I gave a short and kinda provocative talk about climate communications at B.U.'s inaugural Media Innovation and Social Impact summit. I posted it on my free Substack, which is called Emissions; I haven't emitted much yet but please sign up, I'm planning to start. open.substack.com/pub/michaelg...

A hill I will die on is that this is a stupid reason to go to the moon.

I know it's hard to keep up with all the insanity but it's really outrageous that Trump is giving Argentina a $20 billion bailout to prop up its right-wing president and some hedge fund bros at the same time he's ending foreign aid for the global poor.

None of the big Dem winners - Spanberger, Sherrill, even Mamdani - talked a lot about the climate. But their wins are all good for the climate! Maybe climate activists should think about this before yelling at Dems to talk a lot about the climate.

The lesson of the elections, once again, is that Democrats can’t just be against something. They have to be very very against something.

My first choice would’ve been Adams - NYC looks great these days! - but it’s crazy that Schumer never endorsed the D nominee. The Ds are gonna need goodwill from lefties, this was such a pointless stand to take.

BAY AREA! I’ll be at Stanford Wednesday to talk about food and the planet with the brilliant scientist David Lobell. Then on to Boston Friday and Austin Sunday. Here’s the Stanford event: events.stanford.edu/event/stanfo...

Dick Cheney got George W. Bush to break his promise to regulate carbon emissions, and began turning climate into a strictly partisan issue. He was always loyal to fossil fuels and that’s a huge part of his legacy.

BAY AREA! I’ll be at Stanford Wednesday to talk about food and the planet with the brilliant scientist David Lobell. Then on to Boston Friday and Austin Sunday. Here’s the Stanford event: events.stanford.edu/event/stanfo...

Seven Republican states have banned cultivated meat, including my so-called Free State of Florida. What happened to free markets and free competition? Since when do politicians get to tell me what to eat?

Climate hawks (like me!) should listen to the Deciding to Win/Searchlight/Yglesias warning that climate talk turns off swing voters. But here’s some popular stuff to talk about: - Solar - Clean air (even Trump talks it up!) - Denial is dumb - Banning renewables is bad

WE ARE EATING THE EARTH chronicled how Tim Searchinger dismantled the science behind the biofuels industry and carbon farming industry. I regret to report that he's now taking on the forestry industry: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I didn't even know WE ARE EATING THE EARTH made The New Yorker's list of the best books of the year so far. www.newyorker.com/best-books-2...

This is really touching. Mark Easter, who wrote a book about regenerative ag and disagrees with me about some fundamental stuff, went out of his way to emphasize a bunch of things he admired about my book before getting to his polite disagreement. yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/10/the-...

Northwestern! I’m speaking on campus today: planitpurple.northwestern.edu/event/634089

Since I’ve been whining about the left: It’s really dumb that Schumer and other Dem leaders haven’t endorsed Mamdani. He’s the nominee, it’s NYC, if you want a big tent you have to show you mean it.

More room for the rest of us! www.commondreams.org/news/nyt-gaza

TODAY, please join us at Relish Works Chicago for an evening with award-winning journalist and NYT bestselling author @mikegrunwald.bsky.social as he presents his latest book, We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. partiful.com/e/HYP2nDeX6Q...

Thread from the great editor of a great outlet dedicated to reporting on industrial ag. Roundup may be “the center of the controversy” but it’s not the problem!

Wesley Smith is a social conservative who doesn't agree with me about much...except that facts ought to matter. We had a great chat about food and climate, the blind spots of the left and right, and why so many humans hate to grapple with inconvenient truths. humanize.today/podcast/mich...

“Agriculture is really our biggest environmental problem.” A nice overview of my hot takes on organic, grass-fed, and other fake solutions. Props to @envdefensefund.bsky.social for standing by the science when a lot of green groups are following the zeitgeist. worth.com/sustainable-...

CHICAGO! I'll be downtown to talk about our food and our planet on Tuesday evening, at an event sponsored by @paulsoninstitute.bsky.social. I tried to be polite when the book came out, but these days I'm feeling spicier, please check it out! Info & RSVP here: partiful.com/e/HYP2nDeX6Q...

Beyond Meat’s sizzle has fizzled. It’s gone from $250 to $2 a share. Because people don’t like it as much as animal meat! But that doesn’t mean they’ll never eat fake meat. The cow is a mature technology; biotech burgers can still get better and cheaper and even healthier.

“Every farm, even the scenic ones with red barns and rolling hills, is a kind of environmental crime scene.” @mikegrunwald.bsky.social tells Philippa Nuttall that, to fix our food system, we first need to stop romanticising agriculture:

CHICAGO! I'll be downtown to talk about our food and our planet on Tuesday evening, at an event sponsored by @paulsoninstitute.bsky.social. I tried to be polite when the book came out, but these days I'm feeling spicier, please check it out! Info & RSVP here: partiful.com/e/HYP2nDeX6Q...

