Reducing
meat consumption may just help solve the world’s
environmental problems
“Eighty percent of Americans, in polls,
say they are environmentalists … And yet, most
of us have remained unaware of the one thing
that we could be doing on an individual basis
that would be most helpful in slowing the
deterioration and shifting us toward a more
ecologically sustainable way of life.” – Excerpt
from “The Food Revolution” by John Robbins
To mark the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in
1990, bestselling author John Robbins made his
rounds on the talk show circuit, appearing on
major shows of the day like Donahue and Geraldo.
Robbins made waves by urging Americans to change
dietary direction in his 1987 book “Diet For a
New America,” which remains a big seller today.
He would go on to become one of the world’s
leading experts on the relationship between diet
and the environment.
“It was especially hard back then for people to
recognize the link between what was on their
forks and their eating habits and the
environment,” says Robbins, a Santa Cruz County
resident, adding that he has happily watched
that bridge be gapped over the years.
But with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day just
around the corner on April 22, he says there is
one dire environmental problem that remains
unaddressed: Eating meat.
“We are going to have a lot of Earth Day
celebrations, surely that was the case for the
20th anniversary,” he says. “And at a lot of the
celebrations, there will be meat served—and I
find that hard to understand.”
Forty years after an estimated 20 million people
celebrated the first Earth Day, the budding
environmental concern that sprouted the
tradition has become full-fledged fervor.
Deforestation is rampant, key resources are
tapped or limited, and global warming is, it can
seem, all we hear about. Also in that time,
environmentalism has become synonymous with
“being green,” a new millennium whirlwind trend
that, we’re told, means changing to
energy-saving light bulbs, using reusable
grocery bags, and driving hybrid cars. But when
it comes to the world’s most pressing ecological
problems—climate change, land degradation, air
and water pollution, loss of biodiversity—it is
now a documented fact that a plant-based diet is
the most effective way to help curb all of them.
“It’s phenomenal to me that groups come out with
articles and lists like ’20 Things You Can Do To
Change the Environment,’ and will list things
like drive a fuel-efficient car and change your
light bulbs, but they won’t say ‘eat less
meat,’” says Robbins. “In not saying ‘eat more
plants and fewer animals,’ they are omitting the
single most significant, most powerful, most
meaningful action you can take.”
A Food Revolution John
Robbins has been making a case for a plant-based
diet since before “global warming” was a
household phrase. He is now a leading world
expert on health, food habits and environmental
vegetarianism.
Photo: Charles Mixson
In 2006, the UN’s Food and
Agriculture Organization released “Livestock’s
Long Shadow,” one of the most thorough and
referenced reports on the environmental impact
of animal agriculture. The study found that
animals raised for food are responsible for 18
percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Broken
down, they say that livestock account for 9
percent of carbon dioxide emissions, 37 percent
of methane emissions (which is more than 20
times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat
in the atmosphere, making it that much more
harmful), and 65 percent of nitrous oxide
emissions (which has 298 times the global
warming potential of CO2).
The 18 percent figure was raised to 51
percent in late 2009, when two Worldwatch
Institute researchers released “Livestock and
Climate Change,” in which they re-examine the
figure and consider “uncounted, overlooked, and
misallocated livestock-related GHG emissions.”
(These included emissions from animal excrement,
gas, and breathing—dangerous discrepancies
considering livestock in the United States
produce more than 130 times the excrement of the
human population.) But whether you look to the
UN’s more conservative percentage or WWI’s 51
percent, livestock remains the primary
contributor of greenhouse gases.
“It’s not just that it’s a contributor, it’s
that it’s a huge contributor,” says Robbins,
adding that greenhouse gases are just the tip of
the environmental iceberg. “Livestock are the
most significant contributor to today’s most
serious environmental problems.”
The report, and several other studies since,
also concluded that animal agriculture
contributes more greenhouse gases than the
global transportation sector—that’s every single
car, bus, plane, train, etc. on this earth. It
reads, “[Livestock] currently amounts to 18
percent of the global warming effect—an even
larger contribution than the transportation
sector worldwide.”
As we aim for a more sustainable future, it’s a
no-brainer that we need cleaner fuels, smaller
cars, better mass transit, and weaned-reliance
on single-occupancy vehicles. But what about
this piece of information? A 2006 University of
Chicago study found that adopting a vegan diet
is more effective at reducing greenhouse gas
emissions than driving a hybrid car. In the
frenzy to be eco-friendly, can vegetarianism
join the ranks of trends like driving a Prius?
