Unf*cking the FutureWhat if we could unfuck this mess by just changing the food we eat? Maggie Baird joins host Chris Turney to talk about animal agriculture, plant-based diets, and how she's trying to unf*ck the music industry.
Show notes from Chris Turney:
- There is a wealth of great research into the carbon (and climate) impacts of how we eat. But if you’re interested in learning more, a great place to start is a research article called “Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts” by Peter Scarborough and colleagues, published in the science magazine Nature Food. The article is free and can be accessed by this link.
- Take the Support and Feed pledge! Sign up here.
I had a woman one time on a panel I was on say something to me in a quite snide manner, like we can't eat our way out of climate change, and I thought, well, you know it's not. You know, we kind of can. It's not the only solution. Plant By's diet is not the only solution to climate change, but there's no solution that doesn't include that.
Oh fucked.
Welcome to I'm Fucking the Future. I'm Chris Turney, a climate scientist based in Sydney, Australia. I have a bit of a reputation for being an optimist, but in this day and age, with all the bad news, even I can't help but think we're fucked. But that thinking is not going to get us out of this mess. There are people out there who have got some really big ideas for how to turn things around. They inspire me to keep going, and over this podcast series, I want them to inspire you too, or at least make you feel a little less terrible about our future. So in each episode, we're going to hear the story of a scientist, an entrepreneur, an activist, or someone else who is fighting the climate crisis in a surprising but positive way, We're going to learn how they got started, how they're making a difference, and perhaps most importantly, how we can make a difference too. I still believe that together we can fix this all mighty mess. So let's get started.
We're fucking future.
I feel very grateful to be a woman right now.
I feel very proud, and I want to thank my mom for being truly the best mother that I could ever ask for, and thinking never for herself and only for others.
Every day I want to be more like you.
Oh my god. That's a clip of Billie Eilish speaking at the twenty twenty three Variety Power of Women event. She's being honored for a song from the Barbie soundtrack, and the woman she's thanking her mom, is our guest today. Maggie bed is not only the mother of two of the most successful musicians on the planet, she's also an accomplished actor and writer and a longtime climate activist. Even Billy is impressed by that.
I'm so proud of her every day and I want to dedicate everything in this to my mom and everything you do for the world. I'll buy you anything you want.
Maggie is the founder of Support and feed and nonprofit that aims to combat the climate crisis and increased food security by advocating for a plant based diet. And the reason I wanted to bring Maggie on in this first episode is because her radical idea for changing the world is actually relatively simple. Maggie says that we can make a real difference tackling the climate crisis by just making small changes to our diet. The rest of the world has only recently come round to the idea that meat agriculture might not be the best thing for the environment. But that's a conclusion Maggie came to early in life.
We didn't have much a lot of money. My dad was a school teacher. My mom worked in various jobs, so we didn't have much money, and we lived in this beautiful place in western Colorado. But I was outdoors all the time, and I started even as a child, I did not want to eat meat. I just immediately saw that it was an animal, and I did not seem like an edible substance to me. So it was originally animals that brought me into that world. But I have very clear memories of I read a book like there's two different things, but I written because two books that Diet for a Small Planet Diet for a New America Francis Morler pay books when I was a teenager, and they talked about the effect on the environment of animal agriculture.
These books from the seventies and eighties are absolute classics. They've influenced a lot of people to switch to plant based food, which brings us to a segment we like to call what the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck are you talking about? What Maggie just mentioned. Animal agriculture is simply the farming of animals for food production. As you may already know, there are big climate consequences for it. Sure, you've probably heard about the me fame produced by those belching, farting cows, but it actually goes a lot deeper than that. It all starts from a simple fact that there's a limited amount of space on Earth. For Fortunately for those of us who enjoy lamb or a ribbi, animal proteins require far more space to grow than plant based proteins. It takes almost one hundred times as much land to produce a gram of beef protein as it does to produce a gram of tofu protein. But that's not the only problem, because, of course, in order to raise animals, you have to feed them. Roughly a third of all farmland on Earth is used solely to grow food to feed livestock, and in order to clear land for livestock to graze on, you have to cut down trees. Meat production is the biggest cause of deforestation in the world's tropical forests to clear away for Brazilian cattle. More than eight hundred million trees in the Amazon have been cut down just in the last six years. And trees, as we know, sub carbon out of the atmosphere. When trees are cut down, two things happen. First, once they're dead, they can't suck carbon out of the atmosphere anymore. That's bad. Second, these dead trees release a carbon they've been storing all these years. That's really bad. All this extra carbon in the atmosphere is causing climate zones to shift, making it more difficult for the world's great farming regions to remain productive. And finally, animals produce emissions of their own. According to the United Nations, livestock are responsible for about fifteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. What this means is that if we all reduce the amount of meat that we eat, it could have a big impact on the climate.
