Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
and Nobel Prize winner, on reducing meat
consumption to fight climate change:
“In terms of immediacy of action and the
feasibility of bringing about reductions in
a short period of time, it clearly is the most
attractive opportunity. . . . Give up meat for
one day [a week] initially, and decrease it
from there.”
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of transportation, remembering to turn off electricity-draining
lights and machinery, or curbing our consumer purchases. Indeed,
the most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions is
one we “tap”—at every meal.
Of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has de-
termined that the entire transportation sector is second to the
farmed animal sector. That is, the meat, egg, and dairy industries
are responsible for even more devastating GHG emissions than
the world's cars, airplanes, motorbikes, and all other transport.
To meaningfully reduce our impact on the environment, we must
change the way we eat and we must change the way we farm.
Increasingly, the more than 60 billion land-based animals raised
and killed for human consumption are reared in intensive, industri-
alized production facilities, and every aspect of factory farming—
from the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow animal feed and
the energy required to operate automated production facilities to
the clearing of rainforests in the Amazon for soy production and
pasture land—emits GHGs into the atmosphere. These and other
“ingredients” of today's meat, egg, and dairy production are heav-
