From Crisis to Change: Empowering Climate Friendly Lifestyles

Review | MediaEd Insights | ‘What’s for Dinner?’ Food as an Ecomedia Literacy Inquiry Edition | August 2026

Written by Jane DeMarines

Climate Diet is a non-profit that sheds light on a critical, yet often-overlooked climate change culprit — industrial animal agriculture. Its podcast host, executive director Jane DeMarines, wants to educate and inspire individuals about the profound effects of their food choices on the planet’s climate.

Jane invited Dr. Carolyn Fortuna to a January 2025 podcast conversation to discuss how Carolyn's life as a vegetarian was integral to her writing for CleanTechnica and Substack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luy-c8trgbc

As a media creator, Jane was interested in unpacking Carolyn's perspective about how reducing meat consumption and embracing plant based diets can positively impact methane emissions and deforestation.

In this metacognitive analysis, Jane looks back 18 months to the conversation with current knowledge of significant US federal changes in agriculture regulations. Our Q&A draws upon an ecomedia lens to discuss how climate messaging is important yet fluid in today's complex media landscape.

Question: Determining the purpose of messages is an important media literacy principle. What is the goal of your podcast and website? Who is the target audience? What action do you hope it will inspire in that audience?

Our goal is to create awareness and get people to think more about what they eat and how it impacts the health of the climate, and their own health. We interview experts in science, particularly climate-related, and food experts, particularly those who understand plant-based eating, and have a level of knowledge to share with our audience. Our podcasts are offered on multiple podcast platforms that are general, and we hope to reach a more general audience with them, but also likely reach plant-based eaters as well.

We hope that the audience promotes the benefits of plant-based eating, because I think people tend to trust their friends, as much or in addition to known experts.

The goal of our website is to be a kind of encyclopedia with more detailed information and differing platforms on climate and diet–we also use it as a storage facility for our information, podcasts, and work! We’ve launched several new sections recently, a “Kid’s Corner,” to try to offer something for the younger crowd, and a Consumer Health Section for anyone seeking more knowledge about the benefits of plant-based eating. The clickable human figure and types of vegetables and grains let you see health benefits and even specific body parts that benefit. It is fun to use!

Our Recipes section is a favorite and we offer them in a pleasing format, with colorful graphics showcasing the delicious veggies and dishes. People can access these on the website, but the open rate when they are sent out is very high at over 30%.

We also cover climate news and use National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) information, which is extremely detailed and valuable, often with excellent graphics.

Question: Has food media become too reliant on search traffic, social media algorithms, and advertiser-driven incentives? How do you attract your audience?

This is a very good question for which I lack an answer, but assume companies with large marketing budgets do use all of the data sources you mention. We know the data from our own media and what works best for us: our email marketing gets the highest response from our weekly plant-based recipes. This makes me happy, as to me it likely signifies behavior change. Our website has good traffic and social media followers continue to grow. From a recent national survey we did, we do see the greatest interest and actual consumption of plant-based foods from a younger generation-20-30 year olds, which bodes well for the future of our planet!!!

As far as attracting our audience, we have a creative and savvy marketing team in India that develops bold and eye-catching promotional pieces that we post on social media to advertise our podcasts, recipes, webinars, and newsletters. We also gain new followers from attending events and ask people to sign up for our newsletter and offer free vegan energy bars. Everyone seems to like this exchange! So Vegfests and Vegan conferences help us gain new followers.

Question: Carolyn spoke on the podcast about the rationale for businesses to decarbonize. "It's not necessarily for the common good," she said, "but (instead) for their bottom lines. It's good for their business." If we are to impact business decarbonization efforts, especially around food systems, she continued, "We have to be prudent, to speak out, and allow our voices to be heard." Funding for independent journalism is quite fragile in 2026. To be fully transparent, who pays for your podcasts? How do you balance the need for some profitability with your desire to have your voice heard to make the planet healthier?

We have received grants from Montgomery County Community Grants, but the funds were targeted directly for our “Power of Food” program partnering with several middle schools in the county. Other grants have supported general operating expenses and have been from mostly small foundations, and mostly vegan oriented. I cover a large portion of our budget, and because we use contractors in a very limited way, 5 hours per week, mostly, our expenses are kept very low. I work for free of course, and am the only full-time employee.

Question: How have you addressed the new USDA federal, upside-down food pyramid, which now foregrounds red meat and dairy as necessary diet elements?

I have not made comments on it, but do not see it as helpful. Any cardiologist will tell you saturated fat, especially from red meat, clogs your arteries and can lead to high blood pressure, heart conditions, and even cancer. Many sectors of the population are also lactose intolerant, as well.

Question: Recognized as the second-largest producer of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, animal farming is also the leading cause of deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and soil erosion. What meanings, values, and perspectives are often embedded in agricultural mass communications that suppress these stark realities?

My sources, climatologist Gerard Bisshop who has done extensive research and written reports on animal agriculture and details it as being the largest greenhouse emitter of all, more than fossil fuels, at 51 to 53 percent. His calculations include the opportunity cost, from loss of oxygen cooling from deforestation, but also the exacting calculations of methane from cow burping, from cow’s waste, and from the fertilizers often using nitrous oxide, another climate heating substance. Methane is highly damaging to the atmosphere, and heats at 20 times the rate of carbon dioxide.