If every American eight no meter or cheese just one day a week for a year is equivalent to not driving ninety one billion miles or taking seven point six million cars off of the road.
So that's what the fuck we're talking about. What the fuck are you talking about? All right? Back to Maggie. As a teenager, she made the connection between what we eat and its impact on the environment, and so she became a vegetarian.
I think to most everyone I know, I was pretty annoying because I was I've been a vegan for fifteen years, but you know, vegetarian for since nineteen, like seventy six, right, So I was talking about it all the time, and I was, to be honest, a little bit of a apologetic for it. You know. It was the era of like don't mind me, I'll have a salad, don't mind, you know, so it's kind of apologetic and like, you know, not trying to make waves. But I was living that way, and you know, I was carrying my own grocery bags and my reusable water bottles, and then.
You know, ahead of a curve.
I grew up in the seventies. You know, everything was turned off, the lights, you know, concern.
It's amazing. I mean, my dad was a forester and we used to travel all over the UK, live in really quite remote places. And I was born in the seventies. We grew up in the eighties. But mom and dad, because we were living in such remote places, we're in the like a nineteen seventies time bubble. So we listen abusing. We had this basis stainable livestile and there was just that moment in time where there was this realization that things were changing and there was this amazing connection with major in the environment, and looking back, it was actually just quite a magical time. But things could have changed so dramatically.
When things were you know, still Christine or still beautiful, and you were more concerned about like our I was more concerned about like not wanting to lose this beautiful area, preserve this whatever.
For a lot of people, Maggie included, the seventies were really optimistic time. The environmental movement was just starting to take hold. Nineteen seventy was a year of the first Earth Day. People took to a street demanding that government's pay closer attention to protecting the natural world. It felt like you could truly make a change and preserve the nature around you.
But that changed quickly, because very quickly, you know, then we saw things happening around the world related to climate. But you know, in your own little world, you're worried about the trash at your favorite campsite as opposed to like an entire community being destroyed by flooding.
Right by the end of the nineteen nineties, environmentalism has become a highly politicized issue. It's no longer Rah Rah Earth Day. It's more like heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, massive hor spills, and Amazon deforestation. And now Maggie's a mum, and all of a sudden, her personal interest in the environment takes on a different meaning. It isn't just about her anymore.
I mean, if it doesn't change you, I don't know what would you know. I feel the urgency, very passionate. I think that's true for many people, and I'm happy to say that. I hear people say it was their children or their grandchildren or something that woke them up.
Yeah. Actually, my kids are basically saying age as yours as well. And I think it's an amazing time when you actually have children and you suddenly have that greatest sense of the natural world and your place in it, and they your responsibilities, and then you've got this background of this existential threat which you've as you're saying, it's just suddenly becomes really focused for you.
And if you can't look at your children as they face this future and say, I have really been trying, you know, I'm really doing something. I think that we all owe it to them to be focusing on this and doing as much as we can, and that we can look them in the eye and not feel that and we you know, I'm still going to feel that I failed them.
That's another story anyway, but you know.
That I can at least say I really did try.
Anyway. Maggie and their husband Patrick made it a priority to stilling their kids a passion for the environment, and in part that meant raising them vegetarian.
We decided to raise our children that way because I wanted to give my first of all, what I believe in. And I'm responsible for their physical and moral health really until they're a grown person, right, so I want to provide them what I believe is the most a responsible way of living and the healthiest way of living. So it's the single most effective thing you can do personally is change the way you eat right, because you can't overnight, you know, I mean, I guess, I guess if you're a person who flies on a private plane every day, you could stop. That would be that would be very act. That would be good. You know, children, if if you explain what animal food is, they generally don't want to eat it. The truth is they don't generally understand what it is. But the great thing is watching my kids, like you know, you know, come to it on their own and understand it on their own, and you know, process it and it's a journey. And I think we are responsible for our children's morals and ethical health. And we know that young people's brains are not fully formed till they're twenty six. Now you're not going to be telling it, you know, twenty one year old what to do. You can you can barely, you know, tell a thirteen year old what to do. But as far as instilling values, you know that that is your job.
And something I'd love to sort of explore with you a little bit more of that is this love of the environment in your children. But the other thing you've done, of course, is you've even stilled disappreciation of music. And I'd love you to talk a little bit more about what role music plays in your family.
