To Eat or Not to Eat Meat

by Emily Gertz

Published October 05, 2008 @ 09:16PM PT

Rajendra Pachauri would like you to eat less meat -- to have at least one meat-free day a week, in fact -- to help stop global warming.  And since he is the head of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you might want to take him seriously. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity," Pachauri told the U.K.'s Observer newspaper in early September. "Give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there." 

The paper called it "the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning."  But the numbers back him up.  Global livestock farming accounts for about 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, concluded a 2006 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (By comparison, transportation generates 13.5% of greenhouse gas emissions.)  And the FAO expects global meat production -- currently around 280 million tons a year -- to double by 2050.

A lot of livestock's climate-destabilizing impact derives from loss of forestland to grazing lands or growing feed crops.  Living trees absorb carbon dioxide, and cool the ground beneath them; trees razed or burned to clear the land release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The FAO estimated that in the Amazon alone, around 70% of deforested lands were turned into livestock pasture. 

Livestock farming also contributes 37% of all human-caused methane emissions -- cow digestion generates this powerfully destructive greenhouse gas, and a cows burps or farts as much as 53 gallons of methane a day.  And cow manure (around 30 gallons a day per cow) generates nitrous oxide as it decomposes -- a greenhouse gas with nearly 300 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.

Some meats tread a bit lighter on the earth than others.  Consider the amount of feed an animal consumes: it takes about eight kilos of grain to produce one kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef -- which generates about 26 pounds of carbon emissions.  Pork has around half the global warming impact of beef, and chicken about half the impact of pork.  Organic, locally grown meats generally have smaller carbon footprints than their factory-farmed brethren.

But Pachauri advocates giving up a day's worth of meat, period, to help curb the climate crisis. Per capita, Americans eat 271 pounds of meat a year -- so a one-seventh reduction would add up to 38.7 pounds.  According to Grist Magazine, if every American had one day's eats per week free of meat, the reduction in carbon emissions would equate to taking eight million cars off the road.