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Shradha Merchant writes:
Global Warming Culprits – Cars or Cattle?
Once a week, if all of us skipped one meal of chicken and substituted it with veggies, what difference might it make to global warming?
Tons …do you know we would all be able to save so much carbon dioxide! Just like taking half a million autos off the roads!
And what difference might such a switch to a veggie meal make to us – almost nothing. 1 meal, once / week, just one. How difficult is that?
I didn’t even know that my non-vegetarian diet was aggravating global warming by adding 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide! And I used to frown at poor smokers because they were polluting the environment. Look at me, if I become a vegetarian, I’d save 1. 5 tons of CO2!
Studies have shown that if Americans consume just one less hamburger every week, they will already start making a difference to global warming.
I recently read a report from the UN FAO (United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization) in which they stated that more greenhouse gases were emitted by cattle than by cars. Cattle, reared for meat, don’t just have a slightly larger carbon footprint, they produce a whopping 18% more CO2 than cars (FYI, all of us humans produce only 3% of this gas combined)
So when you eat meat, you encourage people to rear these cattle. The net result on global warming? Cattle produce 18% more greenhouse gases than cars, including methane that is more dangerous than carbon dioxide.
Further, land is degraded because forests need to be felled in order to make space for such cattle farms and provide fodder for them. The trees help produce oxygen and combat global warming.
Added to this vital water resources are reduced since the cattle need it for drinking and cleaning purposes.
Cattle consume much needed non-renewable resources which are used for the maintenance, upkeep, transport, selling, buying, storing, cooking, etc
As it turns out, a vegetarian diet is not only healthier for you and me, but it is also more energy efficient. In independent studies, 5 types of diets were compared and the veggie one was the least harmful for global warming.
So the question that is in everyone’s mind is – can I really make that much of a difference to global warming just by changing my diet?
Check out this out –
Your carbon footprint will be much smaller. Just the same way in which you produce lesser global warming when you drive a sedan and not an SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle)
The most dangerous greenhouse gas is methane (more than carbon dioxide). The #1 producer of methane all over the world are animals, specifically those reared for producing red meat.
If you don’t stop eating meat, you will help double meat production and consumption in just another 40 odd years. Which means you are specifically contributing towards global warming with every bite of meat you take?
And the final word is, isn’t it much easier for you and me to just stop eating meat– than to get cars off the roads, mobilize governments, form committees, penalise corporates, keep global warming watchdogs, organise international eco-summits and so on?
So from today, for the environment, to stop global warming, just stop eating meat!
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Count me in! Am gonna be a veggie once a week. If thats ALL its gonna take, then why didnt someone tell me about that before!
Lower carbon footprint, kindnes to animalskindness to self due to weight loss, carb / cholesterol reduction, preventing pollution, ah, see that halo around my head
Actually, think about it, becoming veggies isnt such a bad thing after all. Have always being toying with that idea and now that I have such a great goal in front of me, switching to a vegiie meal once a week is a GREAT idea.
We have 7*3 = 21 meals a week. Of those, 02 can be non-veg and 1 can be veg.
I’d like to propose Thursdays lunch as vegetarian. If Americans all have a veggie lunch on Thursday, then that will be our first step to prevent global warming.
What say, guys?
Comment by Sandy — September 9, 2009 @ 5:58 am
Thats ridiculous. Sounds like a dictatorship – Thurs veggie day!
Next we know, we’ll be fined for eating non-veg on Thurs or we might starve if we want to eat a non-veg lunch because no restaurant in America will serve meat that day!
One meal a week is reasonable but no dictats pl that it should be this day or that meal.
Let everyone eat a vegetarian meal just because they BELIEVE!
See, am almost always a veggie because I have high cholesterol. Am sure there must be millions of people like me out there who are veggie OUT OF CHOICE – animal lovers, health conscious, and so on.
And let one more group join the cause of vegetarianism – environmentalists and the ‘greens’. Welcome to the club, I say!
Comment by Vegan — September 9, 2009 @ 6:03 am
It is of common knowledge that Eggs and Chicken have Nutritional benefits over other foods, but it is a little known fact that the entire Poultry Industry is helping to fight global warming in a very big way. It is also helping the economics of nations by making food more affordable to people. Let me explain how.
First, approximately 50% of the poultry feed consists of ingredients like rice brokens, wheat brokens, De-oiled Rice barn, Sunflower Oil cake, De- oiled soya, De-oiled groundnut cake, De-oiled rapeseed meal etc., these ingredients are byproducts of grain processing or after oil extraction and is not used for human consumption. However, they have good protien and energy values.
If these byproducts like broken rice or De-oiled rice barn are not used up by some means, then the price of rice would go up. If the byproducts such as Sunflower oil cake & groundnut oil cake are not used then the cost of extraction of oil (sunflower oil, Groundnut oil) will be met by increasing the price of cooking oil. Moreover, these byproducts would have to be dumped in landfills causing pollution to our precious air, water and land resources.
Poultry industry helps subsidise the cost of grains and cooking oils for the entire population by using these ingredients in the production of nutritious eggs and chicken meat.
All these above ingredients are used in production of poultry. One kilogram of poultry feed (constituting of these byproducts) is getting converted to seven to eight nutritious eggs in the table egg industry. Similarly, one kilogram of poultry feed is getting converted to 750 grams of white meat in the broiler (chicken meat) industry. Moreover, the poultry litter is used as a cheap valuble organic manure inplace of expensive chemical fertilizers to grow new crops of grains, fruits and vegetables. Poultry waste is also used along with other ingredients as a substrate for growing mushrooms.
If you consider country chicken, an average hen produces about 50 – 60 eggs a year consuming about 50 Kgs of locally available ingredients. In the organised sector, a hen typically produces 280 – 300 eggs on average by consuming about 40 – 42 Kgs of feed in a year. It is evedient that from a productivity point of view also, poultry industry provides the maximum output utilizing minimal resources.
Thus, poultry industry as a whole operates in a sustainable manner and is a forerunner in the cause of global warming.
Comment by Balaji.P.B. — March 8, 2010 @ 2:39 am