A Letter from Lauren

Happy Earth Day!  If you are anything like me, this day – like most others sadly- fills me with climate crisis dread.  It is a feeling that we are all frogs in a slowly boiling pot, unable to take action to save the planet and ourselves until it is too late. That is why it was such a breath of fresh air when I met Lauren Singer many years back!

Lauren has spent her career studying climate change and working towards real, actionable solutions. We first met when she was the CEO of the Package Free shop- a genius retailer that sells all the things we need to live a less wasteful life.  FEED was proud to do a collaboration with Package Free in 2020. She is an entrepreneur for good and environmental activist in the truest sense. In 2012 she lived so thoughtfully that she was able to collect all her trash in a 16-ounce jar.  Lauren is now a managing partner at Overview Capital, a venture fund dedicated to investing in early-state companies that aim to mitigate methane emissions and other short-lived climate pollutants.

So I was thrilled when I bumped into Lauren at a dinner a few weeks back and asked her to shed some light on the environmental crisis, giving us some pointers about how we too can do better in our daily lives.  

Earth Day with Lauren Singer: A conversation on everyday solutions  to help save our beautiful planet

Do you remember the first time you became aware of the climate crisis?

My awareness of the climate crisis began in high school during an AP Environmental Science class. Reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was a pivotal moment, it opened my eyes to the profound impact human actions have on the environment. We are the only species that has the capacity to destroy the planet for everything else that lives here. It’s an immense responsibility. This realization sparked a deep commitment to align my daily choices with my environmental values and do everything I could to protect and support my home. 

Who has been your mentor or teacher in learning about climate change?

I've been inspired by many, but Rachel Carson's work laid the foundation for my environmental consciousness. Later, learning about Bea Johnson and her family demonstrated the practical application of these values.Their examples showed me that individual actions could lead to significant environmental benefits and provide agency in a world that so often feels like we have none. 

When it comes to other environmental work, I was very influenced by Christopher Schlottman, a professor of mine at NYU who taught the class Food, Animals, and the Environment, all of Peter Singer’s writing, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and the documentary King Corn, with Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis about our food system and how corn is at the center of it. Something about the coupling of what the animals we eat eat, and the insight into the meat industry at large inspired me to become a vegetarian over a decade ago. 

You mentioned to me over dinner that by cutting out or down on our meat consumption may have a more positive effect than limiting our air travel. So talk to me about methane—what do we know about the effect of methane on the environment and what can be done to mitigate this huge issue?

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, significantly more impactful than CO₂ over a 20-year period, 84 times, in fact. A substantial portion of methane emissions, about 30%, comes from industrial agriculture, particularly livestock farming. By reducing meat consumption, we can directly decrease methane emissions. Reducing methane today is the best opportunity we have to lower global temperatures quickly and significantly, and to buy time to allow for decarbonization technologies to commercialize. It is truly the most important and powerful lever we have, yet it has received less than four percent of all climate financing and is hardly included in climate discourse. 

What industries are the worst offenders in the climate crisis?

I am looking at the world today from the lens of what can drive the largest reduction of warming the fastest and most economically. Methane is the only answer today. The largest drivers of man-made methane are animal agriculture (particularly cows), the fossil fuel industry (particularly gas), and waste from landfills. Addressing these industries' practices is crucial for combating climate change.

And what are the top everyday solutions we can all participate in to help save our beautiful planet?

Here are some steps we can take:

1. Low Beef, Pescatarian, or Plant-Based Diet: The fastest way to cut methane emissions is through lowering the demand for cow-products including meat and milk. If you still want to eat meat, opting for things like chicken, turkey, and seafood would drive less warming. My suggestion is to cut meat as much as you feel comfortable with and incorporate more plant-based meals to lower your environmental footprint.

2. Reduce Waste: Organics in landfills are a major driver of methane emissions. Keeping those out of landfills by doing things like recycling or composting helps to keep methane emissions down from this sector. 

3. Compost: Composting organic waste reduces landfill contributions and methane emissions and can return valuable nutrients back to the earth reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers that create a host of other environmental problems. 

4. Mindful Consumption: Choose reusable, plastic-free products to reduce the demand for oil. 

5. Advocate: Use your voice to support environmental policies and initiatives.

Remember, every small action contributes to a larger impact. By making conscious choices, we can collectively work toward a more sustainable future.