Well, I mean, I just love music myself, right, and I was an amateur songwriter my whole life. And my husband loves me music, and so we just always had a lot of music in our house. You know. We we live in a small house. We have two bedroom house. We had three pianos in it.
Really, we had.
Two pianos because what happened was we got my my mother had died young, and then my father sadly died also, and I had my childhood piano. And then we had someone that we got off craigslist. It was like a baby grand like took up the entire room that it was in. And then we had a keyboard, so we had a piano everywhere in the house. Really, it's like a fireplace for some people that they you must have. Yeah, so there's that, and then you know, just out of the blue, like they just learned to play. Phineas asked my husband to teach him how to play one song to impress a girl, and he taught him what a chord was and what an inversion was, and that was the extent of his lessons.
Wow.
And then he asked me, like, what's a chord on a guitar? And I show him And that was literally it. Every every other bit of it came from YouTube or him just figuring out.
And then the.
Exact same thing happened with Billy. She just did it herself. So you know, I guess we had given them this exposure to like constant music and this music program, but it really just the main thing we did was just kind of allow them to do what they wanted.
We're on fucking the future. We're on fucking the future.
All this discussion about music might seem like a bit of a tangent for a show about the climate, but I promise it's important because what Mackie understood is that music and art can be a powerful catalyst for social change.
You know, I certainly grew up with you know, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Joan Bias and you know Peter Paul and Mary and you know, those are the songs my parents put me to bed too, you know, And now they were political and social, you know, so they were certainly impactful to me. I think you have an opportunity as a musician to reach a very large audience and have a more direct connection to people. People really feel connected to songwriters because they've expressed what they feel and it's a rare and special you know. And I've felt it myself with songwriters, and you feel so connected to them. And then if that songwriter decides to write about climate change, or not write about it but talk about it at their concert or be on an Instagram post about it, it really makes a huge difference.
In twenty sixteen, Maggie began to experience his first hand. Her fourteen year old daughter Billy, released a song called Ocean Eyes, and it launched into pop stardom.
That just took over my whole life, right because I had to protect her, I had to be with her, I had to make sure everything was okay. And so then I found myself in this new world. But but I couldn't leave behind my other world, right, so constantly I was why are we using plastic water bottles backstage? Why do we have this kind of merch Why is the vinyl thing? What is the packaging thing, just constantly asking questions about the music industry in terms of climate change and sustainability. So I and in the beginning, to be honest, I was pulling my hair out. It was so stressful and it seemed like no one was doing anything. Now, I was very lucky that I got introduced to Chris Martin, and Chris Martin introduced me to this company called Reverb, and then I started to get this support and feel this community in the music industry of people who were trying to make change. Then Billy at the same time, Billy and Phineas got powerful, you know. And so in the beginning, nobody was listening to me. I'm just again the annoying person saying like, you know, why are we doing this? So why can't we We've been there, just annoying people. But then you know, my children have this power, and people started to listen. And when people started to listen, they realized, oh, this actually really matters, and it's really affecting us, and it's affecting our whole industry, it's affecting our whole world.
All of a sudden, Maggie's kids had a platform and they realized it. Together they could use their influence to make a positive impact on the climate. The first and most obvious way they could do this was by helping make plant based food seem cool, because for decades, veganism has being portrayed as anything back cool.
We're with mankind for ethical animal treatment. Poplars are living creatures. You gotta stop harvesting them for food or what? Or will boycott fishy jos?
You're vegetarians?
Who cares what you do?
Shut up?
Animals eat other animals. It's nature, No, it isn't. We taught a lie and to eat tofu. That's a clip from a show Futurama, and it's emblematic of how vegans have been mocked in pop culture, so much so that Maggie says, it's almost become a dirty word.
Well, if you're referring to the study that I was quoting to you that referred to vegan as one of the most hated words in the English language, you know, I think the reason is in the article I was quoting to you makes the point that it's about cognitive dissonance, right, so that most people, when confronted with the facts of animal agriculture, the way animals are treated, the way they're killed, the environmental impact, the degradation of our soil, the loss of biodiversity, the amount of greenhouse gases, the health most everyone, if they see those facts in front of them, are going to think it's a good idea not to be participating in the system of animal agriculture. But if you don't do it, then you have cognitive dissonance. And so people who do it and have taken on this word vegan, you know, become kind of an antagonistic feeling in your body, so you kind of hate that.
What Maggie is saying is that even though people might support all the benefits of a vegan diet, because that's a negative association with word, they tend to shy away from it, and that has real consequences.
