Pollution Climate Change Holocene Deforestation Population Acidification Y Not Freakin' Recyclable
How will we combat climate change in 2019. I’m guessing you know that a diet which is plant-based WILL make you healthier by reducing the chances of you becoming obese and getting diseases like heart disease and diabetes. You might also have seen the research that demonstrates there’s another valid reason to consumes meals which are meatless more often. By filling your plate with plant-based foods instead of animal-based dinners, you can help save planet Earth.
Nature journal published a study in October link to this . They discovered that because of overpopulation and the gluttonous gorging of high in red meats and processed foods Western diets, the food system could increase the environmental pressures by 90% by the year 2050.
That’s only 31 years away!
“As we are exceeding basic planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity beyond which Earth’s vital ecosystems could become unstable,” according to study author Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford.
“If the whole world, which continues to grow, eats more like us, the impacts are staggering, and the planet simply can’t withstand it,” said Sharon Palmer, a registered dietitian nutritionist and plant-based food and sustainability expert in Los Angeles who was not involved in the new research.
“It could lead to dangerous levels of climate change with higher occurrences of extreme weather events, affect the regulatory function of forest ecosystems and biodiversity … and pollute water bodies such that it would lead to more oxygen-depleted dead zones in oceans,” Springmann said.
How big a problem is what I eat, I mean does it make much of a difference in something as huge as global warming.
What we put on our dishes means something, about one-quarter of all the global climate change issues we are witnessing can be attributed back to what we eat on a daily basis. This is greater than and worse than all the cars on the planet. It’s double global warming pollution as automobiles have created.
A study of the connection between climate and Diet at the University of California Davis, they are tracking how the way we produce food creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. With that data, the team has crunched the numbers to figure it out. So precisely what quantity carbon pollution is produced by different foods and various diets? Do you know? However, we need to. Many folks feel quite helpless when it comes to climate change like we can’t make a difference. Research is showing us that our personal decisions really can have a significant impact.
Lets look at everything that went into making a single serving of beef, you ended up admitting around 330 grams of carbon. That’s the same as driving a car three miles. Now, lets say you choose chicken instead, this more than a drop in emissions, how about switching to fish and you see the number go down even more.
Now, look at veggies they also have a cost lets be honest. Be found entirely for lentils. So why does beef and other red meat too, for that matter, pack such a powerful punch to the planet.
Livestock accounts for 15 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Does that sound kind of low to you, let’s consider it’s about equal to transportation. We’re talking every vehicle such as cars, trucks, tractors, motorbikes, planes, trains and ships on the planet combined. YES, COMBINED! This is partly because beasts of burden animals such as ruminant animals like cows and sheep, get gassy and the methane they produce is at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Don’t’ forget a lot of land fertiliser and about a billion tons of grain to feed all that livestock, and you could feed three point 5 billion people with that same amount. Nothing those of us that are enlightened don’t already know. What about all the people who don’t know this simple fact?
Were we directly eating these grains ourselves. It would eliminate a lot of the Carbon Dioxide two that’s emitted from a diet. Its clear as day that meat has a large carbon load. Remembering that not all livestock is raised equally in parts of the world, for example, certain farms and ranches are working to raise livestock in ways that help restore the land, and they are experimenting with ways that soil grasslands can be used to keep carbon pollution out of the air. However, even these sustainable, responsible ranches will tell you we’re probably eating way too much meat. We all have family members who are horrified at the thought of no chicken being served. A vegetarian or vegan meal is like a horror movie to them, lol!
Countries like the USA have one of the highest meat footprints per capita. Vegan is the way to go for the least impact on the planet, but it’s not that much different concerning emissions than say a vegetarian diet. Moreover, it has emissions just like everything else. The environmental impact of the Mediterranean diet is pretty similar to Vegan and vegetarian diets. It’s a lot less meat massive than what say Brazilians or Americans are used to.
Let us be clear reducing 90 per cent of your meat intake is more important than eliminating all of your meats. We don’t all have to be begging and starving. We also need to make our meat production more sustainable. We don’t all even have to be vegetarian to combat climate change in 2019. If we can reduce our intake every little bit helps. If you can bring it down a lot, you can improve the climate a lot.
If we all just switched to a Mediterranean diet, we could resolve 15 per cent of global warming pollution by 2050 if everyone were to move toward it.
That is the same as taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets regarding vehicle emissions each year. So that kind of a footprint is a huge deal, but let’s think you desire more meat than the Mediterranean diet recommends. Even cutting down your portion size to the doctor. Recommended four ounces can reduce your emissions by half. That’s huge. The doctors are telling us, humans are eating about twice as much meat as we need for a healthy diet. Some of us are listening to our medics. In the last decade, there’s been an 18 per cent drop in the amount of red meat we eat.
So much of the advice that you’re already being told are right for you also happen to be good for Mother Earth.
What we eat is a big part of the climate conundrum we are all trying to solve. An electric car or putting solar panels on our house is not affordable for most of us, but we all eat every day, and these choices we make can add up to massive numbers, and since meat has a pretty big carbon load, we need to be thoughtful about how much we eat.
The ideal diet to combat climate change – KXLY.
