Fog City Green Tip of the Day:

Become a vegetarian or eat less meat

Photo courtesy University of Kansas

April 12, 2007

What is more responsible for Global Warming: Your car's exhaust emissions, or the meat that you eat? Believe it or not, it's the meat that you eat.

Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment: Livestock.

Just how enormous is this problem? According to a new report, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (Livestock's Long Shadow), there are 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo in the world and 1.7 billion sheep and goats. The effect of so much livestock in the world has resulted river and waterway pollution and increases in deforestation to create livestock pastures.

Livestock production is one of the driving forces behind the burning of the Amazon forest.

According to the report, the international meat industry generates as much as 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world's planes, trains and automobiles combined.

If you eat less meat, or switch to a vegetarian diet, you can shrink your greenhouse gas footprint by up to 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

You can do something about Global Warming! Eat less meat, or better still, become a vegetarian.

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