Giving up / cutting down on meat is the single, most powerful step most individuals can take to save the planet. This has to be understood and taken seriously on a global scale if we have any hope of fighting climate change, as has been stated by numerous reports by world experts including scientists, doctors, major environmental organisations, university studies, important public figures, NASA, and of course the UN themselves, who have stated that "A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change." and that we need far more awareness and the will to make a difference, in spite of the subject being scandalously and unbelievably omitted from so many climate talks, hence the big focus on this subect in my concert. The Vegan Society recently launched a campaign where 10,000 people gave up meat for one week and saved enough carbon to fly to the moon and back. This shows us just how much of a vital difference even a few days can make.
I have often heard people say that they don't know what they, as individuals, can do to combat climate change, but I hope this has shown and inspired them never to underestimate the power they have to make a difference! Now more than ever, it is clear that we cannot reply on our world leaders, so it is up to us to take the lead. We share the planet with 8.7 billion species and we owe the same amount of compassion that we would expect for ourselves to them and the rest of the natural world, and to understand that we can only survive by working WITH nature, and not exploiting it. The root of most of the world's problems are the belief that some lives are more important than others, but the world's ecosystem is designed to work together and cannot function selectively. There is so much destruction and cruelty in the world that anything we can prevent is worth everything! Please continue to talk, to speak up against injustice, but above all keep fighting to promote a compassionate world and to save our planet!" (Elli Spackova)
Quotes from United Nations Reports: 2006, 2010 and 2014.
"A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
"A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change."
"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems."
"Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."
Important facts:
* According to the 2006 UN report "Livestock's Long Shadow", animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gasses, which they later revised to 14.5% using different data. The World Bank
report (2009), taking into account greater amounts of livestock, calculates this figure as 51%. Even at its lowest figure, this is still more than the entire transportation sector in the world.
* Each day, a person who eats a vegan diet saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sq ft of forested land and 20 lbs CO2 equivalent.
* A person who follows a vegan diet uses 50% less carbon dioxide, 1/11 of the oil, 1/13 of the water, and 1/18 of the land compared to a meat-eater.
* Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of CO2 per year.
* Cows produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day, which is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 and has a global warming power 86 times that of CO2.
* Livestock is responsible for 65% of all emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas 296 times more
destructive than carbon dioxide and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years.
* Animal agriculture uses 34-76 trillion gallons of water annually.
* A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people
* Even without fossil fuels, we will exceed our 565 gigatonnes of CO2 limit by 2030, all from raising animals.
* If the US alone substituted beans for beef, 74% of the Paris climate targets would be met by 2020.
* Almost every species of fish, in all countries of the world, are described in a UN report as
either "fully exploited" or "depleted". We could see fishless oceans by 2048.
* Scientists estimate as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins and seals are killed every year by fishing vessels.
* 70 billion farmed animals are reared annually worldwide. More than 6 million animals are killed for food every hour.
* 82% of starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals, and the animals are eaten by western countries.
* 97% of the world's soya crop is fed to livestock.
* It would take 40 million tons of food to eliminate the most extreme cases of world hunger, yet nearly 20 times that amount of grain is fed to farmed animals every year in order to produce meat.
* Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of Amazon destruction and covers 45% of the earth’s total land.
* Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction.
* Animal agriculture consumes over 540 times as much water as fracking
* A recent Oxford University Study shows that worldwide veganism could save $700 billion to $1 trillion per year globally on health care and save 8.1 millions lives per year.
Sources:
www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm
http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf
www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only
www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/pdfs/podest_ghg.pdf
www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/15060
www.savetheamazon.org/rainforeststats.htm
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/15/4146.full
www.earthsave.org/pdf/ofof2006.pdf
https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2017-06/Eating%20for%202%20degrees_Full_Report.pdf
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