A new study is putting the blame squarely on white Americans and their dietary habits for causing climate change.
The study, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, found that white Americans contribute the most to greenhouse gas emissions out of all major race categories in the U.S.
Although it isn’t surprising that white people contribute the most to climate change by virtue of the fact that they make up the majority of the U.S. population, the study found that they still consume more “environmentally intense” foods (such as vegetables, dairy, and total grains) than other ethnic groups.
The typical diet of the American Caucasian was found to consist of the highest rate of potatoes, beef, apples, and milk, which require more water, land, and energy to produce than other foods. The consumption, production, and distribution of such foods leads to the emission of more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, the study says.
“While the difference [between racial groups] may not be enormous, these numbers are per individual, and when you add up all those individuals, it’s very clear that whites are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of their food choices,” says Joe Bozeman, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago who helped author the study.
The study only looked at the dietary habits of whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Latinos, which make up 61.3%, 17.8%, and 13.3% of the population, respectively. Collectively the three demographic groups represent 92.4% of the U.S. population.
While white Americans may have had the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions and water impact across all racial categories, black Americans did have the highest per capita land impact because of their consumption of “land-intense” food items in the fruit and protein food groups.
Tellingly, the authors of the study labeled also Hispanic Americans as “Latinx,” the latest social sciences fad of identifying Latinos in a gender-neutral, nonbinary way.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
