Go Vegan! Reduce Emission of Greenhouses
Mbonisi Tshuma, 23, eats meat almost every day of the week because he says a meal without meat is just not good enough.
“A meal without meat never tastes good that is why I eat meat everyday - meat is good, my friend,” he said.
Asked whether he would consider becoming vegetarian, Mbonisi said he would do so only if a gun were pointed to his head.
Like Mbonisi, many people around the world eat meat because it provides convenience, pleasure and in an age-old habit. Little do these people know that adopting a vegan diet could be one of the best ways to respond to what one writer refers to as arguably two of the world’s most urgent social issues: climate change and the food crisis.
If people eat less meat, there will not only be more food to go around the world but also the cutting down of emissions that are a direct product of meat production.
Yet, eating meat is associated with affluence and in parts of the world experiencing economic booms such as Asia, there is increased consumption of meat at the expense of vegetable-based diets.
Eating meat itself is an old human habit, and like many old habits it is very difficult to break. According to researchers, humans evolved beyond their vegetarian roots and became meat eaters at the dawn of the dawn of the genus Homo, around 2,5 million years ago.
The UN’s top climate scientist says changing the old human habit of eating meat can be a way of combating global warming.
Shockingly, UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouses gases into the atmosphere than transport.
“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18 percent of the world’s total gas emissions,” the BBC quoted Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Moreover, grain used for meat production (particularly in developed countries) could be used to feed millions of poor people around the world.
According to the World Watch Institute meat consumption is an inefficient use of grain, and the continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals. This creates competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world’s poor.
“The FAO figure of 18 percent includes greenhouse released in every part of the meat prodyction cycle – clearing forested land, making and transporting fertilizer, burning fossil fuels in farm vehicles, and the front and rear emissions of cattle and sheep,” reports the BBC.
Statistics show that producing to feed farmed animals requires vast amounts of water – it takes about 300 gallons of water per day to produce food for a vegan, and more than 4,000 gallons of water to produce food for a meat eater.
The BBC further reports that “the biggest source globally of carbon dioxide from meat production is land tenure, particularly of the topical forest, which is set to continue as long as demand for meat rises.”
Pachauri says that he is not in favour of mandating eating less meat around the world, but the fact of the matter remains, eating less meat is both good for human health and can help to save the environment.
“If we’re honest, less meat is also good for the health, and would also at the same time reduce emission of greenhouses,” said Pachauri.
Check out this article re: top 3 priorities for preparing a “green” meal, along with a ranking of CO2e emissions per serving for various meats: http://www.ecohatchery.com/diet
To see how your own diet impacts your carbon footprint, try this calculator: http://www.ecohatchery.com/calculator