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Go green! Reduce, reuse and recycle! Save electricity, save the trees, save water and we’ll save our planet! We have heard of these slogans many a time and yes, too often. Can we really fight climate change by simply doing all these acts?
Debates have been going on forever to urge the human race to take a step back and reflect on our destructive carbon footprints, but few environmentalists and politicians ever talk about the solution. Solutions to reform the ice shelves, solutions to put a halt to the catastrophic effects of climate change, and solutions to guarantee the survival of the human race are one of the many things that we rarely hear from these “heroic” activists.
How can we, as individuals, effectively reduce our carbon footprint to near zero? Well, it’s as simple as ABC. Plant a couple of trees each, use renewable energy and most importantly, reduce meat consumption or go on a full vegan(animal-free) diet. In any case that you are still kept in the dark from this surprising fact, let me reiterate: Dietary choices have, by far, the most impact on our environment.
According to FAO’s 2006 “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report, the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global(the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined). It alone accounts for 9% of CO2 emissions, 65% of Nitrous Oxide emissions(trapping 296 times more heat than C02) and 35% of CH4 emissions(23 times more effective in trapping heat than C02).
“Don’t eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper — that’s how you can help brake global warming”, said Rajendra Pachuari, the head of the United Nation’s Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change(IPCC). “This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.”
Shockingly, an equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed every minute, much of it to create more room for farmed animals. A whopping 80 percent of the world’s soy crop and 60 percent of corn crops are used to feed farmed animals. It is hugely inefficient to feed crops to farmed animals instead of eating the crops directly ourselves; it takes up to 10 kg of grain to produce just 1 kg of animal flesh. Relate this to world hunger and you’ll bridge the connection.
By going on a plant based diet(even if you drive a non-hybrid car), you are actually more environmental friendly than a meat-eater on bike! You could also save up to 4kg of carbon dioxide emissions per animal-free meal you take instead of, say, a plate of chicken rice.
Join us in fighting climate change beginning with diet change. You could do so much more for the environment by deciding what’s on your dinner plate. Let your forks and spoons work the eco-magic! Adopt a meat-free day once a week and you’ll be healthier and so would our planet! For more information, please keep a lookout for future events by SAVE Food4Thought and refer to our website.
Excellent advice!
If people were to take the first step of regularly adopting a vegan diet just one day per week then the detrimental effects of factory farming would be reduced by a large percentage. Showing people manageable steps they can take towards a mutually desired outcome is the way to change the world!
well written, i always knew the green movement is more of an commercial attempt to gain hype but little else. To quote George Carlin, ” We’re not saving the Earth, we’re saving ourselves. Even if it becomes inhabitable the Earth wont be dead, we will”. Kinda tells you that the green movement is limited by our taste buds and unwillingness to compromise a silly luxury.
thanks for this article. well-written i have to say. but in the same vein we can add that we should not have children to not contribute to global warming. so many things are suggested for lay people like us to contribute to the abatement of this global warming. not that i’m passe over it but would you many really give up a whopper or a prosciutto di parma for the thought that it would lessen global warming? again another “taxation” incidence on humble consumers like us! hehehe
Well, if you go deep into the ways things are, a lot of the changes done actually is attributed to the green revolution in 1970 and also the change in stance for agriculture farming.
I’m not saying that its a good thing, but it definitely comes due to massive increase in food (you can argue that hey, so much food yet unable to feed live humans? But think about how are food transported and how can wastage occur in some places yet not sent to other places? like aids to victims?). The massive amount of food produced has huge surplus to allow us to decide whether to eat or not. Livestock now has opportunity to be grown, and is less a luxury(previously we had less cash to spend on other areas) now due to the scales of economics.
I’m also not saying that i’m pro the ways things are now, but its all about maths (calculating how much do we really need) versus arts ( meaning of choice to us?) and the irrational behaviour exhibited countless times of even the smart people (who may have a low EQ?)
Hi Pragmatist (same as author, no?) I think this article is right in many ways. I have to say that you have so many sweeping generalizations (and I’m not gonna harp on that!).
My point is, as a consumer whose demand for food is income inelastic, price inelastic, and cross-price inelastic, the ‘incidence of taxation’ of decreasing quantity demanded is primarily to the consumers. The entailing consumer surplus decrease is more than the decrease in producer surplus. Look up what that means…
Could you explain the economics in lay-man terms please? I did econ at A levels but can’t remember any of it :/
Well i understand that consumer demands are inelastic (meaning the rate of change in demand in food is less than the price increase. Of course, price itself would place a burden on consumers as producers always pass the increasing price towards the consumer (that is what you mean right?).
You brought up another point that is money. So is money the root of all evil or the abuse of money (being lazy to save the environment but instead work a bit more for the extra cash, pushing profits in exchange for the impact on the environment, focusing on the present instead of the future?) the cause of environmental pollution? I would state my case to be the abuse of tools. Its in human nature to resist work and focus on able to do less work than more work (simplication of machanization etc, etc innovation) but always at a cost. Its a zero sum game, or a “thought up process of increase (economics)”, not a spare thought of where we are taking them from (nature? environment?) but focus on cost. Remember the world is not utopia.
hi jainita, it’s a long explanation better spoken than written.
pragmatist… once again you have lots of sweeping statements but far be it from me to correct them in a school online newspaper.
i never said anything about money. hello, i quoted the word taxation because it can be in the form of anything, as you have eloquently elaborated.
of course the world is not utopic for assumption-ridden social science called economics to work, but you’re counter-point is off-tangent. i never talked about the root of all these evils (that would be another essay-long comment post). there’s a reason why i said that The entailing consumer surplus decrease is more than the decrease in producer surplus.