What Can I Do?

What have we bought? What changes in MY diet could have the power to change the way we produce meat?

Hospitals will take meat off menus in bid to cut carbon

Juliette Jowit, The Guardian (Media—Government)

Cheese pizzas in the kitchen at Great Ormond Street hospital, London. Photograph: Karen Robinson (The Guardian)

Meat-free menus are to be promoted in hospitals as part of a strategy to cut global warming emissions across the National Health Service [NHS].
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...if the NHS was a country it would have been ranked as the 81st biggest polluter in the world that year [2004], between Estonia and Bahrain.

One-fifth of the emissions were from transport, one-fifth from buildings, and the remainder from procurement, including drugs, medical equipment and food.
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Last year the NHS served 129m main meals, costing £312m, according to Department of Health figures. "We should not expect to see meat on every menu," said Pencheon. "We'd like higher levels of fresh food, and probably higher levels of fresh fruit and veg, and more investment in a local economy."

You Don't have to be a Vegetarian to Make a Difference

Environmental Defense Fund (Media—Sustainability Advocacy)

If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains, for example, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.

Low Carbon Diet

Mike Tidwell, Audubon Magazine (Media—Sustainability Advocacy)

Indeed, accounting for all factors, livestock production worldwide is responsible for a whopping 18 percent of the world's total greenhouse gases, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That's more than the emissions of all the world's cars, buses, planes, and trains combined.

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"If we want to fight global warming through the food we buy, then one thing's clear: We have to drastically reduce the meat we consume," says Tara Garnett of London's Food Climate Research Network.

So while some of us Americans fashionably fret over our food's travel budget and organic content, Garnett says the real question is, "Did it come from an animal or did it not come from an animal?"

Which brings us back to vegetarianism and why I live a meat-free life. The facts speak for themselves. If we really want to fight climate change, we should change our lightbulbs and purchase hybrid cars and, above all, vote for politicians committed to a clean energy future. But we should also eat less meat, a lot less, or none at all.

Low Carbon Diet - Letters from Readers (Advancing the Discussion)

Audubon Magazine (Media—Sustainability Advocacy)

Sustainability Fun Facts

Cattlemen's Beef Board and National Cattlemen's Beef Association (Business—Media—Marketing)