Despite the ubiquity of climate change
conversation, talk about how to reduce carbon
footprints has, until recently, largely left out
the fact that reducing or eliminating meat and
dairy from your diet will help you achieve the
greatest reduction of emissions. Al Gore failed
to mention it in An Inconvenient Truth (let us
note here that his family has deep ties to the
beef industry), and the mainstream media has
kept mostly mum. But this Earth Day it is time
for all of us who are the slightest bit inclined
to be green to ask ourselves: does loving Mother
Earth mean eating less meat?
Campus Crusaders
It’s a stormy Santa Cruz day, and six members
of Banana Slugs for Animals have braved the
slapping wind and broken rain to picket outside
of the McDonald’s on Mission Street. Despite a
thin showing, the protestors are strong in
spirit, wielding signs and passing out
literature to passersby and reticent McDonald’s
customers.
Eric Deardorff, the group’s founder and a
philosophy and ethics major at UC Santa Cruz,
waves to passing cars, soliciting honks of
support and a few of displeasure. It is his 29th
birthday, and, as the event’s planner, he is
content to be celebrating by holding a “McCruelty”
sign in the wet and cold.
Deardorff’s journey to veganism began at the age
of 20 on a family dove-hunting trip (“It was the
weirdest experience I’ve ever had,” he says),
and culminated with a bad experience with a
chicken burrito. “I’d known there was something
very wrong in the world for a long time, but I
didn’t know what it was,” he says, remembering
how the injustices finally became clear. In the
nine years that followed, Deardorff spent four
working for People’s Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) and the last two as the leader of
UCSC’s only vegetarian organization. “Becoming
vegan is the most fundamental change I’ve made
in my life, and will probably be the most
fundamental change that I will ever make in my
life,” he says.
The McDonald’s demonstration is one of several
that his group has held to expose the
corporation’s cruel treatment of animals. But
while today’s message is one mostly of animal
welfare, Deardorff is leading a broader
vegetarian movement up on campus.
“Students come to UCSC knowing the school is
supposed to be a leader in sustainability,” he
says. “But if you look at certain things—like
serving meat—they aren’t doing a great job of
being sustainable.”
Campus Crusader
Pictured here with fellow Banana Slugs for
Animals members at a February demonstration
outside of McDonald’s, UC Santa Cruz student
Eric Deardorff (second from left) is leading the
movement to reduce meat consumption on campus.
Photo: Kelly Vaillancourt
Four other UC schools—Berkeley, Davis, Santa
Barbara and San Diego—have adopted Meatless
Monday, a movement sponsored by a non-profit of
the same name that advocates for cutting meat
out one day a week. Meatless Monday has also
caught on at countless universities outside of
the UC system (and elsewhere, such as in all 200
schools in the Baltimore, Md., public school
system), but has yet to become a fixture at
UCSC.
Banana Slugs for Animals recently helped UCSC
Dining Services coordinate the first meatless
dining hall day—a test run at the Crown/Merrill
Dining Hall where students could choose from
entirely vegetarian and vegan breakfast, lunch
and dinner selections.
Deardorff has spent the months since tirelessly
pressuring dining administrators to make
meatless dining hall days a regular thing.
According to Candy Berlin, program coordinator
for UCSC Dining, the school will have its second
trial Meatless Day at the College 8/Oakes Dining
Hall during the week of Earth Day.
“This is easy to change and it’d be received
well,” says Deardorff. The group is also busy
with its Cage Free Eggs campaign, for which
they’ve gathered over 2,000 signatures asking
the school to switch to 100 percent cage-free
eggs, and circulating other petitions like
PETA’s Meat’s Not Green, which asks industry
producers to put warning labels on animal
products (think “WARNING: This product is a
primary contributor to global warming!”).
While Deardorff mans the movement at our city on
a hill, superstar Sir Paul McCartney is
campaigning for a meatless day on a much larger
scale. McCartney, with a little help from his
daughters, runs Meat-Free Monday (supportmfm.
com), an organization with the same goals as the
similarly monikered Meatless Monday. The
well-known vegetarian spoke about the need for
Meat-Free Mondays before the European Parliament
(EU) in late 2009.
Much like Earth Day founder Senator Gaylord
Nelson once asked Americans to set aside one day
a year to pay tribute to our planet, the
Meatless and Meat-Free Monday campaigns are
asking conscious Earthlings to forgo meat one
day a week as a favor to our planet.
$200 Hamburgers
Back at the McDonald’s, a young woman takes a
pamphlet from a BSA member. “You know, I agree
with you, but I only have $2 for lunch today, so
this is what it’s going to be,” she says.
