Interest in vegan food and its associated health benefits has been booming across the rich world. A global retreat from meat could have a far-reaching environmental impact.
By 2050 the world’s population could approach 10 billion – and around 60% more food could be needed to feed everyone. The environmental impacts of the food system are daunting its responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions and uses about 70% of all freshwater resources, and it occupies about 40% of the Earth’s land surface.
Food rated emissions could increase to 50 percent by 2050 and fill up the total emissions budget that we have in order to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
Interest in vegan food has been booming across the rich world. A major study has put the diet to the test – analyzing an imagined scenario in which the world goes vegan by 2050. If everybody went vegan by 2050 we estimated that food-related greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 3/4.
Cows are the biggest emission contributors. Bugs in their digestive system produce methane and deforestation for their pasture releases carbon dioxide – these gases warm the planet. If cows were a country, they’d be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter.
“Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
“On general principles the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable. It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarian habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton, cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals.”
“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”