Last week a new report from the United Nations
urging nations to reduce meat and dairy consumption to combat climate change
was leaked.
According to a draft of the report obtained by Reuters, global warming growth is on course to
exceed 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit), which would
exceed the most stringent goal set in the Paris agreement by around 2040. The report did state that countries could keep
warming below this dangerous level if “rapid and far-reaching changes were
made.
Bill Hare, climate scientist and climate analytics
director, said:
This IPCC report shows anyone drawing from published papers that there are big differences between 1.5 and 2 degrees warming in both natural and human systems. Two degrees warming and the tropical reefs have basically no chance—1.5 degrees, they have a small to modest chance of survival.
Hare suggests many ways countries can reduce
their carbon emissions, a major one being cutting back meat and dairy
consumption. But this isn’t the first time reducing consumption of animal products
has been suggested as a way to help the planet. A recent study from researchers
at the University of Oxford found that ditching animal products could reduce your carbon footprint by 73 percent. In
fact, researchers concluded that if everyone went vegan, global land use could
be reduced by 75 percent. This reduction would be comparable to the size of the
United States, China, Australia, and the whole European Union combined. Let
that sink in.
Similarly, a recent report from Farm Animal
Investment Risk and Return found that the meat industry is jeopardizing the Paris climate agreement
by failing to properly report its emissions, despite being the single largest
contributor to climate change.
Raising animals for food produces more
greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, planes, and other forms of
transportation combined. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, carbon dioxide emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global
human-induced emissions, with beef and milk production as the
leading culprits. In fact, even without fossil fuels, we will exceed
our 565-gigaton CO2e limit by 2030.
Clearly there is no such thing as
“sustainable meat, and plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs take
a mere fraction of the resources to produce as
their animal-based counterparts.
But a vegan diet isn’t just good for the
planet—it also spares countless animals a lifetime of misery at factory
farms. Pigs, cows, chickens, fish, and other farmed animals suffer
horribly. From birth to death, these poor animals are caught in a nightmare:
cruelly confined, brutally mutilated, and violently killed.
So what are you waiting for? Join the millions
of people helping protect farmed animals and the planet by switching to a vegan
diet.
Click here to get started, and click here
for our Pinterest page with hundreds of vegan recipes!