By favoring mostly plant-based foods, we can actually save the world – and live longer, healthier lives.

A shift to mostly plant-based diets and new food technologies could solve our most important and pressing global problems. Issues like climate change, hunger, freshwater shortages, the Sixth Extinction, antibiotic resistance, and the threat of new pandemics might just melt away with the new food revolution.

According to official estimates, meat and other animal-based products account for around 20% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. However, the real figure must be significantly higher. Emissions from soils of grazing lands and fields growing cattle feed have not been included in the official statistics. Methane emissions from polluted lakes, rivers, reservoirs and shallow seas are still classified as natural emissions. Besides, cattle raising and fields growing animal feed threaten to transform the whole Amazonian rainforest to semi-dry savannah. If this happens, animal agriculture will become, overwhelmingly, the main driver for global warming.

Food, Health and Climate explains why it is not possible to halt global warming without reducing meat consumption. On the other hand, if we manage to shift to more sustainable eating habits, billions of hectares of land will be freed from animal farming and could be used to grow new conservation and carbon-sink forests, or to produce raw materials for new wood- and biomass-based products that could replace metals, concrete, plastics, and chemicals.

Risto Isomäki is a Finnish science fiction and science writer and a leading expert on environmental issues. His books have been published in more than twenty Asian and European languages.