Grandpa, why do they call it The West Wing when there’s only one wing?

In this episode, I go meat shopping with @mikegrunwald.bsky.social, sample cattle feed, and confront some hard questions about what's really "best" for the planet. Maybe my favorite one yet! www.marketplace.org/episode/2025...

New report finds agriculture caused 86% of deforestation over the last decade. In other words, WE ARE EATING THE EARTH. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Al Gore used to complain about Ivory Soap environmentalists who refused to accept 99.44% purity. I don’t think Ivory Soapism has worked out particularly well for environmentalists, or for progressives generally.

From the Department of As I Was Saying, a little coda to my essay about Trump’s bailouts for soybean farmers and Argentina’s president: www.forbes.com/sites/sarado...

Follow @mikegrunwald.bsky.social for all your agricultural clickbait needs!

“We pay farmers to farm soybeans, pay them more to convert some of those soybeans into inefficient fuels, pay them even more when they can’t sell soybeans because of our trade war, then pay extra to bail out one of the countries replacing them in the marketplace.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/o...

My new NYT essay is about the essence of Trumpism: Bailing out farmers who can’t sell soybeans to China because of his tariffs, while bailing out Argentina so it can sell more soybeans to China. It’s the economic equivalent of pardoning pals and prosecuting enemies. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/o...

Why is Impossible Foods still at Burger King and Starbucks, while Beyond Meat has plunged from $250 to $2 a share? Because consumers like Impossible’s GMO soy better than Beyond’s pea protein. Taste is king. The dogs gotta like the food.

Chicago people! I’ll be talking about the earth, particularly the eating of it, on October 28 at the Merchandise Mart. Register here, Chicago takes food seriously right? partiful.com/e/HYP2nDeX6Q...

I'll have more to say about this soon in print but even after Trump posts a meme of himself literally dumping shit on American cities, does anyone think Democrats will stop rhapsodizing about farm country as the heartland of real American values?

This “community kitchen” is a food pantry with expensive ingredients and labor. And of course the foodies want the feds to pay for it. If you don’t follow the debates over “good food,” you wouldn’t believe how dumb they can get. sentientmedia.org/community-ki...

I know, I’m a bore about how agriculture is eating the earth. Well, it’s drinking the earth, too. Water shortages aren’t caused by lawns or AI; they’re caused by the farms that use 70% of our fresh water.

So cool: @marketplace.org’s How We Survive pod’s new season from @amyscott.bsky.social is about the eating of the earth! Episode 1 features cultivated chocolate, WildType salmon, and, uh, me. www.marketplace.org/episode/2025...

Energy is now a political problem; we know the right answers. Food is still an analytical problem; we barely know the right questions. That’s why my book’s hero is an analyst. He figures out that we’re eating the earth, and he’s trying to figure out how we can eat less of it.

We shouldn’t keep throwing money at rich farmers with no strings attached. Agriculture is an important manufacturing industry, and we should help farmers manufacture even more food, but we should insist they do it with less mess.

Sri Lanka tried banning all synthetic pesticides and fertilizers - yields crashed, they had brutal food shortages and food riots, the government fell and the president had to flee…hmm actually maybe we should give that terrible idea a shot.

Everyone: ROUNDUP IS KILLING YOU! Me in NYT: There’s no evidence of that. Letters to NYT: Well, the science must be biased, and anyway Roundup is killing milkweed and bacteria even if it isn’t killing us, and in any case you sound like an agribusiness shill. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/o... 🤷‍♂️

The natural-food ideologues who righteously denounce GMOs probably don't spend much time thinking about how @pcronald.bsky.social has genetically modified rice crops to help smallholder farmers survive floods in Southeast Asia.

Twinkies aren’t unhealthy because they have GMOs in them. They’re unhealthy because they’re Twinkies! GMO crops are safe, and gene-edited crops can help make more food with less land. There’s no need to freak out about them.

I keep getting asked when the audio version of WE ARE EATING THE EARTH is coming out. It's out! Get it here: www.audible.com/pd/We-Are-Ea...

It's good to acknowledge when people you disagree with do good things so: RFK Jr. & the MAHA movement deserve a lot of credit for pushing to get junk food out of schools. I like their push to get junk food out of the SNAP program, too. Junk food is awful, our tax dollars shouldn't support it.

We need agriculture, because we need to eat. But the biggest problem with agriculture is that it’s eating the earth. Two of every five acres of land are now farms or pastures. We’re losing a soccer field worth of forest to agriculture every six seconds.

This article is dumb. Food has a big environmental impact whether it’s ultra-processed or not. Agriculture has a big environmental impact whether it’s industrial or not. What matters most is what you eat and how efficiently it’s grown. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Food accounts for a third of the climate problem… Agriculture uses 40% of the earth… @mikegrunwald.bsky.social tells Philippa Nuttall why we need to fear the farm: “Holy shit! This is a big deal and people don’t know about it!”