4 Tips to Eat Your Way to Climate Stability
In our Beyond Medicine series, Eating Your Way to a Better World, here are some points on how we can help decrease our carbon footprint and reduce our impact on climate change. Climate change is real and we can see the effects through extreme events and disasters like hurricanes, fires and flooding; polar ice caps melting and sea-level rise to name a few.
We have looked at our personal well being reasons for eating better, as well as the cruelty animals have to go through to provide humans with meat and dairy. We can, in a simple and positive way, help with reducing our impact on climate change by being mindful of what we eat.
Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change. Let’s see how:
1. Eighty (80) percent of the world’s arable land is used for animal agriculture; either to graze animals for meat and dairy or to grow food to feed the animals. If this land is used to grow food for human consumption, there will be no shortage of food for humans in the world.
2. Billions of animals grazing on the land burp and fart methane gas that is a much more potent greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide, in addition to breathing out carbon dioxide.
3. Deforestation means fewer carbon sinks (trees store carbon dioxide), more warming and more carbon dioxide in the air.
4. The life-cycle of raising, slaughtering, storing, transporting, processing and refrigerating meat and dairy creates even more emissions.
GreenHouse Gases according to National Geographic are harmful to the Earth and us. They trap heat from the sun onto the Earth, as well as contribute to respiratory diseases due to smog and air pollution.
We humans can help reduce climate change, have better health and reduce animal cruelty and slaughter by being mindful of what we eat. If we choose to eat a more plant-based diet, reducing meat and dairy, we can definitely help lower greenhouse gas emissions. In the process, we will be healthier, prevent cruelty to animals, and contribute to climate stability as well as leaving a healthier planet for our children and grandchildren. This is very empowering!
Share with us your reasons for eating your way to a better world.