If you label a food item vegan, something like I should get the real step for you, you know, like only twenty percent of people will choose that item, but if you say it's you know, plant based, it could be sixty to seventy percent. You know, when ordering off a menu with plant based food. You've got to get people to stop. You've got to change that culture from vegan being a bad word or plant based being a bad word or being the butt of the joke right in TV and movies, all the environmentalists is a tree hugger, right, and that vegan is you know, annoying and whatever.
Getting people to choose a climate friendly diet is partly a cultural problem, so it definitely helps if one of the world's most influential pop stars is a public supporter. Maggie's helping her kids use their platforms to reflect their values, starting with how they run their concerts.
When the pandemic happened, we were on tour with Billy's then world tour, and we were super excited about this tour for the sustainability factor. You know, we had done all these things. We had all plant based food for three meals a day for our whole crew.
But then disaster struck.
We had this very sustainable backstage and all these things implemented, and then we went home because of COVID and then within like five days, I was sitting with Billy. I was like, you know, people are going to need food. Plant based restaurants are going to go to business, and small businesses are going to suffer, and you know, et cetera, et cetera, let's get food and we'll feed people. Well, very quickly, we we were doing that. We were delivering meals to people, but we realized that there were very few organizations that were feeding people were taking into account the quality of what they fed people and the environmental impact of what they fed. So we were like, wow, massive amounts of food are going out to people with no regard to the health of the people receiving it or the climate impact of that pid It's incredible, it is right when you think about it, it was like it was like a hall moment of like bad, like oh my gosh, right, gigantic amounts.
Of food really really yeah, you think.
About major major food organizations. We were lucky enough to get calls with some of these, you know, and they did not have an awareness of the impact of plant based food and what they're feeding. They had often no plant based option, and they might even have like a kosher option or but then no plant based option. It was like, you do know that environmentally we need to reduce our animal agriculture, and some of them would say, yeah, yeah, that's true, like we do. Like so that's when we realize. We also realized that if we directed our work toward communities in food apartheides areas that were cut off from access to nourishing food. We could multiply our impact.
But as the other piece of base, which is which is really terrifically important, that's food equity. And for listeners who don't know what this is, how is that connected to climate?
Well, food equity speaks to the fact that we do not distribute food equally in our society, and a lot of that is due to systemic racism. We have policies within our government. I'm speaking specifically about the US, but it's not just true for the US. We have policies that have been created which literally deprive communities of access to nourishing food by policies that don't allow grocery stores within certain areas or prevent the recreation of grocery stores when those grocery stores close, lack of green spaces, and at the same time, these same communities are often most impacted by climate change. Right, So you've got a community where say there are absentee landlords, no green spaces, no trees, That temperature in that community could be one to two degrees higher, right, so, already suffering from the effects of that second of all, lack of proximity to nourishing food through either economic reasons or transportation access. So climate change is disproportionately affecting people who are the least responsible for climate change.
This is a point you'll hear a lot about on this show. Well, thatverage in the US produces about sixteen tons of CO two a year a person in India not even one that half. But yet developing countries are often more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather than rich countries like the US. Food is another place where this inequity exists because people in wealthy areas tend to have more access to healthy, sustainable food.
The meal is wonderful, but if a meal that's extra nourishing can be served to a community member who may not generally get that kind of nourishing food, and we can make a climate friendly, we could like triple our impact. We still purchase our meals from community restaurants and so support the local economy. We pay a fair and equitable price for those meals to support that. You know, restaurants are so important to communities, and you know the workers at a restaurant are you know, from the farmer to the serve are such an important part of that chain. So, you know, combining all these things into one the intersectionality of this mission, which is really what we have to look at in everything we do. If we're going to address this issue, and why not why address this issue without adding on all the issues that touch that.
We're on fucking the future. We're on fucking the future.
In twenty twenty, Maggie's passions for plant based food, equity, and music all came together. She founded a nonprofit called Support and Feed. The organization provides narishing meals and education to historically marginalized communities, driving global demand, acceptance, and accessibility of plant based food. And they're using a call to action at concert tours to each new places and inspire more people to embrace a plant based diet.
Yeah, Support and Feed and the name is like been, I think it turned out to be more more accurate than we ever dreamed, you know, because we really are feeding people. But we're supporting community organizations, we're supporting small businesses, we're supporting activists, we're supporting the work. We are very much an all boats rise organization. We are trying to get this word out.
Yeah.
Now we're bigger than ever. We are in eleven cities in the country in a regular presence and that means regular food deliveries and regular education which means community conversations, cooking classes, experiential. We were able to have Support and Feed be a presence on that tour, and you know, when we were in Australia, we were able to partner with oz Harvest to add fifty three thousand plant based meals to their amazing work already. We also did the same with Paramore's tour, and we've been festivals for Pharrell, Something in the Water and Lallapalooza, Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, plant Based Food Drive. So getting the word out with Support and Feed, you know, we have a large impact with the you know, the people we're feeding and then also people who are here to learn about how what they eat impacts climate change and how what they eat is impacting someone across their town, across their state, across the world.
