Growing up my best friend became a vegan in 4th grade. A vegan? What’s that? How could you have a lifestyle that doesn’t involve ice cream, cheesy pizza, or even baked cookies that contain eggs? When I was young me, along with many of my fellow classmates didn’t understand why someone would choose to not eat food that seemed to have absolutely nothing wrong with it, not to mention was deliciously scrumptious. My friend, as an animal lover, didn’t want to be a part of anything that hurt or imposed cruelty on any type or animal. Little did she know as a fourth grader that she was actually changing her lifestyle to act in one of the most effective ways to stop global warming and be environmentally friendly, which is to simply not eat meat.
Meat industries are one of the leading sources of the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. In 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Not to mention that raising animals for food is an incredible waste of resources. An area of rain forest the size of seven football fields is destroyed every minute to make room for grazing cattle, but each vegetarian saves 1 acre of trees every year. The raising of cattle for food leads to overgrazing of grasslands and deforestation is partially caused by the clearing of forest to grow feed for livestock. This land could be used to grow food for humans, an option that is better for the most people and much more sustainable. We waste food that we could feed to starving third world countries to feed livestock the livestock that sustains much smaller portion of people. About 20 percent of the world’s population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone.
If we could possibly solve world hunger through just a shift in eating habits, do you think people would go for the idea of giving up meat and fish, food that is part of every culture? Could America go for the idea of veggie burger barbeques? Would Japan be able to shift to no fish sushi? Maybe asking the world to become completely vegetarian is a bit of a stretch but I do think people being conscious of the amount of meat they eat or even just being conscious of the possible damage they are causing to the environment by supporting meat industries is a step in the right direction for creating a more sustainable, environmentally friendly world.
- Danielle
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
