Changing our diet, for the planet

I’m going mostly vegetarian; won’t you join me?

In 2019, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the “Special Report on Climate Change and Land”. The BBC analysis of the SRCCL reported that:

• 26% of global greenhouse emissions are caused by food production;

• 58% of food-related emissions come from animal products; and

• 50% of the animal product emissions come from beef and lamb.

So if you were to shift from the typical omnivorous diet to a completely vegan diet (no animal products at all), you’d step out of the production of 15% of global greenhouse emissions. If you stopped eating beef and lamb, you’d exit the production of 7.5% of global emissions. (If you live in the USA, it’s probably quite a bit more because of how much meat we consume here.)

So here’s my commitment: We will continue to have dairy and eggs. I will serve one chicken meal each week; every four weeks I will serve one beef, one pork, and two fish meals. That takes us from 30 meat dinners each month to 10. I am going to cut my son’s and my partner’s lunchtime meat consumption by 50%.