Am I ready to give up my steak to save the planet?
No CommentsI have asked myself this very question so many times, trying to avoid to really look for an answer. I have been knowing for a long time that beef production is strictly related to release of greenhouse gases. It is actually hard not to know that, when many of the most prominent environmentalists are vegetarian and keep telling us that reducing meet consumption can significantly reduce the emission of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere. Although I am certainly not a heavy consumer of red meat, I feel sort of guilty for I have been trying to ignore the issue, keeping myself uninformed about the extent of the problem. It is however harder and harder to keep doing it, when people of the caliber of Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, who received the Nobel Peace Price in 2007 together with Al Gore, also a known vegetarian, has repeatedly urged us to change our lifestyle and not to eat meat. So, when the February issue of the Scientific American magazine got in my mailbox, the article The greenhouse hamburger by Nathan Fiala, caught my attention. I have found out something that probably most active environmentalists and vegetarians already know, but for me was a real surprise. The production of half a pound (about 230 grammes) of potatoes emits about 0.13 pound of CO2 equivalent, which corresponds to driving a car for 0.17 miles (about 200 meters). However, the same amount of beef meat is equivalent to 7.4 pound of CO2, which corresponds to driving a car for 9.81 miles (about 16 kilometers). These numbers take into account the whole process of meat production, from fodder growing, to irrigation, energy consumption for livestock housing, transportation and refrigeration. I am seriously impressed by these numbers. Instinctively, I would have thought that driving a car for 16 kilometers would be worse than eating 250 grams of red meat. Chicken is certainly more environmental friendly, since it corresponds to driving your car only for 0.73 miles (about 1.2 kilometers).
Of course one might be tempted to quit driving a car to compensate its own meat consumption “Sorry mom! I had a nice steak for dinner yesterday night, I cannot drive my car to come visiting you today. Do not take it personal, I am just trying to save the Planet!” could be next generation excuse to avoid visiting their old parents.
For those of us already living without a car however, it seems almost inevitable to find a solution to compensate our meat consumption and decrease our ecological footprint. Or simply give up eating meat.
Tags: carbon dioxide > ecological footprint > meat
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