I don’t really care too much for animals.
Sure, dogs are great friends, sea turtles are adorable, and eagles, in their own way, are pretty majestic. But when it comes to killing cows for beef or fish for sashimi, I couldn’t really care less. There’s a food chain and, lucky for us, we’re on top.
And yet, I’m a vegetarian.
Now, there are arguments both that eating meat is, and is not, morally wrong. But most people, even if they think that animal cruelty is wrong, still savor a delicious factory-produced chicken breast now and then. But I won’t deal with those arguments here.
I am a vegetarian for what most people would consider a compelling reason: Animal agriculture, more than any other industry, causes the greatest amount of environmental devastation. And unlike other industries with a similar impact, such as oil, it’s easy to abstain from consuming its products. Forget organic bread, a Prius, or those wind energy credits from Whole Foods; being a vegetarian is the most effective in improving the environment.
The livestock industry, which produces everything from beef to cheese to shrimp, is massive. When one takes into account the industry’s entire supply chain, which includes everything from the corn grown for use as feed to the processing plants that cut meat for stores, the environmental impact is staggering.
Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That’s a larger share than that of all the cars in the world combined. These emissions include, generally in the form of livestock farts, 37 percent of anthropogenic methane. The industry is also responsible for nearly two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which play a key role in turning the rain and entire ecosystems to acid.
Animal agriculture also degrades our land and water. In the United States, livestock are responsible for roughly half the erosion and a third of the nitrogen and phosphorous dumped into the water supply. It’s also the lead destroyer of forests, as farmers cut down trees to make way for grazing land.
These problems are likely to worsen. As the global population, particularly in Asia, gets richer, global demand for meat increases. Global meat production is set to double from its level in 1990 by 2050 in response.
For wild game ““ fish ““ the future is frightening. A recent paper in Science magazine surveyed existing data and predicted that, given the current pace of fish consumption, 100 percent of global fisheries are going to collapse by 2048. In just over 30 years, that spicy tuna roll may very well cost as much as a bottle of Cristal. We’ll have to resort more frequently to fish farming, which can have a devastating impact on ocean ecosystems.
If only we demanded less meat, these problems would be lessened. In comparing two potential diets ““ one that is 25 percent meat and one that is completely vegetarian ““ one finds striking results. In fact, double the population could be fed if we adhered to a vegetarian diet, but the 25 percent meat diet would have fed only about 60 percent of the world population.
So, if we all became vegetarians and didn’t decide to use all the resources currently devoted to meat production in order to gorge ourselves on soy, we would need significantly fewer resources to meet our needs. The environment, and the people that have to live in it, would be much better off.
So go ahead, what are you waiting for? Just cut down on the meat. It’ll do a lot more good than recycling.
I should add, though, that in my own vegetarianism, I have a special exception: I’ll occasionally eat meat if I’ve never tried it before, or if it’s part of a unique cultural experience. When I was last in Chicago, for instance, I made sure to have a famous Chicago hot dog. How could one turn that down?
Besides, if you’ve got to eat meat, hot dogs are probably the best way to go. Sort of like conservation-minded American Indians, those companies have found a great way to use all parts of the animal.
E-mail Reed at treed@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.