As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise many people are looking for an easy one-size-fits-all solution to our climate problem. One of the trendiest options is going vegan. Over recent years people have raised questions about the impact of eating massive amounts of meat and suggested that everyone going vegan could solve our climate crisis.

So, what’s the real environmental impact of our meat, and can going vegan really save the environment?

Many are concerned about the amount of water and food it takes to produce a pound of beef, but the reality is a typical cow’s water footprint is 94% green water. This means that 94% of a cow’s water footprint is just rainwater, and of course, once that water is used it’s not gone forever. It’s urinated out and cycled back into the environment. In fact, almonds end up using less green water than beef.

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Additionally, many are worried about the amount of food it takes to produce a pound of beef. Couldn’t we be feeding more people with all that food? More than 85% of livestock feed is non-human edible, and in the end, 4.3 billion kilograms of non-human edible food gets fed to livestock.

In a recent “What I’ve Learned” video the narrator goes into many of the common problems with the carbon footprint of our meat and why it’s actually more nuanced than you might think.

At the end of the day, the government and big businesses need to be held responsible for their role in destroying the environment. The role of fixing the environment does not fall on the individual consumer, but rather, the producer. If you’re curious about how eating sustainable agriculture stacks up against going vegan check out this article.

More than 100 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer is sprayed on crops every year. When sprayed, the nitrogen releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Over recent years Nitrous Oxide emissions from natural sources have remained stagnate, whereas emissions from human causes have skyrocketed over the last couple of decades. Concentrations of nitrous oxide have reached 331 parts per billion in 2018, 22% higher than before the industrial era. Emissions are caused by the use of synthetic fertilizers.

The emissions are created through microbial processes in soils. The use of nitrogen in synthetic fertilizers and manure is a key driver of this process. Other human sources of N₂O include the chemical industry, wastewater and the burning of fossil fuels.

New research: nitrous oxide emissions 300 times more powerful than CO₂ are jeopardising Earth’s future

Nitrous Oxide is typically destroyed in the atmosphere by solar radiation, but The Conversation reports that we’re currently emitting it faster than it’s being destroyed. Nitrous Oxide has 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and stays in the atmosphere for an average of 116 years.

Research from the intergovernmental panel on Climate change has shown that we have exceeded the levels of nitrous oxide expected in all of our developed scenarios for the future. We are on track to see a global temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius, this century.

Emissions of nitrous oxide have grown 30% globally over the last three decades. Brazil, China, and India have been some of the top contributors, with growing economies and increasing numbers of livestock and crop production. In Europe, nitrous oxide emissions have decreased over the past two decades- even while agricultural productivity increased. Europe had implemented governmental policies to reduce pollution and encourage more efficient fertilizer use.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions we should focus on sustainable small scale agriculture that promotes carbon sequestration. Our health and environment are very intertwined. By eating locally grown organic produce that is good for your body, you can also do good for the Earth.

At the start of the pandemic, scientists were widely talking about a silver lining in a shut down of the economy: the massive drop in emissions. Emission decreases peaked in early April, showing a 17% decline in global greenhouse gas emissions.

China Nantong Energy’s coal-fired power station in Jiangsu Province, China /BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

The continuing rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere may sound surprising in light of recent findings that the pandemic, and the associated lockdowns, had led to a steep drop in global greenhouse gas emissions, peaking at a 17 percent decline in early April.

Earth’s carbon dioxide levels hit record high, despite coronavirus-related emissions drop

Despite the drop in emissions, CO2 levels are the highest they’ve ever been in human history. Until we reach zero emissions CO2 levels will continue to rise. Our annual growth of greenhouse gas levels was around 0.8ppm per year in the 1960s. The growth rate doubled in the 1980s and has reached 2.4ppm within the last decade’

“The buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up,” said Ralph Keeling, who directs Scripps’s carbon dioxide monitoring program, and whose late father, Charles David Keeling, began measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 1958.

Earth’s carbon dioxide levels hit record high, despite coronavirus-related emissions drop

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A recent study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has confirmed that gas stoves are bad for you. Gas stoves do not often have the proper ventilation required to filter the air. Data in California shows that 47% of homes had improper ventilation while 7% had no ventilation hoods at all. In California, only an estimated 35% of residents even bother to turn on their hoods. Cooking with gas stoves releases indoor greenhouse gas emissions, in which nitrogen dioxide was the worst. Nitrogen dioxide exceeded the level appropriate level set by California Ambient Air Quality Standards and the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. People don’t turn on their hoods often due to the noise. Additionally, people often don’t clean the filters in their hoods because they can be difficult to get to.

Indoor air pollutants included Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate matter. Nitrogen Dioxide was the worst, “exceeding the level set by both the chronic California Ambient Air Quality Standards (CAAQS) ambient annual average limit of 57 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3), and the acute National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS, set by the US EPA) 1-hour limit of 188 μg/m3 or 100 parts per billion (ppb). ”

New study confirms that gas stoves are bad for your health

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Gas is much cheaper than electricity, and more people prefer to cook with it. Despite this, numbers show that if everyone switched to clean electric alternatives, we could reduce the number of deaths by 354 a year and reduce the number of acute bronchitis by 596 cases yearly in California alone.

Source:

• New study confirms that gas stoves are bad for your health – Tree Hugger