cutting back on meat to combat climate change; here's what smarter people have to say

I'm working on a wee wittle project that is examining food choices as a battleground for combating climate change. Yes, it does, in fact, feel supremely good to be using my brain for a green cause once again.

Anyway, the evidence I'm finding that food selection is a major way to shrink our environmental footprint is ASTOUNDING. The carbon-cost of beef is enormous! So I thought I'd share some snippets. None of these are my words, but they're the most important ideas of what I've stumbled across. This is also a convenient working bibliography for this project. Two birds, one proverbial stone.

"Eating Less Meat Could Cut Climate Costs" by Jim Giles

"Cutting back on beefburgers and bacon could wipe $20 trillion off the cost of fighting climate change. That's the dramatic conclusion of a study that totted up the economic costs of modern meat-heavy diets.

The model takes into account farmland that is used to grow extra food to make up for the lost meat, but that requires less area, so some will be abandoned. Millions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, would also be saved every year due to reduced emissions from farms.

Beef is particularly damaging. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released from flatulent cows and by manure as it decays. Furthermore, to produce a kilogram of beef (2.2 pounds), farmers also have to feed a cow 15 kg of grain and 30 kg of forage. Grain requires fertiliser, which is energy intensive to produce."

Here is a link to the full academic study that was the foundation for this article, Climate benefits of changing diet

"10 Eye-Opening Facts Every Meat Eater Should Read by Elizah Leigh on www.thisdishisvegetarian.com

1) While transportation systems around the world are responsible for producing 15% of our planet’s overall greenhouse gases -- which, in light of our 7 billion global population isn’t a terribly surprising figure -- global livestock collectively produce a whopping 18% of our planetary carbon emissions. Incidentally, they also plow through 1/3 of our world’s grain crops...hungry little critters....

3) Of the 41 million beef cattle slaughtered each year in the United States, the average consumer eats a full 62.4 pounds in the span of one year. The 500 calories of food energy in a one pound steak requires 20,000 calories of fossil fuels, the majority of which is consumed through the crop cultivation process. (As an interesting and slightly related 'aside', half of America's entire water supply is reserved expressly for the bovine population. Glug glug glug.)...

"Sizing Up Our Food's Nitrogen Footprint" by Emily Gertz

"When measuring our food's environmental impact, carbon isn't the only important element to consider. Calculating a food's "carbon footprint" can tell us how much climate-altering greenhouse gas we emit when growing and transporting it, but estimating the meal's associated nitrogen pollution accounts for the excess nutrients that create oxygen-depleted dead zones in our oceans...

...Red meat topped both footprint lists, making it the food with the greatest impact on both climate change and eutrophication: Eating a pound of beef creates about 22 lb of greenhouse gases and about 2.5 oz of nitrogen pollution. Cereals and carbohydrates had the smallest footprints, with each pound of food releasing only 3 lb of greenhouse gases and almost no nitrogen pollution.

But many foods had diverging impacts on the climate and coastal ecosystems. Dairy products landed at the bottom of the carbon footprint list with carbohydrates, but sat second only to beef in eutrophication potential, releasing 1.1 oz of nitrogen pollution for every pound of food produced.

And that dairy-produced nitrogen pollution adds up: According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, the average U.S. American consumes 10-times as much dairy foods as beef each year, which translates into about 42 lb of nitrogen pollution per year compared to almost 9 lb released from beef. Meanwhile, people's annual dairy and beef consumption emits about the same amount of greenhouse gases."

"Which Is Better for the Environment, Local or Vegetarian?" from www.eatanddrinkbetter.com

"The most significant way to green your food choices is by cutting the meat or animal products as much as possible, especially the red meat.

“Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish,” the authors write. “Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than ‘buying local.’”

In the end, the researchers found that cutting the meat and animal products or even just cutting back on the red meat one day per week is more significant than buying all your food from local sources."