Being vegetarian: greener than having a hybrid car
March 7, 2006 – Do you want to do your part to limit global warming by purchasing a hybrid car? It’s a good start, but your contribution would be much more important if you became a vegetarian!
Indeed, vegetarians pollute even less than those who drive in a hybrid car: a difference of half a tonne of polluting emissions. At least that’s what geophysicists from the University of Chicago claim.1, in the USA.
The researchers compared the annual amount of fossil fuel needed to, on the one hand, feed a vegetarian, and on the other, a person following the American-style diet, which is 28% animal sources.
To do this, they took into account the quantity of fossil fuels consumed by the entire food chain (agriculture, processing industry, transport) as well as the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide caused by the fertilization of plants. soils and by the herds themselves.
Energy-intensive production In the United States, food production (agriculture, processing and distribution) is increasingly energy intensive. It monopolized 17% of all fossil energy consumed in 2002, against 10,5% in 1999. |
Thus, a vegetarian annually generates one and a half tonnes of polluting emissions (1 kg) less than a person following the American-style diet. By comparison, a hybrid car, which runs on a rechargeable battery and gasoline, releases one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO485) less per year than a car running exclusively on gasoline.
If you do not become completely vegetarian, reducing the animal composition of the American diet from 28% to 20% would be equivalent, for the environment, to replacing your conventional car with a hybrid car – less monthly payments!
Eating less meat would not only benefit ecosystems, but also the health of individuals themselves. The researchers point out that many studies indeed associate the consumption of red meat with cardiovascular disorders, and even with certain cancers.
Martin LaSalle – PasseportSanté.net
According to the New Scientist Magazine andScience-Press Agency.
1. Eshel G, Martin P. Diet, Energy and Global Warming, Earth Interactions, 2006 (in press). The study is available at http://laweekly.blogs.com [accessed March 3, 2006].
2. For both types of diet, the researchers estimated consumption at 3 calories, per day, per person, from data on food production in the United States. The difference between individual requirements, averaged at 774 calories, and those 2 calories takes into account food loss and overconsumption.