Environmental Vegetarianism

One argument for veganism, or at least vegetarianism, is that a plant-based diet is better on the environment.  In short, it would take less work and energy, and produce fewer greenhouse gases, if we were to shift to a plant-based diet.

Raising livestock takes a considerable amount of land, water and energy.  Even in the case of factory farms, where animals are crowded into as little space as possible, large fields of crops are required to produce their feed.  It would be much more efficient to convert those fields to produce crops for direct human consumption and essentially bypass the middle-man, animals, in the whole nutrients-to-people equation.  We gain more energy from our food if we eat plants directly, rather than eating the flesh of animals who ate them, and we use far less energy producing plants for our own consumption.

A United Nations study conducted in 2006 found that the livestock industry is among the top contributors to the deterioration of Earth’s environment.

“the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”
- United Nations Initiative

The current agricultural practices of the developed world are environmentally unsustainable.  A shift to a plant-based diet is one way to minimize our impact on the environment and slow global warming.