Diet and Global Warming
by Alex Jack
Cutting back on animal food may do more to preserve the planet than buying a hybrid automobile, according to a new United Nations study on the impact of meat eating on the environment. Billions of cattle that are bred for hamburgers, steaks, and milk emit more greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming than all “the cars, planes, and other forms of transport put together.”
- “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global,” Livestock’s Long Shadow, the new Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) study, explained in early 2007. “The findings of this report suggest that it be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
- “Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency. Major reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost.” Among the findings in the four-hundred-page investigation are these:
- Global meat production will double from 229 million tons in 1999/2001 to 465 million tons in 2050, and milk will jump from 580 to 1.043 million tons. The environmental impact per unit of livestock production must be cut by half just to avoid increasing the level of damage beyond its current level.
- As the largest user of land, the livestock sector accounts for 26 percent of the ice-free surface of the planet, and food grown to feed cattle and other livestock takes one-third of the planet’s total cultivatable land. In all, livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all farmland and 30 percent of the earth’s land surface.
- The livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. “This is more than the transport sector.” This includes 9 percent of CO2 emissions, especially from deforestation to clear pastureland; 37 percent of methane (which has 23 times the global warming potential of CO2) especially from cattle flatulence; and 65 percent of nitrous oxide (296 times the global warming potential of CO2), especially from animal manure. Livestock are also responsible for nearly two-thirds of ammonia emissions, a main cause of acid rain.
- The livestock sector accounts for 8 percent of human water use, primarily for the irrigation of feed crops, and appears to be “the largest source of water pollution, ‘dead’ zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance, and many others. The main sources of pollution are from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for feed crops, and sediments from eroded pastures,” In the United States, livestock are responsible for 55 percent of soil erosion and sediment, 37 percent of pesticide use, 50 percent of antibiotic use, and one-third of nitrogen and phosphorus contamination of freshwater resources.
- Livestock account for about 20 percent of the earth’s animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the surface of the planet they occupy preempt what was once habitat for wildlife. “Indeed, the livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity, since it is the major driver of deforestation, as well as one of the leading drivers of land degradation, pollution, climate change, overfishing, sedimentation of coastal areas, and facilitation of invasions by alien species.” Some 306 of 825 imperiled ecosystems identified by the World Wildlife Fund reported livestock as a current threat. Of the 35 global hotspots for biodiversity singled out by Conservation International, 23 involve livestock production. The World Conservation Union’s Red List of Threatened Species reports that most of the world’s threatened species are experiencing habitat loss as a result of livestock production.
Source: “Cancer-Prevention Diet” by Michio Kushi and Alex Jack, p.179-180