Sarah Bridle: Food and Climate Change

Professor Sarah Bridle has been studying dark matter and dark energy for the last 20 years. Sarah is author of over 70 publications with over 3500 citations and led the first cosmology constraints from the biggest ongoing cosmological imaging survey, the Dark Energy Survey. Motivated by the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, Sarah leads the STFC Food Network+, which brings together food research and industry with UK technology capabilities from astro, particle and nuclear physics and the UK’s largest science facilities. Sarah leads the Greenhouse Gas and Dietary choices Open source Toolkit (GGDOT) which brings data scientists together with expertise on food psychology, nutrition and life cycle analysis with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from food choices.

Talk: Food and Climate Change

There is an impending perfect storm of pressure on our food production system, with increasing population and changing consumer tastes, in the face of rising temperatures and extreme weather events. Tim Gore, head of food policy and climate change for Oxfam, said “The main way that most people will experience climate change is through the impact on food: the food they eat, the price they pay for it, and the availability and choice that they have.”. Yet, at the same time, food production is a bigger contributor to climate change than transport. I’ll explain the main ways food contributes to climate change, bust some myths about local and organic food, and suggest some ways food could be different in the future.