Militant vegan groups have been at it for years, pleaded the public to step away from the steak and embrace the veg. Environmentalists, on the other hand, have mostly shied away from such appeals. It wasn't until last January that Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, begged the world to "please eat less meat", acknowledging IPCC's former apprehension to make such a request: "This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it."

As the role of livestock production in global warming comes under scrutiny, the western meat eating habit is increasingly recognized as part of the problem. Even Mark Bittman, New York Times food columnist and a "meat-first" kind of guy began questioning our meat-guzzling ways and handing out tips for cutting back. He even published a vegetarian cookbook.

Regardless of such pleas, the average person in the developed world consumes around 225g (o.5lb) of meat per day. In the developing world, that figure goes down to 47g. However, global demand for meat is set to double by 2050 from the current 284 million tons, largely fueled by raising affluence in large developing countries like China, India and Brazil. These rampant rates of consumption are not without consequences.

Worldwide, livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all forms of transportation combined. Livestock occupies 30% of the worlds land surface, a large part of which is used for feedcrops such as corn and soy, plays a major part in deforestation, land degradation, water and fertilizer use and water pollution.

Searching for Solutions

On the one hand, technology can address part of the livestock emissions problem. In the Netherlands, for example, a pilot manure digestion project converts the methane from the waste of 3,000 pigs into electricity. The process reduces the farm's emissions, produces quality fertilizer and enough carbon credits to sell on European carbon markets.

In Denmark, it is now mandatory to inject manure underground rather than laying it on top of the fields, thus enhancing the fertilizing effect and prevents emissions from escaping. Elsewhere, scientists are attempting to produce feed that makes cows belch less methane. Not to mention the development of in vitro meat, made from cell cultures grown into tissue, which is apparently endorsed by PETA.

Regardless of what technological fixes we can find, the present trends of livestock production and consumption are simply unsustainable. Producing one pound of meat causes the emissions equivalent of 22 pounds of carbon dioxide, 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of  carrots. And although a vegan diet typically emits 1.5 tons of CO2 per year less than the average American diet, it should be kept in mind that the production method matters, even in the case of vegetables.

Greenhouse grown tomatoes, for example, generate more emissions than the same amount of chicken. Beyond the same old educating, bargaining and pleading, proposals to curb demand range from adding a “sin tax” on pork and beef and emissions labeling (as Sweden plans to implement next year).

However, sin taxes and labeling would be unnecessary if the price of a steak would simply take into account all the environmental costs of producing, rather than the subsidies injected into the agro-industrial complex and lax environmental regulations. Correcting these imbalances might even give sustainable ways of production a fighting chance.

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Warmed by What We Eat
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Image Credit:
JC Westbrook