Cut back on the meat and help save the climate

Photo credit: Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer

Kathy Freston, a “self-help author and personal growth and spirituality counselor”, has posted an interesting article over at the Huffington Post about the consequences of eating meat. Or in this case if we didn’t:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas–enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

The meat industry is a big burden for our climate as it is responsible for about one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, in the world. That means they currently pollutes more than the whole transport sector. The cattle release CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases. They also use a lot of land areas, around 25% of the earths total land area. And about one third of all farm areas are used to grow food for the cattle. And by year 2050 the meat production is expected to increase with 50%.

So just like Rajendra Pachauri, who currently chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002 and who recently won the Nobel Peace Price along with Al Gore, said “that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider.”

Simon Leufstedt is the editor of Green Blog. Simon has previously studied Global Environmental Justice and is currently studying Human Ecology and Political Science at Lund University in Sweden. Simon is also blogging over at the Swedish 350 website and working with the Swedish TckTckTck organisation. You can follow Simon on Twitter and on Google+.
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