Michael B. Eisen

If everyone on the planet hypothetically stopped eating meat, the shift wouldn't just reduce new emissions. A new study calculates that if animal agriculture was phased out, it would also unlock substantial "negative emissions," helping shrink greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so dramatically that the world could reach net zero emissions for decades even if other pollution continued unabated. The study, coauthored by Stanford University biochemistry professor emeritus Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen, a professor of genetics and development at UC Berkeley, calculates the climate impacts of different scenarios in the food system, including what would happen if the world phased out animal agriculture over the next 15 years. This story appeared in several media outlets. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.