The Mark 2010

A steak looks great on your plate, but getting it there is making a mess of the earth.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” – Albert Einstein

When I tell people that I’m a vegetarian, I often get odd looks. Originally, I was driven to vegetarianism by a general concern for animal rights, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that agriculture, and our choice of foods, has profound environmental implications. After almost seven years as an ova-lacto vegetarian (someone who won’t eat any kind of meat or fish, but will consume dairy products and eggs), I'm more convinced than ever of the soundness of my dietary predilections.

Like many people who have become environmentally conscious, I too recycle, switched my light bulbs to compact fluorescents, upgraded my home appliances to more energy-efficient ones, and contemplated buying a hybrid vehicle. None of these technologies and behaviours, however, comes close to the environmental benefits of adopting a vegetarian lifestyle.

Over the past fifty years, our taste for meat and seafood has increased dramatically. Since 1961 farmers produced four times more beef, chicken, pork and other meat, totaling 276 million tons by 2006, and the global consumption of fish has increased eightfold since 1950. The amount of land consumed by the livestock sector is staggering, and 26 per cent of the planet’s ice-free surface is devoted to grazing alone. When measured as CO2 equivalents the livestock sector is responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, which surpasses the transportation sector!

For the sake of our taste buds, our planet is being put under extreme pressure: billions of farmed animals produce massive amounts of manure, which generates greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. Our water supplies are becoming contaminated by agricultural run-off, our lakes are loaded with nitrogen, growth hormones, and antibiotics enter our bodies, and heart disease and certain kinds of cancer have reached epidemic proportions due primarily to a meat-based diet.

What makes this sad is the indisputable fact that meat consumption is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure good health. On a global basis, 2 billion people eat a primarily meat-based diet, whereas an estimated 4 billion people exist on a plant-based diet. In a study comparing these two kinds of diets, several thought-provoking facts are presented. For example, a plant-based diet requires significantly less land to produce food on a per capita basis than a meat-based diet (0.4 hectares versus 0.5 hectares).

In terms of energy inputs, the average animal protein production system requires 25 kcal of fossil fuels to produce 1 kcal of protein, whereas the energy inputs for vegetable-based proteins from grains requires only 2.2 kcal per 1 kcal of plant protein. In other words, the energy input to produce a unit of animal protein is more than 11 times greater than for plant protein! In another study where various climate, energy, and land-use models were examined, it was calculated that a transition towards a plant-based diet would have a dramatic effect on land use, and consequently allow up to 2700 million hectares of pasture and 100 million hectares of cropland to be abandoned and used as a large carbon sink to help slow down anthropogenically-induced climate change.

In short, if you want to make a profound difference for our planet, adopt a vegetarian diet. It’s healthier, it does not involve the needless slaughter of billions of animals because you like the taste of steak or shrimp, and it’s environmentally more beneficial than driving a hybrid car. The average meat-based diet generates 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide than a vegetarian diet with the same caloric intake. By comparison, a hybrid car produces about 1 tonne of carbon dioxide less than an equivalent sized non-hybrid. To me the choice is clear: vegetarianism is the simplest way to ensure a stable, secure, and sustainable food supply for a world in which population growth is a reality.