WE ARE EATING THE EARTH
My book launches today. Plus a hot take.
I started researching We Are Eating the Earth because food generates about a third of our climate problems, plus an even larger percentage of our other environmental problems, and I didn’t know squat about it. I figured if I were that spectacularly ignorant about it, people who didn’t write about the environment probably were, too.
After five-plus years of reporting, I’m a little less ignorant. Simon & Schuster is publishing my book today, and I’d be so grateful if you read it and posted about it.
Now I’m going to do some braggy stuff about the early reviews, so feel free to skip.
But wow! “A brilliant new book…a gifted storyteller…my head is spinning with everything he writes about.” (Sonalia Figueras, Green Queen) “A giant of climate journalism.” (Robinson Meyer, Heatmap News) “Engaging, informative, witty, convincing, and ultimately sobering.” (Booklist) “An accessible and alarming look at our planet’s land crisis.” (Kirkus Reviews) “Grunwald is an engaging storyteller, and to his credit, he sticks to the terrible math even as it gets terribler and terribler.” (Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker) I’m fired up about the reception so far.
If you want to hear me chatting about the book, here’s a fun conversation with clean energy and climate guru David Roberts at Volts, another one with Robinson and Jesse Jenkins at Shift Key, a surprising one with a regenerative ag leader (who wanted to hate me until he heard me speak) at Flipping the Table, and a deep one with the food-tech innovation leader Eric Schulze at Food Truths. There are a lot more - I’m in shameless flack mode - but I’ve got to thank Nils Zacharias at Eat for the Planet for starting with the words every author wants to hear: “I couldn’t put your book down. It’s something we definitely need now. We probably needed it 10 years ago.”
Anyway!
I’ve also got a new hot take in US News and World Report: Your July 4 Barbecue Is Destroying the Planet. People don’t like to hear that beef is bad, but beef really is bad: “When you’re eating a burger, you’re not just eating a cow. You’re eating macaws and the rest of the cast of Rio. You’re eating the Amazon.” We need better beef - which means more efficient beef, not organic grass-fed beef, which is even worse for the climate and the planet than conventional feedlot-finished beef - but in the rich world we also need to eat less beef. It sucks but it’s true.
More flacking news: I’ll launch the book tonight at 7 pm in conversation with CNN’s Bill Weir at the New York Public Library. You can also catch me July 8 with Chris Leonard at the Kansas City Public Library, July 11 with Susan Glasser in D.C. at Politics & Prose, July 14 in my hometown of Miami with Yoca Arditi-Rocha at Books & Books, and July 16 all by my lonesome in San Francisco at Book Passages.
I promise, soon this newsletter will be back to focusing on my articles - did I mention I’m now a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion page? - and eventually I’ll start emitting all kinds of stuff here. Thanks again, and if you do enjoy my writing, I think this book is the best thing I’ve ever written.