I hear Peter Brook, a sociologist at San Jose State University on National Public Radio today. He was saying that eating meat is the equivalent of driving an SUV because cow farms create 16% of the world’s methane, a greeenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
So becoming a vegetarian or even a vegan will decrease supply of meat, decrease the size of cow farms, and create less global warming. Or something like that.
The benefits that a vegetarian diet has for the environment are pretty well established. The following is a quote from “The Way We Eat” by Peter Singer & Jim Mason.
“Eshel & Martin from the University of Chicago studied the greenhouse gases emitted by the production of animal products, and concluded that the typical U.S. diet, about 28 percent of which comes from animal sources, generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tons more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories. By comparison, an average driver switching from a typical American car to one of the more fuel-efficient hybrids would save 1 ton of carbon dioxide per year – making the switch to a vegan diet a more effective way of reducing one’s contribution to climate change.”