The Governor
Should Focus on Our Meals, Not Just Our Wheels
By Chris Holbein
Norfolk, VA
This
week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking the
bold step of suing the Environmental Protection
Agency for its delay in responding to California
’s request to enact stronger controls on
the greenhouse-gas emissions of cars. The governor’s
efforts to halt climate change are admirable:
Scientists and economists warn that climate change
will lead to droughts, rising sea levels, disease
outbreaks, major economic problems and increasing
conflicts over water and other resources.
While controlling auto emissions would be a good
start, Gov. Schwarzenegger and other environmentally
minded leaders should remember that there’s
an even larger source of global warming emissions
right under our noses. In its groundbreaking 2006
report, Livestock’s Long Shadow,
the UN concluded that the meat industry generates
roughly 40 percent more greenhouse gases than
all the cars, trucks, SUVs, ships and planes in
the world combined. The report also found that
the meat industry is “one of the top two
or three most significant contributors to the
most serious environmental problems, at every
scale from local to global.” To put it simply:
Our addiction to buckets of chicken and fish sticks
is destroying the planet.
According to the Live Earth global warming handbook,
“refusing meat” is “the single
most effective thing you can do to reduce
your carbon footprint.” Scientists at the
University of Chicago determined that switching
to a vegan diet is more effective in countering
global warming than switching from a standard
American car to a hybrid Prius. In fact, it’s
50 percent more effective (and doesn’t cost
$20,000). Diehard meat addicts probably don’t
want to hear it, but vegetarians in SUVs do more
good for the planet than meat-eaters who cruise
around in hybrids.
While many environmental groups have been slow
to acknowledge this, some are starting to make
the connection. Environmental Defense recently
wrote that if every American substituted vegetarian
foods for chicken in just one meal per week, the
carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking
more than a half-million cars off US roads. If
every American went completely meat-free for one
full day per week, the group says, the effect
would be the same as taking 8 million cars off
the roads.
So imagine what we could do if more people went
vegetarian, which is easier than ever, with great-tasting
meatless meals available at most grocery stores
and restaurants.
It’s great that Gov. Schwarzenegger is tackling
this issue, but perhaps an even better way to
show he’s serious about it would be to go
vegetarian and make the menus of state-funded
food programs — like school lunches and
prison meals — meat-free.
This move would require courage and leadership.
But courage and leadership are the only things
that will stop global warming from becoming a
full-blown catastrophe.
(Chris Holbein, a longtime environmental activist,
is the senior projects coordinator for vegan campaigns
for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
( PETA ), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.GoVeg.com)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
