Let me start with the following principle: “Energy is the only universal currency: One of its many forms must be converted to do anything.” Economies are complex systems designed to make those changes, and all significant economic power changes have (often very undesirable) environmental impacts. Therefore, as far as the biosphere is concerned, the best changes in anthropogenic energy are those that have never occurred: No emissions of gases (either greenhouse or acidifying), no generation of solid or liquid waste, no destruction of the ecosystem. The best way to do this is to convert to more efficient energy: Without its widespread adoption (be it in large diesel and jet engines, combined gas turbines, light-emitting diodes, metal smelting, or ammonia synthesis. ) we will have to convert the most basic energy with it all existing environmental impacts.
On the contrary, what could be more wasteful, more unpleasant, and more senseless than to despise the greater part of these benefits of conversion by wasting them? Yet this continues to happen—and at unsustainably high levels—with all final energy consumption. Buildings consume about a fifth of all global energy, but due to inadequate wall and ceiling insulation, single-pane windows and poor ventilation, they waste at least a fifth to a third of it, compared to well-designed indoor spaces. The average SUV is now twice as big as the average car before the SUV, and requires at least three times more power to do the same job.
The most disturbing of these wasteful practices is our food production. The modern food system (from the energy concentrated in breeding new varieties, the synthesis of fertilizers and other agrochemicals, and the mechanization of the fields used in harvesting, transportation, processing, storage, marketing and cooking) accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s oil and fuels. primary electricity—and we waste about 40 percent of all food produced. Some food waste is unavoidable. However, the food waste that exists is more than unsustainable. It is a crime in many ways.
Fighting it is difficult for many reasons. First, there are many ways to waste food: from the loss of the field to damage in the storage area, from the surplus of the season to the end of the “perfect” displays in the stores, from the large portions when eating out to the breakdown of cooking at home.
Second, food now travels much farther before it reaches consumers: The average distance food typically travels is 1,500 to 2,500 kilometers before being purchased.
Third, it is always very cheap in relation to other costs. Despite recent increases in food prices, households now spend only about 11 percent of their income on food (in 1960 it was about 20 percent). Consumption of food away from home (which tends to be more wasteful than eating at home) is now more than half of that total. And finally, as consumers, we have an overwhelming choice of food at our disposal: Consider that an American supermarket now carries more than 30,000 food products.
Our society is apparently content to waste 40 percent or 20 percent of all the energy it uses on food. By 2025, unfortunately, this alarming level of waste will not receive more attention. In fact, the situation will get worse. While we continue to pour billions into the search for energy “solutions” – from new nuclear reactors (and even fusion!) to green hydrogen, all of which carry their own environmental burdens – in 2025, we will continue to fail to address massive environmental waste. food that took a lot of fuel and electricity to produce.
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