From the Guardian:

“The global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods, a major new study has found.”

It’s already bad enough that producing food ‘in general’ is the cause of 1/3 of our emissions.

The fact that 2/3 of this 1/3 comes from eating animals, even though we usually eat animals well decorated (sides of vegetables, rice, pasta…) is what is known in the industry as ‘food for thought’.

“The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed, is responsible for 57% of all food production emissions, the research found, with 29% coming from the cultivation of plant-based foods. The rest comes from other uses of land, such as for cotton or rubber. Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions produced by raising and growing food.”

The low-hanging ‘fruit’ here is not hard to spot:

Perhaps the craziest fact from the report is that more than half of all cropland is used to grow food for the animals we eat.

The second craziest fact:

“To produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions.”

A word from one of the authors of the report:

“I’m a strict vegetarian and part of the motivation for this study was to find out my own carbon footprint, but it’s not our intention to force people to change their diets,” said Jain. “A lot of this comes down to personal choice. You can’t just impose your views on others. But if people are concerned about climate change, they should seriously consider changing their dietary habits.”

I find one way to move in this direction is to take a look in the mirror, and slowly but surely encode the fact that you (and I) are part of nature, not above it.

Accepting this perhaps scary fact might be the first step on a new path.