Jennifer, one of the protestors, frowns as the
girl walks away toward the Golden Arches. “It’s
cheap, but it’s subsidized in other ways,” she
says, raising her voice over the wind.
In fact, while the menu price may be as
low as a dollar for a fast-food burger, the
actual cost is closer to $200 when hidden costs
are taken into account, according to Raj Patel,
author of “The Value of Nothing.” The hidden
costs are varied and extensive. From large water
subsidies for the agriculture industry to the
long-term costs these products incur on public
health (meat consumption is linked to high rates
of heart disease, obesity, certain types of
cancer, and more), the true cost is externalized
into society.
“When I drive by McDonald’s and see the big
banner—1 Billion Sold!—I think, ‘how many heart
attacks were produced from those 1 billion
burgers?’” says Robbins. “’How many animals were
tortured? How much harm has happened to the
environment? How many people haven’t been able
to eat because the grain that could’ve fed them
was fed to the animals whose flesh was put into
those burgers?’”
In strictly environmental terms, Robbins refers
to the hidden cost of water used in the
industry. “We don’t pay for it at the cash
register or at the restaurant, but we pay for it
in our taxes and the likelihood of a drought,”
he says. “Water is Precious” is the sign we see
on restaurant tables in Santa Cruz, but most
Cruzans would be shocked to learn how much water
is required to produce their steak dinner.
Robbins points to a study by Soil and Water
Specialists at the University of California
Extension in 1978 that found that it takes 5,214
gallons of water to produce one pound of
California beef.
“I ask people to look at it this way,” says
Robbins, plunging into an arithmetical example.
Let’s say you shower everyday, he says, and that
your showers average seven minutes long,
totaling 49 minutes of showering a week. He
rounds that up to 50 minutes, and poses that the
flow rate in your shower is two gallons per
minute (on the higher end for Santa Cruz
County).
“At that rate you’d be using 100 gallons a week
for showering,” he continues. “That is 5,200
gallons a year to shower—the same amount
required to produce one pound of beef. You would
save as much water by not eating one pound of
beef as you would by not showering for a whole
year.” That’s a big steak, or, depending on your
tastes, maybe four McDonald’s quarter pounders.
This number is contested, however, and differs
depending on which expert or study you refer to.
A more common figure than 5,214, which Robbins
expounds upon in his book “The Food Revolution,”
is about 2,500 gallons of water per pound of
beef. This was the amount concluded on by the
late Dr. Georg Borgstrom, the former head of the
Food Science and Human Nutrition Department at
Michigan State University, and very close to the
2,464 gallons determined by The Water Education
Foundation after analyzing data from hundreds of
experts in their report “Water Inputs in
California Food Production.” In their book
“Population, Resources, Environment,” Stanford
University professors Paul R. and Anne H.
Ehrlich claim that it takes between 2,500 and
6,000 gallons to produce one pound of beef. On
the flip side, cattlemen associations use
figures as low as 840 gallons.
Regardless, the amount of water needed to
produce a pound of beef is strikingly higher
than the amount needed to produce a pound of
fruits or vegetables (between 19 and 70
gallons), the 25 to produce a pound of wheat or
even the 250 needed for a pound of soy. Meatless
Monday, which is an initiative of the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
claims that by not eating meat on Mondays, an
individual can save enough water to fill his or
her bathtub 22 times each week.
“You see people who are environmentalists trying
to conserve water washing their cars less often,
installing low flow sinks and toilets, drought
resistant landscaping, and legislation passing
requiring low flow shower heads and so forth,”
says Robbins. “These are all prudent and helpful
measures, but all combined they don’t even
compare to what you save by eating one less
hamburger.”
Here, in this comparison, lies the hang-up for
environmentalists today: You can abide by as
many green tips as you want, but if you are
eating meat, you are still participating in the
most detrimental practice. “The simple fact is
that you can’t be a meat-eating
environmentalist,” says Deardorff,
matter-of-factly. “It would be going against
everything that environmentalism stands for.”
Family Farms and Other Pseudo-Solutions
A main point of concern Deardorff has with
dining services at UCSC is the emphasis they put
on buying local and organic, while making what
he considers to be a minimal effort to do what
would be most sustainable.
And he’s right. Buying local foods is a positive
trend—especially in Santa Cruz, where we are
lucky enough to have a delicious bounty of foods
growing—but it’s a meager environmental effort
when compared to going veg. A 2008 study at
Carnegie Mellon University titled “Food Miles
and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices
in the United States” found that eating no meat
one day a week reduces personal greenhouse gas
emissions more than eating an entirely local
diet all week long.
