The Hewitt Times

This article is part of a series by Sarah Rodeo ’13 called “Musings on the Meat Industry.” To view more posts, browse here.

Let me guess: upon hearing the phrase “go green,” you probably immediately think, “It’s important, but I’ve heard it all before.” And I bet you’re (understandably) even tired of constant dictations such to “participate in mass transportation by taking the bus instead of that energy-wasting taxi,” or to “buy a hybrid car instead of that gas-guzzling SUV!”

But here’s a new twist on environmental issues that I’m sure you’re less familiar with, even though it’s just as serious. The practice of eating meat emits more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation in the world combined. Chew on this: eating one pound of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving an SUV 40 miles.

It’s been reported that livestock emissions make up for a devastating 51% of all global carbon dioxide emissions. Every year, the 1.5 billion cattle in the world release millions of tons of methane, which retains 20 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Lastly, all of the animals that make up the meat, egg and dairy industries emit 65% of the world’s nitrous oxide, which retains 300 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

But the issue doesn’t stop there. These millions of tons of waste and feces released from livestock have seeped into our land and our natural waterways. This has terribly polluted the fish that we eat and the food grown in our agricultural fields. You know what this means, right? Your nights out at the local steakhouse and your summer barbecues have a direct link to global warming. Americans are eating meat and increasingly harming the environment by doing so as if it were a norm of society. Though many people, organizations, and institutions are very concerned with what they call “going green” and being “environmentally friendly,” barely any of this takes into account the problematic nature of eating meat. So having steak dinner meetings with no paper plates, cups, or utensils doesn’t quite do the trick. The question now becomes, how can we make a change?

If everybody in the United States ate a vegetarian diet for 7 days, 700 megatons of carbon dioxide would be saved. This is the statistical equivalent of taking every car in the United States off the roads. On a smaller scale, replacing every chicken dish with a vegetarian dish would be the same as removing 500,000 cars from America’s roads. Consider that the next time you think about what you’re going to have for dinner.