According to VegNews, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey issued a proclamation last week urging residents to eat more plant-based foods as a way to combat climate change after President Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate agreement.
The proclamation states:
If each American affirmatively chose to eat plant-based food at just one meal per week, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off U.S. roads.
The Minneapolis mayor isn’t the first elected
official to urge constituents to ditch animal products. Earlier this year the mayor of Park City, Utah, announced that he and his wife
were going vegan and encouraged the town’s residents to join them. Several politicians have adopted a plant-based diet,
including U.S. representative from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, former vice president Al Gore, Brooklyn borough president Eric L. Adams,
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.
Eating vegan foods is a great way to help
protect the planet. In fact, a report published last week by GRAIN and the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy analyzes the world’s 35 largest meat
and dairy companies and concludes that they’re on track to surpass the oil industry as the world’s
biggest polluters. The report reveals that the world’s top five meat
and dairy companies are already responsible for more emissions than ExxonMobil,
Shell, or BP.
What’s more, a recent report from Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return, known
as FAIRR, found that the meat industry was 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 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.
There is no such thing as “sustainable meat,
and vegan alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs take a mere fraction of the resources to produce as
their animal-based counterparts.
But going vegan 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 gruesomely
killed.
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!