Reduce Global Warming: Go Veggie!

The single most important step an individual can take to reduce global warming is to adopt a vegetarian diet. This is because the largest contributor to global warming is the livestock industry, according to a United Nations study published in 2006 titled, "Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options."

“Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.”
– United Nations, 2006

In its report, the United Nations said raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. i

A similar finding came from a report by researchers at the University of Chicago, who announced that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Toyota Prius. ii iii

• When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. iv
  

• And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain. v
  

• Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons in 1999/2001 to 465 million tons in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tons vi
  

• Methane sources - not carbon dioxide sources - are the biggest cause of global warming today, and will continue to be for the next 50 years. The number one human-related source of methane worldwide is livestock: vii
  

• Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide levels have risen by 31 percent, methane levels have more than doubled
  

• Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year, about 85 percent from livestock digestion and 15 percent from manure "lagoons" used to store untreated feces
  

• Methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just 8 years, so reducing meat consumption quickly translates to cooling of the earth. In comparison, carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for centuries.
  

• Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing viii
  

• At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification ix
  

• The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops x

The facts are stated, now it is up to you to make the right choice.  Reduce global warming: go veggie.

i “Livestock a major threat to environment,”  United Nations FAO Newsroom, Nov. 29, 2006: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html 
ii “Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming? New Research Suggests What You Eat as Important as What You Drive,” ABC News, April 19, 2006: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1856817
iii “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming,” Gidon Eshel* and Pamela A. Martin, Earth Interactions, Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Dec. 12, 2005: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pdf
iv “Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns,” UN News Center, Nov. 29, 2006 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment
v Ibid
vi Ibid.
vii  “Report: Cars, Power Plants, Cause No Global Warming For Half a Century; Environmental Community Focusing on Wrong Activities in Fighting Climate Change,” EarthSave International (News Release), World-Wire, Aug. 29, 2005: http://www.world-wire.com/news/0829050001.html
viii“Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns,” UN News Center, Nov. 29, 2006 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment#
ix Ibid
x Ibid