Consumption In Covid-19 Times

We have a unique opportunity to change our food habits and push for policies that promote healthy, nutritious and safe food. This can also reduce our carbon footprint.

- Giulia Wegner

Sane ecological choices at hand

How dietary habits can mitigate global warming and prevent new pandemics

GIULIA WEGNER

OVER THE past year, the world has witnessed an alarming succession of unprecedented environmental disasters. Millions of hectares of forests were incinerated in Amazonia and Australia. Floods, like the one in Venice, submerged entire cities with their historic and cultural heritage. An ever-increasing number of cetaceans, turtles and birds died in agony due to the ingestion of plastic. And to cap it all, the global COVID-19 pandemic, which is also a consequence of the way we interact with our planet. In the face of such events, we can feel a rising sense of powerlessness and despondency. We end up thinking: “It’s too late; is there nothing we can do?” As a species, humans are not used to considering ourselves a part of the environmental problem, and even less so, of its solution. Yet, there are actions that each one of us can take to prevent these environmental disasters from becoming the norm.