Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Last updated
Last updated
"Environmental researcher Joseph Poore [...] found that going vegan could reduce your food-related greenhouse gases by up to 73 per cent. Poore says: 'A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth.'"
"Dietary change is more important than intensification for climate targets in 2050 [...] Our results show that diets are the main determinant of GHG emissions, with highest GHG emissions found for scenarios including high meat demand, especially if focused on ruminant meat and milk."
"Vegan diets are more sustainable. Growing food for direct human consumption is an efficient use of land and water and requires less energy to produce than meat. Vegan diets are associated with the lowest emissions of carbon dioxide."
51% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are caused by animal agriculture. Every year, animal agriculture produces at least 32 billion tons of CO2.
"Systematic reviews consistently demonstrate that production of animal-based foods has a higher impact than predominantly plant-based diets on the environment, as measured by GHGe (7,59,93–95), land use (59,72,94), and water use (59,94). The production of ruminant livestock (e.g., cows, sheep, goats) has the largest impact within the category of animal-based foods. Therefore, dietary patterns which are lower in animal-based foods have a lesser impact on the environment. In multiple studies worldwide, vegan, vegetarian (72) and “healthy” diets (which are defined according to study parameters) (72,93,96) have been shown to be more sustainable than diets typically consumed by the reference scenarios based on the average per capita consumption data in multiple countries. Further, studies in highly developed countries are also consistent in illustrating that dietary patterns that followed (healthier) national dietary guidelines were more environmentally sustainable than average dietary patterns or intakes of the respective populations (97)." "Current scientific consensus (4,5,7) suggests that an overall population shift toward plant-based proteins will have the greatest effect on environmental outcomes (climate change, land, energy and water use)"
"This data shows that this is the case when we look at individual food products. But studies also shows that this holds true for actual diets; here we show the results of a study which looked at the footprint of diets across the EU. Food transport was responsible for only 6% of emissions, whilst dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83%."
"Greenhouse gas emissions resulting from vegan and ovolactovegetarian diets are ∼50% and ∼35% lower, respectively"
"Global GHG emissions from the production of food were found to be 17,318 ± 1,675 TgCO2eq yr−1, of which 57% corresponds to the production of animal-based food (including livestock feed), 29% to plant-based foods and 14% to other utilizations"
"Results from our review suggest that the vegan diet is the optimal diet for the environment because, out of all the compared diets, its production results in the lowest level of GHG emissions."