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A new post at Change.org’s Animal Rights blog answers the question, Will Eating Less Meat Help Stop Climate Change? with a resounding YES.
Most interesting to me is the second portion, where the author rejects the myth that “Animals can be raised in a way that is eco-friendly, and people can buy local meat to reduce transportation emissions.”
Key concepts, with my comments in italics:
- “In the average American diet, transportation of food from producer to retailer has been shown to account for a mere 4% of a food’s carbon footprint, while over 80% of the impact from food comes from the production itself–primarily from meat and milk.” Want to go local? Great! Plant a community vegetable garden.
- “with so many cows being raised in cold climates that freeze over in the winter, grass-feeding is not a year-round option.” Arid climates that don’t naturally sustain grass pastures have an even worse problem in that regard.
- “A typical vegan diet emits only 0.14 tons of CO2 per year, compared with 2.19 from an omnivorous diet.”
- “To receive more information on shifting towards a vegan diet, visit www.vegkit.org.” Or tryveg.com, veganoutreach.org/starterpack, or goveg.com.
It kind of reminds me of the article at Humane Myth: Aren’t “humane” animal products more sustainable? which says:
- “Regardless of the style of production, from the smallest scale farms to the largest industrial operations, the level of greenhouse gas impact per unit of animal products created is going to be in the same catastrophic range.”
- “the production of a diet based on on meat, milk, and eggs uses several times more energy and water, and creates more toxic pollution, than a diet based on grains, vegetables and fruits.”
- “Producing ‘humane’ animal products requires at least double the amount of land required for the industrialized style of farming”
- “as more wild lands are converted into “humane” farm land, more and more free-living animals will be displaced or killed, and more species will be driven to extinction.”
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