Starting Small; Resolving Big Issues In Little Ways

In a world populated by 7 Billion people and counting, conserving our resources and environment is critical.

As humans we require food, water, and oxygen. However, the human race is consuming more resources on the planet then ever before.

Some of the worlds most elite scientist, engineers, biologist, and environmental specialist have gotten together to find ways to reduce this problem and though they have come up with many different plausible ways of handling this, the one which solves the most issues all at once is the hardest to apply.

Global warming is upon us and is recognized by the environmental community as one of the gravest threats to the planet. Skeptics and critics can no longer make up conspiracy theories about it.

The rise in green house gasses such as methane and CO2 are affecting our environment deeply. Ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, droughts are becoming more potent, and the ozone layer is practically as thin as a piece of paper.

Not one of us is exempt from causing these changes in our planet to occur, but some people are slowing down the process in which it does–vegans.

Normal CO2 has the spotlight when it comes to greenhouse gases, however, the focus solely on CO2 is fueled in part by misconceptions.

It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming. Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2.

With methaneemissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year.

About 85% ofthis methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock, and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane, the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste, and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as the number one source of water pollution in the U.S.

The resolution now seems to be clear: arguably, the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian/vegan we can eliminate or reduce one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today.