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Wed, 05 Apr 2006

Help Reduce Global Warming by Going Veg!

From Nava Atlas, Veggie Talk blog reprinted from her Vegetarian Kitchen newsletter

I truly believe that global warming is one of the most critical issues of our time. Recently, I heard an interview with the president of the Ad Council on the radio. This is the organization that brings important issues to the public eye with simple slogans like 'Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.' Their latest campaign is on global warming.

Curious, I went to that subsection of their web site, Fight Global Warming. While their suggestions to reduce energy consumption in the home and on the road won’t hurt, I am continually perplexed as to why mainstream environmental organizations ignore the one thing people can do to help reduce global warming: Cut down on, or give up, meat and other animal products.

Since you are a subscriber (to Veg Kitchen newsletter), I am assuming that you already have given up or cut down on meat, and in effect, you are doing more for the earth than most. Good for you, and pass along the message!

I quote from EarthSave: "By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture. Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2; arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products.

Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today."
Read the entire report at Earthsave International

SV Comments

I’m also perpetually puzzled by environmentalists who simply ignore the vegetarian side. I zipped through the Earth Save article Nava mentioned - I loved the suggestion at the end of an environmental tax on meat, similar to that on cigarettes!

Veggie Revolution by Sally and Sara Kate Kneidel came out last fall, and here's a great Sally & Kate quote: "Cow farts are made of methane. Sounds silly - how can intestinal gas have such a major effect? An adult cow weighs more than half a ton. Consider that there are more than one and a half million cows worldwide. That's a whole lot of rear ends crankin' out gas. One single molecule of methane can trap as much solar heat as twenty-five molecules of carbon dioxide, so it's very powerful as a greenhouse gas."

The Global Warming article at Earthsave goes into the methane gas issue in more detail.