people to eat a lot of emissions-heavy foods.

The study relies on data that excludes food from subsistence farming, gardens or wild sources, which means the diets and emissions of the poorest populations might be underestimated. Another limitation of the study, Juan Diego Martinez, a study co-author, tells Sentient, is that it assumes wealthier people consume more meat, but there are some wealthy people who choose vegetarian or vegan diets.

Diets That Cut Emissions and Nourish People

Food is a major contributor to the warming of the planet and an essential human need, creating a difficult challenge: how to reduce emissions without compromising access to nutrition. In 2023, 733 million people — about one in 11 — faced hunger worldwide. Those with the least access to food contribute the least to climate pollution.

The new study estimates that it would take just 0.4% of the global population in 2012 to curb their emissions to make room for the 9% to eat more nutritionally sound diets. “If we increase the consumption of the people who are consuming very low impact diets, that really doesn’t make a big difference,” says Martinez.

You can curb food-related emissions without sacrificing health. Adopting a “planetary health diet” — rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and whole grains, with modest amounts of meat and dairy — could slash food-related emissions by half while still feeding 9.6 billion people by 2050, research suggests.

Plant-based and other alternatives to meat can play a role in replacing meat, other research suggests. A paper published by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the consulting firm Accenture suggested that 60% of animal-based foods would need to be replaced with plant-based or cultivated alternatives by 2050 to keep the food system within climate limits. Delays, the author warned, would require an even more drastic overhaul of global diets. Whatever the substitute, the authors recommend cutting back on meat and dairy. For those who find going vegan or vegetarian to be “a no-go,” says Martinez, beef may be a good starting place for cutting back. If there’s one compromise to make,” he says, “it’s to reduce beef consumption first.”