I had a.
Woman one time on a panel I was on say something to me in a quite snide manner, like we can't eat our way out of climate change, And I thought, well, you know it's not you know, we kind of can It's not the only solution. Plant based diet is not the only solution to climate change, but there's no solution that doesn't include that.
It's easy to feel powerless in the face of a problem as big as global heating. But what I love about Maggie's story is that this shows us but there's something meaningful we can do as individuals right now, which brings us to our final segment, which we call what the fuck Can I Do?
What the fuck can I do?
Okay, Maggie, I thought we could end the show by highlighting something our listeners can do to help stop the climate crisis, And so I want to ask you about the thirty day Pledge. What is it and what's the idea behind it.
We want people to understand that what they eat matters, and it affects people. It affects not only their personal health, but their community and people all around the world. The Support and Feed Pledge is to eat at least one fully plant based meala day for thirty days. And get this, that one small action makes such a huge difference. For example, if we were all to take it together, say ten thousand people eate one plant based meala day, for thirty days. That is seven million gallons of water saved. Is that incredible?
Yeah, that is incredible, That really is.
And then support feed will offer you resources and support, recipes and guidance as you do it till hopefully this one meal a day that you're eating will become second nature and you can add more and more plant based foods to your diet and really make an impact on the climate crisis.
Look, plant based diets are the gold standard. Someone with a plant based diet has less than seventy five percent of the emissions from that of a heavy meat eater. But for a lot of people, me included, it can feel impossible to make a full switch in one go. But the good news is eating a low meat diet can have a similar effect because for difference and emissions between a low meat diet, say around forteen ounces a week, which is about two chicken breasts and a vegetarian or pescatarian diet is pretty nominal. In fact, low meat diets around half the emissions of a heavy meat eater, the same as a vegetarian diet. Hal's to say, we don't need to change a f every thing about our diet right now, but Maggie says, we can make small steps today to get on the path towards an environmentally friendly diet.
The Support and Feed Pledge has gone worldwide. We've been at concerts, arenas and stadiums around the world with musical acts and at live events getting people to sign up to take this pledge to know that what they do every day makes a difference. It's that kind of change that is really going to be impactful.
That's amazing. So if you're interested, head on over to Support Andfeed dot org and sign up for the thirty day Pledge. And that's one thing you can do right now to help fight the climate crisis.
What fuck can I know?
Since Maggie founded it back in twenty twenty, Support and Feed has become a hugely impactful organization. They've distributed over four hundred thousand plant based meals and pantry items.
I'm not the first person to say this, but I think the antidote for egoings it is action. Knowing that you're doing something is what keeps me going. And hope is in the people that join with you, the people working alongside of you and caring. A lot of people say, well, young people, give us hope. But you know, there's enough people out there, and there are enough technological advances and enough people really working towards this, and it gives me hope to you know, if nothing else, we're not in and alone.
And I often reflect on the fact that it's not really the science it gives me hope. That's actually the opposite. A lot of time, it's people. It's what people can do and what they are doing, and that gives me real hope. And I find that inspirre and just talking to you, Maggie about hearing what you're doing and how it can scale a level you know, actually, gosh, we can make a difference.
I mean, that's really that's really why food is so special in this category, because it's like, you can do this, this one you got right in your hands. You know, we can do it.
We certainly can't.
Fucked.
That's all for this episode. Next time on I Fucking the Future, we'll be speaking with comedian, writer and director Adam McKay. He's been doing his part to fight the climate crisis in his own unique way for storytelling. He's the director of a twenty twenty one film, Don't Look Up, which is an environmental allegory and a comedy.
We're dealing with just a gargantuan force, you know, changing the livable climate, and it's amazing how much it just bats you around emotionally. So yeah, it's a wild, wild experience, there's no question. And the number one thing I've been trying to do through the whole thing is just keep my sense of.
Humor, spreading climate awareness, food humor. That's coming up on Fucking the Future. I'm Chris Turney. See you next time.
Fucking the Future.
I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and Awfully Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney. The show is written by Meredith Bryan. I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Renee Colvert. Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carral Welker and Nathan Chloke are the executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges are the executive producers from Awfully Nice. Sound design and mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lillly Hayden and producing services by Peter McGuigan. Sam Swinnerton wrote our theme and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on Apple Podcasts or whether you get your podcasts
