Can becoming a vegetarian help save the planet?

 Going Vegan can Help Save the Earth

“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification,eutrophication, land use and water use.”  

-Joseph Poore, (Environmental Science Researcher, University of Oxford)

Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation,water pollution, and air pollution. Worldwide, meat and dairy production uses 83% of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, while providing just 18% of calories and 37% of protein With so many alternatives available, it’s easier than ever to make choices that help the environment. Take, for example, the vegan Beyond Meat Burger. Nearly two thirds of all soybeans, corn, and barley crops and about one third of all grain crops are used to feed animals, so reducing animal product consumption would make land used for feed production available for other uses.

Pollution and Environmental Racism:-

Hog and dairy farms produce enormous waste, which is stored in lagoons and then sprayed on fields. The Sierra Club (2017)9

 reports:

If waste is sprayed too often, it saturates the
soil and leaks into the aquifer and nearby rivers and streams. The practice also aerosolizes fecal matter, creating toxic particulates that get blown onto nearby homes, accompanied by a terrible stench that drives residents indoors. A majority of those homes belong to African Americans, who have had their property drenched in hog waste for decades and their wells polluted, too.

For 30 years, their complaints about the effect on their health and quality of life have mostly fallen on deaf ears at the [North Carolina] statehouse—making this a clear case of environmental racism with quantifiable human cost.

[Hog waste] comes over here just like it’s raining.That’s what we inhale if we’re outside, and it comes inside the house because you can’t keep that odor out. We don’t have cookouts or family get-togethers like we used to, because we don’t know when the odor is gonna come. When it’s really hot, it burns your eyes.

Summary:-

Animal agriculture is not a sustainable system—your environmental footprint can be drastically reduced on a plant-based diet!

how you don’t need to eat animal foods to be healthy

or to have high-protein, satisfying meals.

A 2018 study from the University of Michigan found that a quarter-pound Beyond Burger is nearly identical nutritionally to a quarter-pound beef burger but generates 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, requires 46% less energy,99.5% less water, and uses 93% less land compared to the production, packaging, and distribution of US beef.

Greenhouse Gases:-

Multiple reports have found that a vegan diet has the most potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.A Lancet report (2019) compared models of changes in food production and estimated reduction in greenhouse gases and found that a shift to plant-based diets could reduce food-related emissions by up to 80% by 2050.Vegan diets have the greatest potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions—by up to 25-55% (Journal of Cleaner Production, 2015).

Vegans have the smallest carbon footprint, while those whose diets are highest in meat have the largest—2.5 times that of vegans (University of Oxford, 2014).

Water:-

While 783 million people worldwide don’t have access to clean drinking water, animal agriculture uses nearly 1/3 of drinking water available (Water Resources and Industry, 2013).A 2016 study published in Science of the Total Environment compared the traditional Mediterranean diet with animal-based products, pesco-vegetarian diets, and vegetarian diets and found that vegetarian diets had the lowest water footprint—with a reduction of 30-53%.A systematic review published in Public Library of Science (2016) looked at a variety of common,sustainable diets compared to the standard Western diet. They found that vegan diets used the least amount of water, and that diet changes can reduce water use by 50%. This review also found that greenhouse gas emissions and land use could be reduced by as much as 70-80%.8

Land:-

Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of deforestation. The environmental impact of animal agriculture, including through “sustainable” methods, is much higher than plant production. A 2018 University of Oxford study showed that even the lowest impact meat and dairy products cause more environmental damage than the highest impact vegetable and cereal products. For example, low-impact beef uses 36 times more land than peas. The same study showed that if everybody stopped eating meat and dairy products, worldwide farmland use could be reduced by 75%—an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia, and the EU combined.