Cows and the Climate - Eat less meat and save the world?

The following article was written by Fremantle based environmentalist and Vegan, Lucinda. It raises issues about the environmental cost of what we eat. Whether you are a die hard vegan, a vegetarian a omnivore or even a pure carnivore, it's an interesting read that we could all take something from.

Cows and the Climate
There have been so many articles about the catastrophic ramifications of global warming and how to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in the media lately. Like the oft–quoted water-saving tip of turning off the tap while brushing your teeth, the tips for reducing climate change (changing light bulbs, turning appliances off stand-by,) make us feel like we’re being proactive without compromising our lifestyle rather than informing us of choices that we can make that make a genuine difference to the environment.

There is one thing we can do that will affect climate change a lot. Strangely, this isn’t mentioned much in the media, and I haven’t heard the government address the issue, maybe for fear of being ‘Un-Australian’ – because if people took notice, the ‘great Aussie BBQ’ would be changed forever and our meat industry (which expects to make $12.5 billion in the next financial year) won’t be happy.

In December 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation released a report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” stating that raising animals for food causes more greenhouse gases to be emitted than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world combined.
Livestock production is also a major cause of all environmental catastrophes confronting the planet; rainforest destruction, desertification, loss of fresh water, air and water pollution, acid rain and soil erosion.

So when it comes to saving the planet the most immediate action we can take is to eat less animal products. Surprisingly, it is more efficient to change your diet than to change your car. A vegan (someone who doesn’t consume animal products) produces approximately 1.5 fewer tons of CO2 from entering the environment than a meat-eater does. Converting from a standard car to an eco-friendly car saves about 1 ton. While it is important to use your car as efficiently as possible and make it carbon neutral, reducing our reliance on livestock makes a greater impact.
The media seems to focus on carbon dioxide as the only greenhouse gas of importance, but the fact is that methane is 23 times more powerful and nitrous oxide 296 times more efficient at heating the planet than CO2. Raising animals for food is one of the largest sources of CO2 and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

To quote Noam Mohr from Earthsave,
“In addition to having the advantage of immediately reducing global warming, a shift away from methane-emitting food sources is much easier than cutting carbon dioxide”.
First there is no limit to reductions in this source of greenhouse gas that can be achieved with little negative impact. In contrast, similar cuts in carbon dioxide are impossible without devastating effects on the economy.
Even the most ambitious carbon dioxide reduction strategies fall short of cutting emissions by half.
Second, shifts in diet lower greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than shifts away from the fossil-fuel burning technologies that emit carbon dioxide. The turnover rate for most ruminant farm animals is one or two years, so that a decrease in meat consumption would result in an almost immediate drop in methane emissions. The turnover rate for cars and power plants, on the other hand, can be decades. Even if cheap, zero-emission fuel sources were available today, they would take many years to build and slowly replace the massive infrastructure our economy depends on today.
Similarly, unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth.”

Cattle consume 14 times more food than they produce, take up 30% of the earth’s entire land surface and in the US water for their food crops use half the water supply. Cows are food factories in reverse. On a planet where one in six goes hungry, the grain fed to animals is in direct competition with food for the world’s poor.

It is easy to ignore vegetarianism in our society. There is such complacency with eating meat that it is rarely questioned, and vegetarians are dismissed as either hippies or radicals. Yet a British study recently revealed that children with a high IQ are more likely to become vegetarian or vegan when they grow up. Many of our most intelligent contributors to society have been vegetarian such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Albert Schweitzer, Sir Isaac Newton and Pythagoras in the past. The list of current famous vegetarians is extensive and ever-lengthening.

Even if becoming vegetarian doesn’t appeal to you, by reducing your meat intake you can still make a difference and if you don’t want to reduce your meat intake for altruistic reasons, think of your own health. Vegetarians are 50% less likely to develop heart disease than are meat eaters, and they have 40% of the cancer rate of meat eaters. Plus, people who eat meat are nine times more likely to be obese than vegans are, and more likely to develop impotence and diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease and asthma.

Every time we eat, our meal choice makes a difference, to the environment, to the animals, to poorer people. So the next time you sit down for a steak please consider that the choices that you make now affect the future. Think of the beautiful kids you know, what sort of world will it be when they’re your age. Think of what steps you can take to give all the children in the world a better place to live in.

(Gina's note: It is of course still worth continuing all the water and power saving changes around the home and office, as small individual changes still do and always will create a collective difference. Perhaps eating less meat, is something else we can consider too!)