If you know me, you know that I don’t try and push my dietary choices on others. Sure, I like to write about being vegan and vegetarian, but I feel that everyone should make their own decisions about what works for them. Yet, with all the attention being given to climate change right now, I just had to share this quote from the 2006 United Nations report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow.”
“Animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents. By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5% of the CO2.”
Why is this not being discussed, even among more progressive sources? It seems that, as a culture, we’re willing to change our transportation choices and habits, or at least think and talk about it. Given these figures, why wouldn’t we at least moderate, if not eliminate, our reliance on animal food products?
1 comment:
It is being discussed. Check out any locavore site, and you'll see pages and pages and pages of information regarding the fact that all petro-dependent, highly subsidized, large acreage, monoculture, agri-businesses are highly polluting, and totally unsustainable.
Barbara Kingsolver talks at length about such things in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and in fact, Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma really is just about that - how polluting and unhealthy agri-businesses and monoculture farming (even organic monoculture farming) are.
In fact, it was the health concerns surrounding agri-business that spurred the whole Locavore movement in the first place, but it is environmental concerns that have fueled it and grown it into a national phenomenon.
So, absolutely! Don't eat Big Macs, but if your choice is steak, choose the one from the local cow.
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