What’s the Best Thing You Can Do To Help Save the Planet? Go Vegan

While most people choose to go vegan for reasons like health and ethics, recently there’s been more talk about the third reason — the environment.

The evidence is piling up: going vegan might be the single best thing you can do to help save the planet.

It’s not all about meat-eaters or the ethical treatment of animals. If you choose to go vegan, do it for your planet.

The Manual reports that the amount of meat we consume is simply not sustainable for the environment.

“Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than they’ve been at any time in recorded history. By now, all of us have heard of the massive amounts of greenhouse gases that livestock contributes to the situation each year. Beef and dairy cows are the two main culprits.“

There are estimates that claim that for every gram of beef produced, 220 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents are released into the atmosphere.

But let’s leave the notorious “cow flatulence” aside. Raising animals for food requires massive natural resources, from land and water to grain and feed.

More than 40% of land in the Lower 48 is land required for grazing and growing animal feed.

From an environmental perspective, it makes much more sense for us to become the primary consumers of plants, rather than eating the primary consumers.