Fight Global Warming with a Pledge to be Meatless in May (Video)
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You might find this surprising, but most of us here at Chelsea Green are not vegetarians. We do have a few veggies and vegans, but the majority of us (including me) eat meat. Of course, we opt for local, grass-fed, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, humanely-treated meat whenever we can, but it’s not always an option—leaving us with only industrialized, packaged, shipped, corn-fed, medicated, abused, hormone’d, and labor-intensive options. (Hardly, gives you the warm fuzzies, eh?)
So, in the interest of raising awareness about the huge impact the industrialized meat production has on our health and environment, we’ve decided to put our veggies where our mouth is and cut industrialized meat out of our collective diet for the month of May. We’ve teamed up with the great folks over at YourDailyThread.com to ask you to take the pledge with us.
How much of an impact on the environment could industrialized meat production really have, you ask? Here are some truthbombs to explode knowledge into your ecobrain!
Truthbomb: Livestock production accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—more than all the world’s cars combined!1
Truthbomb: It takes 40 calories of energy to produce one calorie of industrialized beef.2
Truthbomb: Walking uses more fossil fuel than driving—if you get your calories from industrialized red meat.1
Surprising, no? When we think about industries that damage the environment, most of us immediately (and rightly) think of oil, coal, transportation, etc. Not many people could accurately name U.S. industrial meat production as one of global warming’s largest contributors. But when one takes into account the chemicals, the grain, the fossil fuels, the medications, the shipping, the storage, the packaging, and the medical aftermath associated with eating a diet full of corn-fed, industrialized meats…it is not hard to see why it is so detrimental to our world.
Note: Local, grass-fed, un-drugged meat is not harmful to your or the environment. If you are lucky enough to have a local farmers that practices healthy meat production, we urge you to support their businesses. If you don’t know of meat producer near you, check out LocalHarvest for a great alternative to industrialized meat.
Cutting industrialized meat out of your diet entirely saves 5,000 lbs of carbon emissions per year. By cutting industrialized meat out of your diet for just the month of May, you’ll be cutting 420 lbs. of CO2 out of your carbon footprint.
So please join us and YourDailyThread in taking the Meatless for May pledge. You can do so by “attending” our Facebook Meatless in May event. Below, Tracy and Lauryn explain.
If you’re tempted to take the pledge, but don’t know what to eat or where to get it, check out the following books to help you get started. Remember, going veggie for a month is great—going LOCAL veggie for a month is outstanding!
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Gaia’s Kitchen Vegetarian Recipes for Community and Family by Julia Ponsonby |
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Perennial Vegetables From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier |
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Fresh Food from Small Spaces The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R. J. Ruppenthal |
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Sharing the Harvest A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture by Elizabeth Henderson, Robyn Van En |
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Wild Fermentation The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz |
Sources:
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- Pimentel, D., & Pimental, M. (2003). Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78(suppl):660S-663S.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Of course local/permaculture/gaia/square inch gardening are all wonderful ideas that we should all aspire to, but I’d like to throw in a book recommendation for those less well acquainted with gardening and still interested in being meatless THIS May (not starting that garden to be meatless, next May).
My personal favourite getting to know vegetarianism cook book: Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet from Nava Atlas.
Includes a ton of easily accessible vegetarian dishes that will help you see how incredibly easy it is to be a healthy vegetarian these days. The “gourmet” in the title is even a little misleading- this recipes are really not difficult and use almost no difficult to find ingredients, I promise! I give this to all my wannabe-veg friends.
Also, I’m going to go immediately purchase two Chelsea Green books (I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy a copy of The Carbon Free Home anyway) for mentioning a book that isn’t theirs :/ I love and support you guys!
May 1st, 2009 at 11:02 am
I don’t do facebook but I can go meatless in May. I also don’t each much meat and what I do is locally sourced, but still. May it is.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
A quick question.
It is obviously too late for meat producers to to react to this sudden drop in consumption. So what will happen to the animals designated for consumption in May?
Is it possible that meat will either have to spoil, be sold at discounts, or frozen for the period till the market can even out? How will this figure in the CO2-balance? Would a month of longer living for the animals not increase the overall methane output?
Regards,
Christian
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 am
Does anyone have an effective diet plan in excel Its very hard to find them.
May 3rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
[…] I try not to be a preachy vegetarian, but I’m asking all of the carnivores out there to challenge themselves by skipping meat in May. Only a slim minority of meat eaters regularly consume humanely raised grass-fed, organic-fed beef. To put it bluntly, our meat isn’t raised on quaint small farms with picturesque red barns but on massive industrial factory farms. On these industrial farms, billions of livestock are raised annually under inhumane conditions, raised and slaughtered by workers not treated much better than the animals and the animals are fed an unnatural diet of corn and antibiotics. On top of this, the livestock sector is a major contributor to global warming (more than transportation!), accounting for a whopping 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Producing one calorie of beef requires 40 calories of energy-that’s not so sustainable. […]
May 5th, 2009 at 11:15 am
[…] Chelsea Green, partnering with YourDailyThread, launched a Web campaign urging readers to go “Meatless in May.” The post drew the following response from Chelsea Green author Eliot […]
May 31st, 2009 at 5:32 am
[…] chicken and pork. And just for this month, I’m doing my best to abstain.Book publishing company Chelsea Green and Los Angeles conscious living website yourdailythread.com have teamed up to create the Meatless […]
November 16th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Hey very nice blog!! Man I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your Article to my blog?