When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food. The reason? In a word, beef. It’s incredibly inefficient to produce and cows release insane amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The more demand there is for beef, the more cows will be bred across the world. So, every time you take a bite out of a burger, you’re contributing to global warming in a way that’s almost as bad as driving one of those monstrous “I’m attempting to compensate for a small penis” mobiles.
Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada is one of a growing number of scientists studying the environmental costs of food, from the field to your plate, and he’s got a message for you: go veg, at least a few days a week.
From Yahoo News:
By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, they are getting a clearer idea of the true costs of food.
The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.
Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it’s responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
That’s because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.
People are also eating way more meat than they used to. Meat was once a luxury in our diet, and now – particularly in America – it has taken center stage in most meals. Because of growing demand, meat production is projected to double by 2050, so we’ll have to cut meat consumption nearly in half just to maintain current emissions levels. That’s simply not enough.
Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, says switching to no red meat and no dairy products is the equivalent of cutting out 8,100 miles driven in a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon.
So, that begs the question of you meat eaters… is that burger really worth it?
Link [Yahoo News]
Photo credit: Big-Limos.com
