What's on your dinner plate?

Which is worse for global warming-the fork or the SUV? To many the answer seems obvious—we all know how fuel efficient those Dodge Durango and GMC Yukons are.

But the answer is actually the fork, at least when that fork is being used to eat a big slab of meat. Our meat-heavy western diet is heating up our climate in a big way. A 2006 United Nations report that received little media attention, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” examined how the industry impacted land use, water pollution, air pollution, and biodiversity loss.

It concluded that worldwide livestock farming accounts for 18% of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 13% from all the planet’s cars, trains, planes and boats combined. The majority of emissions come from deforestation, since the constantly increasing demand for meat means clearing land to create pastures or farmland for growing animal feed.

In addition, every day factory farmed animals produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the U.S.—87,000 lbs. of waste per second! Much of this ends up in giant pits in the ground or on crops, which eventually pollutes the air and groundwater.

So now we know what comes out of this industry, but what goes in? According to an E Magazine article “The Case Against Meat,” 4.8 pounds of grain is needed to produce 1 pound of beef. With so many starving people in the world, is it ethical to feed our growing desire for meat instead of feeding people? The article’s author says that the next time you sit down for an 8 oz. steak, think about “the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of you.” Overly dramatic? Maybe. But perhaps we need some dramatic imagery these days.

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that if the U.S. reduced its meat production by just 10%, it would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people. And what do meat producing companies respond to? Customer demand.

So my question is why more environmental organizations aren’t advocating vegetarianism or even reduced meat consumption as an environmental solution to everything from local water pollution to global warming. Hopefully this will change soon. Even the head of the U.N.’s Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, recently urged the world to cut back on meat in order to combat climate change.

I encourage you to start thinking more about what you’re eating and where it comes from. Even if you don’t give up meat completely, you can start by cutting out one or two meat meals a week. And next time you get a mailing or email from a major environmental organization, by all means support them, but also send them a note asking them why they’re missing out on such a huge opportunity to make a difference.