Yes, PB&J is delicious, but my motives are environmental.

Global warming and carbon emissions are sexy these days.  Global warming wins Oscars and Nobel peace prizes.  Melting ice caps leave us with fewer adorable polar bears.  And, yes, there is the outside chance of cold chasing down the halls of the New York Public Library before Dennis Quaid can rescue us.

But here's the thing: global warming is not the problem, it is a symptom.  The fundamental problem is a lack of sustainability.  Any activity that relies on fossil fuels is inherently unsustainable, because you cannot infinitely use a finite resource.  Put another way: there's only so much stuff, and once you use all the stuff, there ain't no more. So you gotta find a way to not use it in the first place.

Transportation gets much of the global warming press.  Every news story about global warming has the stock footage of a traffic jam as seen through the hot, wavy air coming off the pavement.  There's something about the price of gas moving up and down that seems to drive people insane.  But in reality, transportation is only a part of the picture when it comes to a sustainable world. 

People use energy the same as cars do.  And just like cars, if the fuel that we use comes from an unsustainable source, then eventually we will be unable to find the fuel to keep us going.  Which, finally, brings us back to the peanut butter and jelly.
The calories that we talk about in food? They mean more than just figuring out how much time you need to spend on the treadmill after a trip to Whataburger.  Calories are units of energy, the same way that gallons of gasoline are units of energy.  And the same way that you can travel more efficiently by buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle, you can eat more efficiently by consuming more calorie-efficient foods.

Like all energy, the calories in food is a form of solar energy.  Plants convert energy from the sun into energy you can eat.  But when you eat beef or eggs, for example, you are using cows and chickens as an intermediate step in the process.  Cows and chickens are inefficient.  For every calorie of energy you get from beef or eggs, the cows and chickens are fed many times that amount.   And it takes energy to grow all that feed that we are wasting in the first place in the form of irrigation, transportation, processing, and the like.   Cows and chickens are the Hummers of the food world.

So, what if you want to eat a hybrid?  Take out the middle man and eat the feed yourself.   Vegetables, fruits, and grains are all incredibly more efficient.  (Nifty graphs and pictures on the subject can be found at the PB&J Campaign's website).

I'm not suggesting that you become a vegetarian.  While it would be more energy efficient than the current diet most of us live on, the optimal diet does include some amount of meat, poultry, and fish.  There are a myriad reasons for this, including land-use efficiency and health reasons, that are very complicated and boring; just know that the optimal amount is most likely alot less meat than you currently eat.

According to the PB&J Campaign, every lunch I replace with PB&J will save 2.5 pounds of carbon emissions.  By comparison, I save about 5 pounds every time I ride my bike to work (about 20 miles round trip).  I encourage everyone to take the PB&J pledge and see how much of an impact you can have on the environment.