If you want to fight climate change, reducing beef consumption or completely stopping it would be far more effective than purchasing an electric car or cancelling your holiday plans abroad. Check this article.
The Economist: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the global food system was responsible for 21-37% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production alone is responsible for 8.5% of global emissions - nearly as much as for all plant-based agriculture combined!
Beef is uniquely carbon intensive among food products. Its annual emissions are 4.3 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent, more than the all the emissions of the European Union (3.29 gigatonnes) and Japan (1.1 gigatonnes) combined, or else more than Africa (1.4 gigatonnes) and India (2.6 gigatonnes) combined! That's just crazy.
Add to that cow's milk, which account for 1.6 gigatonnes of CO₂-e and cattle become the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer after China. If we were to ban all cattle farming worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions would suddenly drop by 11.5%.
But cows aren't just bad news for climate change. Cattle farming is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon Forest and is responsible for the extinction of hundreds of species every single year. In my eyes this is even worse than global warming. Extinction is forever. There is just no going back, unlike CO2 emissions which should eventually diminish with enough collective efforts. By then tens of thousands of animal and plant species will have disappeared from Earth's surface, just so that people can eat beef instead of other meats than taste similar like ostrich or kangaroo, which don't emit methane and don't cause deforestation.
But the real alternative is lab-grown meat (including fish), which will undoubtedly prove healthier as it won't contain environmental toxins, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals or microplastics. It's also cruelty free and low in carbon emissions.
The Economist: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the global food system was responsible for 21-37% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production alone is responsible for 8.5% of global emissions - nearly as much as for all plant-based agriculture combined!
Beef is uniquely carbon intensive among food products. Its annual emissions are 4.3 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent, more than the all the emissions of the European Union (3.29 gigatonnes) and Japan (1.1 gigatonnes) combined, or else more than Africa (1.4 gigatonnes) and India (2.6 gigatonnes) combined! That's just crazy.
Add to that cow's milk, which account for 1.6 gigatonnes of CO₂-e and cattle become the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer after China. If we were to ban all cattle farming worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions would suddenly drop by 11.5%.
But cows aren't just bad news for climate change. Cattle farming is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon Forest and is responsible for the extinction of hundreds of species every single year. In my eyes this is even worse than global warming. Extinction is forever. There is just no going back, unlike CO2 emissions which should eventually diminish with enough collective efforts. By then tens of thousands of animal and plant species will have disappeared from Earth's surface, just so that people can eat beef instead of other meats than taste similar like ostrich or kangaroo, which don't emit methane and don't cause deforestation.
But the real alternative is lab-grown meat (including fish), which will undoubtedly prove healthier as it won't contain environmental toxins, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals or microplastics. It's also cruelty free and low in carbon emissions.
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