Good Taste: Sunflowers drenched in tomato soup and climate activism

Like many of you, I did not have “climate activists throw tomato soup on Van Gogh” on my 2022 Bingo card, but this year has been full of surprises. On Oct. 14, two members of the group Just Stop Oil splashed cans of tomato soup on Van Gogh’s famous “Sunflowers” painting in an escalation of their protests against the British government’s oil and gas projects.

Phoebe Plummer, one of the protestors involved in the act, explained that the group knew the painting was protected by glass, ensuring the soup would not damage one of Van Gogh’s seminal works. Their intention was to garner attention and start a conversation about government support of fossil fuel companies in light of our ongoing climate crisis.

Twitter was quick to jump into action as users offered their own criticisms and judgments of this act of civil disobedience. However, nobody can deny that this has kickstarted an important and timely conversation.

As climate change continues to decimate our planet, international governmental actions frequently support companies whose practices worsen the crisis. Annually, international governments offer between $775 billion and $1 trillion in oil, gas and coal subsidies.

Fossil fuels release harmful greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and increase the already unsustainable rate at which our planet is warming.  These subsidies incentivize companies to continue extracting coal, oil and gas and dissuade corporate investments in clean, renewable energy.

Though there are countless interpretations of the soup thrown on “Sunflowers,” I find it interesting to consider how it implicates our collective diet in the fight against climate change.

In the words of Jason Hill, a professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems at the University of Minnesota, “Food systems are sort of the dark horse of climate change.” From land clearing and deforestation to cattle’s methane-producing digestion, farming and ranching practices are responsible for nearly a third of our global carbon dioxide emissions.

Our current climate change goals are based on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose research has shown that holding warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels will limit climate change’s most devastating impacts.

To even dream of meeting this goal, we need drastic changes to our food systems. Studies have shown that fossil fuel emissions from food production alone will cause a climate increase that exceeds the 1.5 degree limit in about 30 to 40 years.

Curbing food system emissions requires a multi-faceted approach. We need to reduce production and consumption of foods that release the most greenhouse gases while also introducing more sustainable farming and herding practices.

While meat and dairy production emit the highest kilograms of greenhouse gases per kilogram of food produced, it’s unrealistic to expect the world to go vegan. Collective diet is a result of personal choice and cultural norms, so global diet changes require both individual action and government intervention. While individuals must make the decision to invest in plant-rich foods, government subsidies can lower the sticker prices for such foods to incentivize consumers.

Rather than pouring billions of dollars into fossil fuels, governments can more effectively allocate that money towards a push for plant-rich diets and a cleaner food production system. While a diet change is necessary in reducing industrial farming’s impact on climate change, it alone is not enough. 

Agricultural practices and climate change form a positive feedback loop. Techniques like deforestation for farmland, use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and cultivation of flooded rice paddies emit a variety of planet-warming greenhouse gases. In response, global warming’s intensive weather events reduce crop yields and introduce new pests and weeds, forcing farmers to use even more intensive, greenhouse-gas-producing practices to meet global food demands.

Crop rotation, integrated pest management and no-till planting can reduce farming’s impact on climate change and improve long-term crop yields. With government support for environmentally conscious, sustainable agriculture, we can break this cycle.

We can spend weeks debating the efficacy of climate activism, but we can’t deny the need for change. For years, we’ve believed that we could innovate ourselves out of the mess we’ve made, but it’s becoming more and more clear that the problem is far more complicated and widespread than we imagined. Our solution must be just as complex and far-reaching as climate change itself.

Climate change is not a problem we can afford to ignore. If there is anything we can learn from sunflowers drenched in tomato soup, it is the need for immediate, transformative climate action.

Reena Somani is a graduate student writing about food and its social implications. Her column, “Good Taste,” runs every other Wednesday.