Big positive change in the Environment

You must have seen the recent wildfires in Australia and California. Some of us would have worried about what we could do or could have done in the past to contribute less to climate change and not let this happen again. I was one of them. I was also saddened by the fact that a major part of our society is unaware of how it takes individual contribution to a bigger change. That’s one of the reasons I am here to share with you all one of the many small changes we could make in our lifestyle to bring about a big change in the environment.

We often hear environmentalists or climate-change activists asking us to use less water, electricity, fuel and so on. But there is something that you can do at an individual level from today, on an everyday basis, which is one of the most significant ways to reduce your impact on the planet. It is you adopting a vegan lifestyle. Let me tell you exactly how you going vegan can save the planet.Let’s begin with the basics. The popular health website healthline.com defines vegans as “Individuals who avoid animal products for environmental, health, and ethical reasons”. It’s obvious that vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal – like meat, eggs, milk and milk products. But what’s not obvious and one that many people don’t know is that vegans also avoid animal-derived products like those made of wool, silk, leather and such.

But why, you may ask. Let’s only focus on environmental reasons here. You may think farming animals does not do any harm because we’re raising these animals just for food or that it’s just part of the food chain. But actually animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transportation systems combined and are the biggest contributors to climate change, after fossil.

Firstly, cows release a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas which is at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And a lot of land and food are required to raise these animals. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land (that includes land for grazing and to grow animal feed), an area greater than the size of Africa!

Another major environmental cost of animal agriculture is its water consumption. To put it into scale, a study found that producing a kilogram of beef requires up-to 15000 liters of water, chicken about 4000 liters, and a liter of milk about 1020 litres. If there were less livestock to feed, there would be a lot more water to go around.

Animals are being given antibiotics every day of their lives not to cure illnesses, but to fatten them up and to protect them against the factory farm conditions they are raised in. Factory farmed animals are full of diseases and can be a breeding ground for new strains of viruses and superbugs. By eliminating these factory farms, we could lower the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and all zoonotic diseases such as the COVID-19, Mad Cow Disease and Bird flu being released into our environment. One study estimated that if everyone ate a vegan diet with lots of fresh fruit and veggies, around eight million deaths could be avoided around the world by 2050.

Our consumption of animal products is creating one of the biggest threats to human health on our planet right now. But aren’t all vegans nutrient and vitamin deficient and calcium deficient? The answer is ‘No’. Numerous studies have proven that a plant-based diet is sufficiently well balanced with nutrients and is way healthier than a meat-based diet. At an individual level, the best way to fight climate change and future pandemics is to go vegan, or at the very least switch to a vegetarian diet. Even animal derived products like wool, silk, and leather are very resource-intensive and it’s better for the environment if we avoid them. What would happen to the animals if we all went vegan? Wouldn’t millions of people lose their jobs? What we need to understand here is the fact that it is practically impossible for the entire globe to go vegan overnight. And, the production of animal products works on a supply and demand basis. So as the demand gradually decreases, the number of animals bred also decreases. In reality, any change will be much more gradual, allowing the environment and human culture to adapt naturally.

At the end of the day, we can’t just reverse climate change by changing our diets. Along with personal changes, we need changes in the industrial segment and government reforms to have a significant enough impact to actually reverse the damage we’ve done. But that does not mean individual contribution is unnecessary or that it is wasted. As Anne Marie Bonneau, a famous zero waste activist says we don’t need a handful of people doing it perfectly. We need millions doing it imperfectly.

REFERENCES

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production

2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0552-0

3. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-byglobal-diets

4. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf

5. https://www.surgeactivism.org/coronavirusisjustthestart

6. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/pdf

7. https://theessayarchive.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-crippling-effectsof-meat.html

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPwwU1N9hM&ab_channel=TheInfographicsShow [ Accessed 26th November 2017]