Studies by North Carolina State University and United Poultry Concerns (U.S) literature reveals us this alarming mathematics. A person's non-vegetarian diet is aggravating global warming by adding 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide every time he has a meal. These studies have also shown that if Americans consume just one less hamburger everyweek, they will already start making a difference to global warming. A British e-mail recently leaked to the press has revealed plans by the government to encourage the United Kingdom to give up eating meat. The surprising fact in this is not the initiative itself, but the reasons behind it — it’s not for health reasons that the government wants the British to stop eating roast beef, but to prevent global warming.
According to a report by the University of Chicago, a vegetarian diet can do more to counter global warming than switching from a regular car to a hybrid model. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that the international meat industry generates more greenhouses gases than all transportation methods of the world combined. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tonnes of methane a year and about 85 per cent of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock, and the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock worldwide releasing methane is enormous.
Shifts in diet, lowers greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than shifts away from the fossil-fuel-burning technologies that emit carbon dioxide. Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the UN report on meat-free
diet said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."
Cattle consume much needed non-renewable resources which are used for the maintenance, upkeep, transport, selling, buying, storing, cooking, etc. As it turns out, a vegetarian diet is not only healthier for all of us, but it is also more energy efficient. In independent studies, 5 types of diets were compared and the veggie one was the least harmful for global warming.
So the question that is in everyone’s mind is – can I really make that much of a difference to global warming just by changing my diet?
Check you ecological footprint today @ http://www.myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/ . If you are a non-vegetarian, you could find for yourself how much of incremental increase you make in the ecological footprintfigure by continuing as a non-vegetarian.
The most dangerous greenhouse gas is methane (more than carbon dioxide). The #1 producer of methane all over the world are animals, specifically those reared for producing red meat. If you don’t stop eating meat, you will help double meat production and consumption in just another 40 odd years. Which means you are specifically contributing towards global warming with every bite of meat you take?
As a conclusion, isn’t it much easier for you and me to just stop eating meat– than to get our vehicles off the roads, blame governments, organise committees, penalise corporates, organise international eco-summits, keep global warming watchdogs and so on?!
Let’s GO GREEN and SAVE EARTH!!!