“Think of the savings if, hypothetically, we
made one of the dining halls completely
meatless,” says Deardorff. “If you do meatless
seven days a week, that’s the environmental
equivalent of doing 50 days local.”
Keeping it Local
Although Eleanor Taylor and Noah Pinck don’t eat
meat themselves, they offer local meat and dairy
products through their business
SantaCruzLocalFoods .com with the hope that if
people must have meat, they will at least buy it
locally. Photo: Kathleen Rose
Although less ecologically effective than
vegetarianism, eating local is still a
sustainable lifestyle choice, and one that many
conscious Santa Cruz residents have made.
Eleanor Taylor and Noah Pinck estimate that
their diets are made up of 85 to 90 percent
local foods; but they also ride bikes to get
around and stick to mostly plant-based diets.
The eco-couple owns SantaCruzLocalFoods .com
(SCLF), an online business that aggregates
regional food producers into a virtual all-local
grocery store. Although they refrain from meat
and dairy themselves, they offer eggs, chicken,
lamb, beef and pork through their business. “The
demand is really high,” says Taylor, adding that
their one-year-old company is expanding in all
respects.
Customers often ask the pair why they sell
animal products if they don’t eat such things
themselves. “If people want to eat some meat
here and there, they can make that choice—and
what we’re offering is a lot less harmful,” says
Taylor. “It’s important to offer that option.”
Over the years, Pinck has gone from a
self-proclaimed “militant vegan” to testing meat
from his clients as a co-owner of SCLF.
“I’ve seen the animals, I know they are roaming
on 500 acres, it feels a little bit better,” he
says. “I know the producer, and I know it was
raised humanely and humanely slaughtered.”
The animals sold through SCLF are from local
ranches and family farms, smaller operations
that have become increasingly popular among
consumers as awareness about the myriad horrors
behind factory farm operations grows.
“One of the criticisms of ‘Diet for a New
America’ is that I don’t speak in it about free
range, grass fed, and other forms of humanely
raised livestock,” muses Robbins, whose book
written more than 20 years ago becomes more
relevant with each passing year. “The reason I
didn’t is because they didn’t exist commercially
when I wrote it in the late ’80s. They have come
to exist since then partially in response to the
growing awareness in the public consciousness of
how cruel factory farm products are.”
More humane and better for the environment, are
family farms the solution for those wishing to
continue a mixed diet?
Although these less-harsh products have gained
popularity, they still represent less than 1
percent of the meat production in the country.
Factory farms currently produce more than 99
percent of meat, dairy and eggs in the United
States, and, according to “Livestock’s Long
Shadow,” the meat industry plans to double
production by 2050.
“It would be a major positive step [if
meat-eaters bought locally] but you can’t
produce nearly the quantities of animal product
that way as you can with factory farms,”
explains Robbins.
However, he continues, “I think that’s a good
thing because we shouldn’t be eating the
quantities that we are. If there was much less
of these products available but they were
healthier, less cruel to animals and less cruel
to the earth, that’d be a great thing.”
Creatures of Habit
The average American eats 45 percent more
meat every day than the USDA recommends,
totaling an average of 185 pounds of meat per
person, per year, according to 2006 USDA
findings.
There are a lot of factors in play when it comes
to why we eat meat, and so darn much of it at
that. There is strong industry pressure on, and
involvement in, government regulations,
advertising and nutritional education, as well
as sentimental attachments, cultural habits,
masculinity issues (“Real Men Eat Meat,” right
gents?), stigmas against vegetarianism and a
downright assumption that it’s not only
necessary, but also superior, to eat meat (a
point made in Robbins’ forthcoming book, “The
New Good Life,” on shelves in May). Just ask
Homer Simpson, the cartoon icon who once said to
his vegetarian daughter, “If I went to a
barbecue and there was no meat, I would say, ‘Yo
Goober! Where’s the meat?’ I’m trying to impress
people here, Lisa. You don’t win friends with
salad.”
When it comes down to it, despite the facts,
despite the health risks, despite the
environmental implications, it may be as simple
as that some people don’t want to be told what
to eat.
“I don’t want to be told what to eat either,”
says Robbins. “People’s food habits and
preferences are very personal. There are a lot
of issues involved: emotions surrounding eating
and food, pleasure, our right to enjoy, and if
you think that giving up meat or eating less of
it would make you deprived … well, no one wants
deprivation.
“But what we’re talking about here is a higher
quality of life,” he continues. “If you’re
feeling better, if you’re contributing to a
healthier future for yourself and the world
community, there is a strength in that that is
more pleasurable than any self-indulgent food
choice.”
