For a long time now I have been reading on the vegan diet and veganism lifestyle. At one point in time I even bought a vegan cookbook because I wanted to introduce something new into my the spectrum of my diet.

As someone who is concerned about the greenhouse effect of consumption, I wanted to do some research myself and find out how exactly can going vegan not only benefit my personal health but our planet.

The production of meet and animal products costs us much more than we pay for. After the first round of basic research I saw that in order to get that stake, or sausage or even chicken burger that we have been craving there is a series of steps in the “production” cycle that have a massively harmful effect on our environment.

#1 Deforestation: In order for large heard of animals to be sustained, a large amount of landmass must be used for the livestock. With the fact that most farms are outside of cities and in rural areas, deforestation in order to create farms is the first major problem we run into.

Most companies that decide to carve out an area of a forest in order to build their farm do not need any approval other than being the owners of that land. While this may be appropriate with the law, the construction of this farm-lands means the destruction of the natural habitat of other species which have been using this certain land for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

And the land that these farms are build on sometimes spans to tens of miles squared. While this information may not be entirely backed yet, scientists assume that this massive deforestation can cause some regional species to go extinct if they are not able to adapt to living in the new environment they are pushed out to. What is a climate change fact : Less forests means less vegetation (trees and plants) which are able to naturally reduce levels of C02 from our atmosphere, the abundance of which causes an increase in global temperatures.

#2 Fresh Water Usage : In order to produce one pound of beef, around 20,700 metric water tons are required. That’s a massive amount of fresh water being utilized to produce such a small amount of meet, considering the fact that droughts are becoming more and more common. Just this year, the state of California had some of the worst wildfires in decades caused by a state-wide drought and perhaps some mismanagement. During this state-wide drought, the state government has a list of recommendations set out for people which they should follow in order to ensure that they can manage through the crisis situation.

While that is going on, massive amounts of clean water are being used to grow live-stock with no restrictions or recommendations from the governmental institutions. To compare what I mentioned earlier, a farmer may used 20,700 m3 tons of water for one pound of beef — while to grow a pound of soybeans or rice, the amount of water is 10 times less at around 2,000 m3. This brings us to ask the question, if droughts are such a problem, why is this massive usage of clean water for producing meet not regulated or considered a part of the problem?

#3 Energy Consumption and Pollution : If you though the previous information was all that went into meet production, please strap on your seat belts. This last information is perhaps one of the most mind-boggling information I had discovered in my research on this topic.

* Methane : On a global scale, the methane that is created as a bi-product of meet production is responsible for 12–16 % of all methane released into the atmosphere globally.

* 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from production of meet and poultry

* Meet farming has almost an equal amount of impact on the environment yearly as extracting fossil-fuels.

Having done this research, my observations are the following:

I should have already been a vegan before I started reading this. Or at least, have started transitioning into that dietary lifestyle.

This information was very enlightening and brought on a lot of questions about sustainable development and if that is even possible in the near future.

It also answered my question :

Can going vegan lower the effects of global warming? — Yes.

Deciding to lower the demand for meet products may eventually turn out to be one of the most significant decisions an individual can make in order to make their contribution in the global fight to protect the environment.

So what are the next steps:

I would like to start a series on this website where I explore my vegan options and transition into it. I’m curious about vegan protein, I would like to find a vegan diet plan, but most importantly I think I am going to pick up my vegan cookbook again and start exploring.

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