Meat: Eco-friendly?

Yet another reason (and a big one, too) why I am vegan:

Slate examines the “greenness” of our addiction to red meat:

Meat is not sweet, ecologically speaking. According to an extensive U.N. report from 2006, the livestock industry not only uses more land than any other human activity; it’s also one of the largest contributors to water pollution and a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than all the world’s trains, planes, and automobiles combined.

You can do a lot for the planet simply by cutting back your overall meat intake—food writer Michael Pollan recently suggested that if Americans went meatless one night a week, it would be equivalent to taking “30 to 40 million cars off the road for a year.”

As a general rule, red meat—beef, lamb, goat, and bison—are the worst offenders. A recent report for Defra, the British government’s environmental authority, compared common animal products across seven categories: use of energy, pesticides, land, and nonrenewable resources; and impacts on global warming, acidification, and eutrophication (a kind of water pollution in which excess nutrients lead to fish-killing algae blooms).

Beef and lamb got the poorest marks of all meats in terms of energy usage, global warming, and eutrophication. Beef also used the most land, had the highest acidification impacts, and came close to the bottom in the remaining categories. Lamb did better, though—in fact, it scored the highest of all meats in terms of pesticide and nonrenewable resource usage. All in all, chicken and turkey were the greenest meats surveyed.

Go veg, go green

(OP:thisiswhywefail/RB:bearslair)

Source: thisiswhywefail

97 Notes/ Hide

  1. randomreblog reblogged this from gkojaz
  2. gkojay reblogged this from gkojaz
  3. cyclopaedia reblogged this from thisiswhywefail and added:
    Meat is not sweet, ecologically speaking. According to an extensive U.N. report from 2006, the livestock industry not...
  4. tysonelder reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  5. primordialsoup reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  6. hanbanesty reblogged this from thisiswhywefail and added:
    Lesson of the day? Just skip the meat.
  7. clothedinsky reblogged this from wideeyedhippiechild
  8. klily reblogged this from wideeyedhippiechild
  9. zombieparade reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  10. theslyestfox reblogged this from bearslair and added:
    Yet another reason (and a big one, too) why I am vegan: Slate examines the “greenness” of our addiction to red meat:...
  11. vanduker reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  12. bearslair reblogged this from tank-commander
  13. nosleepwithoutdreams reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  14. tank-commander reblogged this from thisiswhywefail and added:
    Go veg, go green
  15. sanatgersappa reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  16. lackofwords reblogged this from thisiswhywefail and added:
    Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is an excellent book. Everyone should read it. Definitely a huge eye opener the...
  17. rakalak reblogged this from tillapia and added:
    Next time someone asks me why I don’t like meat I should say the above business.
  18. kevingisking reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  19. oblivionbaby reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  20. clapclapclap reblogged this from thisiswhywefail
  21. old-school-epiphany reblogged this from thisiswhywefail and added:
    No shit. I’ve known that for a loooonnng time. Meat is bad for your health, the environment, and animals.