Robbins gave up much more than most people would
have to in order to live by vegetarian
principles. He grew up in Southern California
with a mapped-out future: his father was Irv
Robbins of ice cream giant Baskin-Robbins, and
was grooming him—his only son—to take over the
family business. But before this could happen,
Robbins had a change of heart and mind that led
him to shun animal products and, eventually, to
turn down the Baskin-Robbins fortune.
“I gave up the opportunity to be immensely
wealthy in order to live a life that was in
alignment with my values and that is congruent
with my dreams for a better world,” he says,
speaking from his home in Aptos, Calif., where
he has made a healthy, happy and successful life
of his own. Now primarily vegan for four
decades, Robbins often wonders what keeps so
many others from making the switch.
“I do honestly find it difficult to understand
why someone would hold on to a habit that is
harming them and the earth,” he says. “The only
explanation is that it’s an addiction.” An
addiction fueled by advertising, enabled by
government, and encouraged by mainstream
ideology—but one that he says green-minded
people will find is well worth breaking. “To
break through the corporate agenda, the cultural
trance, is an act of rebellion and empowerment
and a liberation,” says Robbins. “[Eating less
meat] is like an acupuncture point: with a
minimum amount of pressure you get a maximum
amount of results.”
The Meatless and Meat-Free Monday movements are
asking people to start small by reducing their
meat consumption by 15 percent (one day a week),
which, when added up, has anything but a small
effect. Individual action like this will lessen
the demand on unsustainable meat products—the
first step in downsizing the enormous factory
farming industry.
“Every time you buy something you are saying to
that producer, do it again,” says Robbins. “If
you care about the environment, don’t pay people
to pollute it. Don’t buy the products, or at
least minimize your purchasing from industries
that pollute. When we lessen the demand for
meat, that will, in time, lessen the supply.”
The 2006 UN report concluded on a similar note,
stating, “In the absence of major corrective
measures, the environmental impact of livestock
production will worsen dramatically … Consumers,
because of their strong and growing influence in
determining the characteristics of products,
will likely be the main source of commercial and
political pressure to push the livestock sector
into more sustainable forms.”
While he believes differences are made “one
heart at a time,” Robbins stresses the
importance of thinking big. “If we overemphasize
the personal responsibility to the detriment of
looking at what we need to do
collectively—public policies, regulations on the
industries—nothing major will change,” he says.
But until policy properly holds large-scale
producers responsible for their ecological
footprints, truth bearers from Santa Cruz’s
Robbins to UCSC’s Deardorff are sounding the
alarm, proclaiming “Veg Is the New Green,” and
asking others to examine the facts for
themselves.
“A lot of people like to say that people who are
vegan or vegetarian are really sentimental
because ‘Aww, they care about animals,’” says
Deardorff. “But look who is sentimental: who is
holding onto the past, who is holding onto
something that just doesn’t compute for today.
The people who are examining the facts and
looking toward the future are choosing a
vegetarian diet. They decide it’s the right
thing to do based on these reasons.”
In Deardorff’s eyes, UCSC has the potential to
be a leader in sustainability if it were to
adopt regular meatless days, thereby decreasing
its support of factory farming and lowering its
own involvement in pollution, global warming,
and other crimes against the planet. He spends
his spare time between classes gathering student
signatures in support of this, hoping that the
collective power of many individuals will help
make that difference. He presses individuals to
go further than a 15 percent reduction: try
cutting your meat consumption in half, or, if
you’re a vegetarian, try going vegan. Up your
ante. Raise the eco bar.
Eliminating or reducing meat intake can be a big
sacrifice for some people, the creatures of
habit that we are, but a decision that,
environmentally speaking, is simple. “If you
want to take your commitment to the earth
seriously,” says Robbins, “if you want to walk
your green walk, if you want your lifestyle to
be as non-polluting as possible, the single most
powerful thing you can do—by far—is to eat less
meat.” What will you be eating this
Earth Day?
Meat vs. Veggie -
A meat-eating diet uses 4,000 gallons of
water per day. A vegetarian diet uses 300
gallons of water per day. Source: “Diet For A
New America”
Skippin’ Chicken -
If every
American skipped one meal of chicken a week and
ate a plant-based meal instead, the carbon
dioxide savings would be equivalent to taking
more than half of a million cars off of U.S.
roads. Source: Environmental Defense
Water & Fuel -
In addition, 80 percent of U.S. agricultural
land, 70 percent of all grains, half of all
water resources and one-third of fossil fuels
are used to raise animals for food. Source:
Environment Defense
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