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closeWednesday, Nov. 04, 2009
Cutting down on meat is a main course for a greener lifestyle
Universal/Carolyn Jones via AP
Babe’s star is so cute, it’s enough to make a person go vegan. Universal/Carolyn Jones via AP
Perhaps the main reason I was so jazzed about becoming the Ecobitch columnist for DFW.com Ink Edition was the opportunity (OK, kick in the ass) to do some of the things I’d always thought I should when it comes to living a greener lifestyle. And, for this column and the next, I’m undertaking a little two-week experiment that centers on the biggest change we could make toward sustainability, according to many environmental experts: going vegetarian.
I first thought about cutting out meat years ago, after watching the movie Babe. Don’t laugh — James Cromwell, the actor who played Farmer Hoggett in the adorable flick, was so moved by the animals’ personalities that by the end of filming he became vegan. (Cromwell became a vegetarian in 1974 after riding through the stockyards of Texas.)
But the siren song of a juicy steak was always a stronger pull than that of my heartstrings for the poor little animals, and I never moved from contemplation to action. I mean, I’m a gal who savors her filet mignon and thinks the best part of going to a baseball game is the foot-long hotdogs. I’m not alone in my carnivorous ways, either. Americans have the world’s highest per-capita consumption of meat — about 8 ounces daily, roughly twice the global average.
Then I started reading about the dire effects all that meat-eating has on our planet. Here’s the general gist: Livestock like cows and pigs require billions of gallons of water and millions of tons of grains to nourish. The methane produced from these animals’ manure (and — seriously — their farts) is a major pollutant. And there are vast amounts of forests being cleared to "process" (read: grow and kill) these animals — which means that much less vegetation to soak up greenhouse gases.
I’ll try not to bog you down with too many numbers, but here are some that help hammer home the damage. According to a 2006 report from the U.N., raising animals for food generates more greenhouses gases and contributes more to global warming than every mode of transportation in the world combined.
A Swedish study determined that cutting back on beef and bacon could wipe $20 trillion off the cost of fighting climate change.
And, according to the documentary Meat the Truth by Marianne Thieme, if all Americans cut out meat for one day a week, they would save 99.6 megatons of greenhouse-gas emissions — the equivalent of removing 46 million round trip flights between Los Angeles and New York, or taking 19.2 million cars off the road for a full year.
If we ate a vegetarian diet for seven days, we would save around 700 megatons of greenhouse-gas emissions — the same as removing all the cars off the roads in the U.S.
I’ll be making my contribution to those figures — however small it may be — starting today, with a two-week hiatus from meat. So, no turkey sandwiches for lunch, no whipping up my tasty Bolognese sauce for spaghetti, no Chick-fil-A nuggets. Instead, I envision a hell of a lot of fish, beans and, of course, vegetables. I’m curious about how I’ll fare cooking dinner without meat as a staple ingredient — and just how much I’ll miss pepperoni on my pizza.
I have no idea whether this will be permanent or not. At the very least, I want to do my part for a change we should all be making if we’re serious about sustainability.
Now, I’m off to lunch with a friend — and looking forward to the veggie plate.
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