An ecologist on how food impacts climate

Early into his new book The Blue Plate: A Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos, ecologist Mark Easter poses a playful, but loaded, question: "How could a morning piece of toast or a plate of dinner pasta be such a world-altering culprit?" This, like many ideas Easter digs into in his illuminating debut, is a glimpse at how the author goes about breaking down the climate toll of the U.S. agricultural system: One dish at a time.  

Seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and pie are just some of the quintessentially "American" kitchen table staples Easter structures the book around as he tries to help readers understand how greenhouse gases move into and out of soils and plants on land across the country. Each of the nine chapters examines how a single dish is made; from the soil needed to grow the ingredients, to the people who manage the land and the laborers who toil to get it to the table, and the leftovers that remain — documenting the emissions created each step of the way. 

The Blue Plate also takes a look at some of the innovative practices being implemented around the U.S. to make such culinary favorites more climate-friendly. Stopping off at an Arizona produce farm, a Wyoming fertilizer plant, a Colorado landfill, an Idaho fish farm, and several dairies, Easter shows how small businesses are making conscientious changes to how they work. He theorizes how each could be applied at scale while quantifying how the widespread adoption of such techniques, and minimal shifts in consumer purchasing and consumption habits, could reduce agriculture's gargantuan role in warming.