The 16th National Vegetarian week starts today, and it's not just animal welfare groups that are eager for people to swap their BLTs and steak slices for tofu and nut roasts. The typical British family emits 4.2 tons of CO2 from their car. Yet a whopping 8 tons of CO2 is accounted for by the production, packaging and distribution of the food they consume in the same time. Eating less meat, or giving it up all together, is a crucial step in bringing this figure down. So what better week to give it a go than this one?
Production of meat rose from 130 million tons globally in the late 1970's to 230 million tons in the year 2000. Whilst the availability of cheap meat has been gladly received by supermarkets and consumers, the environmental impact of our reliance on bargain priced meat is massive.
Methane emissions, partially caused by livestock digestion and animal manure, account for 17.3% of all green house gases in the atmosphere, and the clearing of wilderness for pasture reduces the planet's ability to absorb CO2. In addition, fertilizers and pesticides are energy-intensive to produce, and contribute almost entirely to Nitrous Oxide emissions, which count for 5.4% of all green house gases. Combined with the environmental impact of transport, all of these factors contribute to the fact that an affluent meat eating diet requires up-to three times as many resources as that of a vegetarian.
Vegan and vegetarian groups point out that it is totally inefficient to use land to grow cops which are not used for direct consumption by humans, but are instead used to feed dairy cows or livestock. With the livestock industry entirely responsible for just under 18% of world wide CO2 emissions (compared to 13% by the transport sector), they might just have a point.
However, consumers should not just be concerned with the effects that purchasing a pack of sausages or a couple of steaks will have on the environment, after all, a bag of spinach imported from the California to the UK is hardly environmentally friendly. Perhaps meat eaters should embrace National Vegetarian week by trying to cut back on the amount of meat they eat, rather than giving it up all together.
Back in 2003 the then-Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, challenged every one of his citizens to reduce their CO2 emissions by one ton each year. By eating meat free meals every other day, parking the car for 60 days a year and switching to cold water for each load of laundry, his government worked out that each person would be responsible for doing exactly that.
Whilst National Vegetarian week, and its sponsors, Cauldron, might have some way to go in convincing everyone to give up their pork chops and steaks entirely, it is clear that thinking about how much meat we each consume is a small and important step for us all to take in meeting the challenges of climate change.
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Posted under Articles, Environmental News
This post was written by Matthew Gammie on May 19, 2008