Lord Stern of Brentford, one of the leading experts on global warming, has everyone in the meat market gritting their teeth. Lord Stern suggests that to solve global warming, people will need to adopt a vegetarian diet. He is not alone in this sentiment. Other global warming guru’s like, Rajendra Pachauri, echo the need for a vegetarian diet. Using vegetables to combat global warming dates back to a 2006 United Nations report where it was concluded that livestock contribute 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

The vegetarian theory is universally based on three main points: direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs -via manure and flatulence, the amount of water it takes to raise livestock and irrigate land, and deforestation of land to raise livestock.

So, as of late, global warming studies have put gas guzzlers on the back burner to prove the point of a meat free diet. For example, a University of Chicago study recently estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your SUV for a hybrid. However, I do find it ironic that many of the global warming “experts” pushing a vegetarian diet, like the two researchers for the University of Chicago and Rajendra Pachauri, were vegetarians before this even become an issue. So, I have to wonder if their agenda is not 100% related to global warming.

My Opinion:

I will be the first to admit that Americans eat too much meat. A study by the American Institute for Cancer estimated that only 27% of Americans eat the correct proportion of animal to plant food. In nursing school, I was taught that a meat portion should be no larger than the palm of your hand. I don’t know how scientific that is, but it is a good guide for a moderate diet. I think that too often the focus of a problem, whether it be global warming or combating obesity, is to ban or elimintate… instead of introducing  moderation and making problem items more efficient. Prohibition should be example one that banning doesn’t work.

Unless these scientists and researchers are proposing to create an extinction issue by sterilizing livestock, there will always be animals that are farting, defecating, drinking water, and deteriorating the land. Those animals will naturally procreate whether livestock farming exist or not. One does not have to become a vegetarian to introduce animal protein moderation into their diet and aid the global warming cause.