Gidon Eshel | |
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| Occupation | Geophysicist |
Gidon Eshel is an Americangeophysicist best known for his quantification of the "geophysical consequences ofagriculture anddiet".[1] As of 2017, he isresearch professor atBard College inNew York. He is known for his research on the environmental impacts ofplant-based diets.[2]
Eshel studiedphysics andearth sciences atTechnion – Israel Institute of Technology, before obtaining aMaster of Arts (MA) degree,MPhil, and aPhD onmathematical physics atColumbia University. His Ph.D. thesis at Columbia was titledCoupling of deep water formation and the general circulation : a case study of the Red Sea.[3] Eshel was then apostdoctoralNOAA Climate & Global Change (C&GC)Fellow at theHarvard Department for Earth & Planetary Physics, a staff scientist at theWoods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and also a faculty member of department ofgeophysics at theUniversity of Chicago.[4] Eshel also advises Bluefield Technologies on livestockmethane emissions.[5]
Gidon Eshel's early research found that the mean American diet that is rich in animal products such asred meat releases more carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere than alacto-ovo vegetarian, poultry-based,pescatarian, orvegan diet.[6] Compared with a plant-based diet, the mean American diet results in 1,500 kilograms of CO2 per person annually.[6] He has campaigned against beef consumption ascattle grazing increases greenhouse gas production and negative environmental impacts such as wildlife displacement,soil erosion and damage to river systems.[6][7] He has commented that "save going all-out vegan, the most impactful change that you can make is to ditch beef altogether and replace it with poultry—just beef to poultry".[6]
Recent examples of his work compare severallivestock andland andwater use,fertiliser-basedwater pollution, andgreenhouse gas emissions perfactor unit of product. His highest cited paper is "Forecasting Zimbabwean maize yield using eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature" at 445 times, according to Google Scholar.[8]
In 2019, it was reported in theScientific American that Eshel and his colleagues published findings in theNature journal which found that "if all Americans switched away from meat, it would eliminate the need for pastureland and reduce the amount of high-quality cropland under cultivation by as much as 25 percent."[9] His research has shown that by switching to a plant-based diet it would eliminate about 80 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture in the United States.[10]
Eshel supportsplant-based diets and has described his own diet as "mostly vegan".[11]
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