As the holiday season approaches, we can learn a lot from locals about how to plan low-carbon holiday meals. Lerwick Harbor on the Shetland Islands. There, there are clusters of gray stone buildings. Houses line streets that curve downhill towards the sea. They endure the cold winds that sweep through the northernmost reaches of the North Sea.
On the first Sunday in October, St Columba’s Church in Scotland is filled with people carrying groceries, canned goods and large boxes of cereal. A fishing net is spread out in front of the pulpit, and there is a cutout of a mackerel in it. Fill shallow milk crate-like plastic fish trays with bait, carry them toward you, and place them on either side of the net.
On Harvest Sunday, a woman leading the morning service spoke about mice and men, telling the story of a field mouse who was surprised to see people with children gathered in a barn praising God for the harvest. . they sang: “Touch the earth lightly, use it kindly, nurture the life of the world in our care. A gift of great wonder, surrender what is ours, trust in the children of tomorrow.”
Carbon trade-off
In addition, in order to reduce the damage caused by climate change and cool the earth, we must touch the earth more easily. The foods we choose to eat vary widely in terms of the overall carbon emissions they load into the atmosphere. Beef cattle in feedlots are the worst. Producing one pound of beef produces 30 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Pork is better, requiring 4 to 12 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce 1 pound of protein. When pigs consume our food scraps, they add value by rotting and releasing methane. Chickens need to weigh between 3 and 6 pounds, and each pound of protein requires one-tenth the amount of carbon dioxide compared to feedlot beef.
The majority of the world’s protein diet is fish. The Shetland Islands are located at the gateway to some of the Atlantic’s best fishing grounds, including the Faroe Banks and second home to the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. The Shetlanders were famous for their skills in steering boats over remote seas and salting and curing fish. They spared no expense for the highest quality salt. As a result, Basque fishermen paid high prices to bring Shetland cod to market. With the development of steam trawlers and driftnets, the Shetlanders became leaders in the herring fishery, selling their products to Eastern Europe.
The North Sea herring and Grand Banks cod fisheries collapsed in the 1970s. The Shetland Islands fishing fleet is now much smaller. Contains plenty of crab. Capture the lobster, place it in a box slightly larger than the lobster trap, and place it again. Every other day, a box of lobsters is pulled up onto the deck on half the day and a few mackerel or rhinoceros are brought inside to feed the lobsters.
holiday harvest
Large quantities of lobster are harvested in preparation for the Christmas market in December. Lobsters rest during the winter. In February, fishermen begin catching whelks, an edible snail, in five-gallon pots.
Two open-sea cod fishing vessels owned by the fishing company A. Sandison & Sons. light of hope and thomas henry It was famous for the size of its catch. The company currently manufactures boxes specifically for the salmon farming industry in Lerwick.
Dr Frances Sandison, a life cycle analyst at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, completed her Ph.D. A paper assessing the role of Shetland seafood consumption in reducing carbon emissions. Farmed salmon is terrible for the environment, producing 4 pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of protein, due to the feed they consume. Modern pelagic midwater trawl fleets that catch mackerel and herring produce an average of 0.5 pounds of CO2 emissions per pound of protein.
The most efficient seafood with the lowest carbon footprint is: Cultured mussels grown on ropesonly 0.2 pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of protein. A delicious way to eat mussels is through Bermuda. Mussel pie is a golden flaky pastry filled with mussels, diced potatoes, finely chopped onions, fresh thyme, chopped parsley, curry powder and a dollop of Worcestershire sauce. Adding a little mayonnaise under the hot pie crust is optional.
Learn from history and change the future
Like the people of Shetland, we can develop ways to use more of our fish, resulting in more protein products and more value from less catch. .
A climate-smart future will include more seafood in our diets, less carbon-intensive, less sustainable foods (less soy and only grass-rotated beef, and more seafood, more seafood, and less carbon-intensive, less sustainable foods). (e.g., more cakes, fish pies, and “chowda”).
Together, let’s eat well to reduce our carbon footprint and “feed the lives of the world we care for.”
Dr. Rob Moir is a nationally recognized and award-winning environmental activist. He is president and executive director of Ocean River Research Institute, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Ocean River Institute is a nonprofit organization that supports the efforts of environmental organizations by providing expertise, services, resources, and information not available at the local level. Please take a look www.oceanriver.org to learn about their work.
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