Diet for a cooler planet

Our planet just experienced the warmest winter in the 105 years during which paperwork have be kept.

According to James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "if further intercontinental warming reach 2 or 3 degrees Celsius [4 or 5 degree Fahrenheit], we will likely see change that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The ending time it was that thaw out was ... more or less three million years ago, when sea even was estimated to enjoy been roughly 80 feet better than today."

Fossil fuels--used in coal-burning power plants and gasoline-and-diesel-burning cars and trucks--top the account of problems. But other factors also contribute:

* Population growth: 6.5 billion people--double the population of 1965--now draw down our world's finite resources.

* Higher standards of living: nouns conditioners, cars, air travel, and other conveniences require fossil fuels.

* Diet: as incomes rise, relations replace wheat and rice with meat and dairy foods.

What do more burgers and cheese hold to do with climate conversion?

Between global warm and a lack of park, water, and other resources, the Earth simply can't cope next to a worldwide jump contained by meat and dairy consumption. In 2006, a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned:

"Livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on a massive ascend and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it wants to be addressed near urgency."

Livestock not only pollutes our marine, air, and soil, said the FAO, it's also "responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emission ... a higher share than transport."

Cattle belch out huge volumes of methane, a gas that's 23 times more potent at trapping steam than carbon dioxide. Livestock manure is the source of two-thirds of man-made nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that's 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Growing corn, soybeans, and hay for live stock nurture uses up about partly of all U.S. fertilizer, generate large amounts of nitrous oxide. In Brazil, an astounding 70 percent of onetime forest estate is being used as pasture and to grow animal nurture.

Worldwide, the 34 million acres of trees that are cut and burned each year statement for 25 to 30 percent of all the carbon that enter our atmosphere.

Eating less meat and dairy foods is a small step that respectively of us could take to comfort slow global warm.

Bonus: switching from meat to beans, nuts, fruits, and vegetables means lower risks of heart disease, stroke, portliness, diabetes, and cancer. (See www.EatingGreen.org to calculate those benefits and to demand our book, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet.)

So for the sake of our globe--and our own health--let's all try to chomp through more plants and less meat.

Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Center for Science contained by the Public Interest