Farmers are often seen as good guys, local, small operators, and many of course are. However, agriculture is big business also, and agrifarms, industrial-sized companies are a different story, with a massive impact on our land and our world. Cattle raising in South America has seen massive deforestation for cattle raising, and their government claims it is their country’s turn to provide economic development to their citizens, as if putrefying the earth is ok, instead of leading a conversation and education on practical ways to farm that doesn’t harm the planet so heavily.

Question: During the podcast, you explained about the impact of cattle on planetary ecosystems. "Every cow weighs two tons. They drink 200 or so gallons of water everyday," you described. "It's a massive amount of resources that go to industrial animal agriculture." Do some of your audience members react emotionally to such statistics? If so, how do you respond to their concerns? (correction: it is 20-40 gallons of water per day, not 200. I used an inaccurate source.)

People are surprised to hear the impact of cattle, but one might expect raising thousands of such large animals would have a large impact. I think people just don’t think about this much, and much of the meat eaten in the U.S. is coming from Brazil. We need more media to tell this story, but likely would run into advertising conflict for some TV stations. Some of the movie star vegans could help immensely, and maybe some do–but have not heard about anyone really trying to do this in a major coordinated campaign way. We reached out to about 5 vegan actors, several years ago, contacting their agencies/staff to try to get some support, to come forward on this topic but found zero interest. We need to try again. Jane Fonda has been doing some talks on environment, but not focused on animal agriculture, but wish she were a vegan!! It is also known that the meat industry selling to the U.S. has launched multiple dis-information campaigns attacking plant-based meat.

Question: You offered the statistic during the podcast that "80% of the world's arable land only produces 20% of the food that is needed. And," you added, "so much of that is being used by cows." How do you, as a media creator, try to gently make transparent the impact of industrial animal agriculture with statistics like this?

Just keep repeating them, use them in articles, bolster our arguments with the true data of this impact.

Question: Carolyn connected the raising of cattle and methane emissions as she spoke on the podcast. "Methane and fossil fuels both have had a tremendous impact on the atmosphere," she said, noting that, "if we can lessen the consumption of red meat," we can better protect the planet. How does the platform of a podcast have the potential to influence audience understanding of topics like methane and cattle differently than other media options?

As I mentioned before, there is a younger audience interested in this topic, and just judging from my own daughters, they do listen to podcasts more than I do, so I think it is a platform that appeals to the very audience that also sees benefits, and has a propensity to both act favorably to the environment, via their own food choices, but also influence their friends at an age where healthy eating, weight control may be extremely favorable.

Question: Carolyn explained during the podcast that, "when we take down the rainforests in order to graze cattle, we are doubly devastating the planet. We are treating the soil in a way that is not protecting those ecosystems that live under the canopy. They are not absorbing the CO2." This is a position that you all at the Climate Diet seem to support. How might different people, though, understand this message differently? What are some possible approaches to meeting them at their knowledge level and helping them to understand the consequences of industrial animal agriculture?

I think it helps to just say the truth of the situation, but judge your approach based on the individual you are speaking to. We also do not try to turn people into vegans, our goal is to try to use data to tell the truth–I don’t create data, (well we do produce surveys using Survey Monkey) it is coming from scientists and experts—so I am just reporting, but we also do promote reducing meat consumption one day/week, and use a “Meat Down Pledge” to move people to a concrete action step. In addition, we pass out vegan snack food at community events and people love our vegan energy bars, so, at least some people are thinking about changing food habits.

Question: One of your podcast questions for Carolyn dug into a 2023 AP Survey that gave stats about trends toward less meat and dairy consumption. Checking for credibility is an important media literacy principle. How credible was this source, and how did you know?

I tend to trust a respected news source like the Associated Press that is used and paid for by subscription from many large newspapers and media companies around the world. I have worked directly for more than a decade with the Associated Press as a source to them, so I respect their integrity and goal of delivering accurate, useful and timely news to their media customers. They are a “cooperative” another favorable organizational construct of the members helping and owning the whole. I worked for the National Cooperative Bank, a congressionally chartered bank for 6 years, and they promote the cooperative structure, which can often produce better results for society than other forms of business. So AP works on behalf of its media owners.

Question: Carolyn spoke about how some consumers limit their red meat intake during daily meals but, occasionally, do eat meat. She offered, "We can make good choices as a regular habit in our everyday lives and be flexible in other times in our lives." Do you agree that it is important to offer audiences gentle pathways to reducing their animal consumption? If so, why?

I answered this above and that is Climate Diet’s approach–I think rigid adherence is not the best way forward to changing this transition, but our approach is to get people to start a habit by eliminating meat just one day per week. That is doable, and people don’t seem to see it as exceedingly difficult.

Question: Carolyn's summary during the podcast offered a hopeful lens on creating systemic sustainable change as Trump 2.0 was ready to take office. Looking back 18 months later, how has the climate of industrial animal agriculture, food production emissions, and food security changed in the US due to new regulations? What hope do you have, Jane, for a future of more sustainable food systems and diets?

Success can come to those who stand and wait.

References
Climate Diet: A program of sustainable Earth eating.
"From Crisis to Change: Empowering Climate Friendly Lifestyles with Carolyn Fortuna." YouTube. January 25, 2025.