Meat and the climate

Well, the good news is that I'm seeing a lot more articles about this issue these days. The one I've found today is called "Eating Meat Is Worse Than Driving a Truck ... for the Climate". Here are just a few points that are made:

...seven pounds of corn equals one pound of beef; six-and-a-half pounds of corn equals one pound of pork; two and six-tenths pounds of corn equals one pound of chicken. (Meat industry estimates are lower but generally refer to the amount of corn necessary to make the live animal gain a pound, not the amount necessary to get a pound of food in the meat case.) Corn is a dietary staple in parts of the world like Mexico, but not here in the United States, where the answer to "What's for dinner?" is supposed to be "beef." Talk about feeding SUVs or people is deceptive, since it masks the intermediate step of feeding animals a whole lot of corn to get one steak dinner.
...
Internationally, two-thirds of the earth's available agricultural land is used to raise animals and their feed crops, primarily corn and soybeans, and the trend is accelerating as people in Latin America and Asia increasingly demand an Americanized diet rich in meat. The need to grow more animal feed and more animals has been devastating rainforests and areas like Brazil's Cerrado region,
the world's most biologically diverse savannah...
...
All those steer feedlots and factory buildings crammed with pigs and chickens produce immense amounts of animal wastes that give off methane. On an equivalent basis to carbon dioxide, methane is twenty-three times more potent as a greenhouse gas. When you add in the production of fertilizer and other aspects of animal farming (including land use changes, feed transport, etc.) livestock farming is responsible for nearly one-fifth of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions...

And don't forget the transportation of animals to slaughter and the energy costs of processing the meat the transportation of the meat (in refrigerated trucks) to market. The energy costs are huge.

Once more, for the 55th time: If you can't bear the thought of giving up meat, at least cut back. Keep one vegetarian day a week, then two, then three. Maybe you'll want to stop there. At least it's something. Truly that level of moderation WILL make a difference.