Researchers have linked dietary data from over 55,000 individuals with data on the environmental impacts of the foods they eat. The team, from the Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) project at the University of Oxford, found that the dietary impacts of vegans were around a third of those of high meat eaters. They also saw a 30% difference between high- and low-meat diets for most of the measures of environmental harm.
@Blackmist no, I don’t think veganism will save the world on its own. No single solution will… but veganism will be part of the solution. Animal farming contributes about 10% of the green house gasses, so it’s not an insignificant amount.
The world could ban office work in favour of remote work tomorrow. Eliminating the daily commute for a large portion of people would be a huge win fighting gas emissions. They can then repurpose those empty skyscrapers as lab grown meat factories.
Even there, the 10% (and I’ve seen figures between 8% and 15%) is mostly going to be from the extra fossil fuels used in the production of it, growing the corn, etc, that feeds them, transporting the feed, transporting all the livestock and meat around, refrigeration… Aside from the livestock breathing and farting, it’s nearly all power.
@Blackmist it’s my understanding that two thirds of the greenhouse gasses produced by animal farming is from burping/farting. Even if we could clean up the costs of production, transportation and energy, we’d still need to massively reduce the number of animals.