Saving the planet with meatless Monday?

As people look for the easiest ways to reduce their environmental impact, many are learning that eating less meat could be the answer.

A key claim underlying this idea holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry. Yes, animal agriculture affects air quality and climate change, and yes, animal husbandry has led to the mass deforestation of rainforests worldwide, but no, avoiding meat is not the environmental panacea we’ve been led to believe.

A 2009 analysis by the Worldwatch Institute asserted that 51 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from rearing and processing livestock, and yet according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the largest sources of emissions in 2016 were electricity production, transportation and the manufacturing industries, with agriculture accounting for a total of 9 percent. Who’s wrong?

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a study titled Livestock’s Long Shadow, which stated that livestock produced 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—it’s this study which led to the belief that cattle methane is causing global warming. The report’s senior author, Henning Steinfeld, has since corrected the report’s assertions that livestock was doing more to harm the climate than all modes of transportation, but the myth has persisted.

The problem was the FAO analysts used a comprehensive life-cycle assessment to study the climate impact of animal husbandry, but a different method to analyse transportation. Livestock had every factor considered, including emissions from fertiliser production, deforestation, growing feed, and direct emissions from animals from birth to death.

But when they looked at transportation, the climate impacts of the manufacturing and assembly of vehicles, and building and maintenance of roads, bridges and airports were overlooked. Rather, they only considered the direct exhaust emissions from finished cars, trucks, trains and planes. A distorted view, indeed.

In its most recent assessment report, the FAO estimated that livestock produce 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, which is still a large amount.

Unfortunately, subscribing to meatless Mondays or even going vegan is unlikely to make a significant difference to the climate. One recent study found that even if Americans eliminated all animal protein from their diets, they would only reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6 percent. This is at the detriment of our health too. Yes, it’s possible to get all the micronutrients and macronutrients the human body needs from a vegan diet, but it’s more difficult (and we haven’t even begun to consider the environmental impact of health supplements) but it’s hard to make a compelling argument for the people around the world who rely on animal protein to give it up entirely.

Of course, a 2.6 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is not to be sniffed at, and if the easiest lifestyle change to make is reducing your meat intake, do so. But vilifying meat eaters for being more detrimental to the environment that the entire transport sector needs to stop.

Climate change demands urgent attention, but claiming that abandoning meat could save the planet simply trivialises the issue. Saving the planet needs research—not media click-bait suggestions.

Let’s maybe not ignore the 1.45 billion of the world’s vegetarians who are actually the poorest people on Earth and would like nothing more than to eat the incredibly nutrient-dense meat. ■

Sustainability

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