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15 votes

Which one promotes the most deforestation: raising crops or animal husbandry?

A relevant point is that raising animals for food requires feeding them plants. Since only around 10% of the energy input (the percentage used for growth) at one trophic level of a food chain can be ...
Zanna's user avatar
  • 11.9k
12 votes

Is it true that giving up red meat would cut more carbon emissions than giving up my car?

It's not about your diet as much as it is the farming of the meat. According to this article in the Guardian: The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but the research ...
Riker's user avatar
  • 2,400
10 votes

How many vegans are needed to reach the Kyoto protocol target?

TLDR: The short answer is that it's not possible. Greenhouse gas emissions come from a diverse set of sources, and only the weakest targets can be met by focusing solely on one area. Even if every ...
nloewen's user avatar
  • 2,843
10 votes

Is it true that giving up red meat would cut more carbon emissions than giving up my car?

Below is a table comparing the carbon footprint of common foods versus driving. For example, the first entry of 91 in the column titled, equivalent miles driven / kg, means that eating 1kg of lamb has ...
WetlabStudent's user avatar
9 votes
Accepted

How big is the impact that humans have on the emptiness of oceans?

Globally The Census of Marine Life concluded in 2010 that 90 percent of the large fish are gone, primarily because of overfishing. This includes many of the fish we love to eat, like Atlantic ...
Nic's user avatar
  • 7,118
9 votes

Relationship between vegetarianism and global warming

There is an Oxford University study on the Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK it concludes that ...an average 2,000 kcal high meat diet ...
Robert Longson's user avatar
  • 2,420
7 votes

How much money do I need to donate to charity to justify not being vegan?

It would certainly be an amount greater than you spend on animal products, and even then, that money donated to whatever charity you choose doesn't cancel out the effect of your vote for the things ...
David S's user avatar
  • 1,172
6 votes

Which one promotes the most deforestation: raising crops or animal husbandry?

There are two sides to your question: economics, and ecological impact. As Zanna explained the latter very well, and my experience is with the former, I'll focus on that. As a political economist, I'...
amagnasco's user avatar
  • 105
6 votes

Relationship between vegetarianism and global warming

The most extensive study and publication on this subject is 2006 FAO's report titled "Livestock's long shadow". In chapter 4 it analyzes the role of livestock industry in greenhouse gases emissions ...
Attilio's user avatar
  • 5,619
5 votes
Accepted

Can a modern diet be vegan, organic and sustainable?

Short version: Yes. Vegan organic farms are actually surprisingly rare due to the fact that usually animal fertilizers are used. But it is possible and they are sustainable. I personally know this ...
ecc's user avatar
  • 721
5 votes
Accepted

How much is a person's greenhouse gas footprint reduced by eating vegetarian?

See this article: The carbon footprint of 5 diets compared - shrinkthatfootprint.com It suggests that the average person produces 2.5 CO2e a year while a vegetarian only produces 1.7 CO2e a year, and ...
atoms118's user avatar
5 votes

Documentaries in Spanish about environmental impact of meat industry?

A Carne É Fraca (or La Carne Es Débil, "Meat is Weak") is a Brazilian documentary about animal abuse in the meat industry. It has a CC-BY license (you are free to distribute it as long as you don't ...
Ramon Melo's user avatar
  • 1,872
5 votes

Which are good documentaries about environmental impact of livestock industry?

I will write down a list that touch this subject and also received a decent rating on IMDB (a vague criteria of a movie/documentary quality): Earthlings - I have watched it a long time ago and it ...
Alexei's user avatar
  • 3,631
5 votes
Accepted

Which pets could be kept by someone who chooses to be vegan for environmental reasons?

As you point out, Rabbits are vegan. Their diet is primarily grass hay, which may be available locally. The environmental impact of getting the hay depends on how far away you have to go to get it (...
Kiochi's user avatar
  • 506
5 votes
Accepted

What is the ecological impact of producing vegan supplements?

I found one study that addresses the production of Vitamin D3: Life cycle assessment of vitamin D3 synthesis: from batch to photo-high p,T (Springer Link HTML, data table HTML, DOI). The functional ...
Nic's user avatar
  • 7,118
5 votes

Is the change from meat eater to pescatarian comparable to the change from pescatarian to vegan?

To address the 'ecology' side of your question, there are a few factors to consider: How much meat/fish you are eating in both scenarios - probably an obvious one How is the fish caught? Pole and ...
Eleanor Sims's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How much land and water is used for farming animals?

Conclusion 8.06 quintillion liters, or 2.129 quintillion gallons, of water, is used each year for meat worldwide. 30% of Earth's land mass is used for these animals. How I got There Meat: About 20,...
Preston Hager's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Is organic palm oil harmful to animals?

I think in this case it is not about being organic, but sustainable. https://www.rspo.org/about https://theconversation.com/palm-oil-boycott-could-actually-increase-deforestation-sustainable-...
Alex's user avatar
  • 166
4 votes

How many vegans are needed to reach the Kyoto protocol target?

In 2006, the UN published the study Livestock's Long Shadow and stated, that the livestock sector accounts for 18% of the greenhouse gas emissions. As stated in the source cited by the questioner, ...
cellu's user avatar
  • 1,186
4 votes
Accepted

How long would it take for oceans to recover if vegetarianism was the norm?

That's an interesting question. According to this article fisheries can recover even in ten years, so much faster than "a few human generations": The team ran computer simulations on a massive ...
Alexei's user avatar
  • 3,631
4 votes

Which one promotes the most deforestation: raising crops or animal husbandry?

This is a false dichotomy. You can't raise (and breed) animals without growing plants to feed them. So it really boils down to which society is better for the environment: one which (1) purely grows ...
Tom Kelly ケリー・トム's user avatar
3 votes

Documentaries in Spanish about environmental impact of meat industry?

Cowspiracy is a good documentary about the environmental impact of animal agriculture, and it has Spanish subtitles.
C_Z_'s user avatar
  • 1,395
3 votes

Which pets could be kept by someone who chooses to be vegan for environmental reasons?

My bet is on fishes. My arguments come below: low food consumption - the vast majority of fishes are cold-blooded (yes, there is at least one warm-blooded fish specie), so they need significantly ...
Alexei's user avatar
  • 3,631
3 votes

How long would it take for oceans to recover if vegetarianism was the norm?

There is a lot of uncertainty around marine ecosystem recovery. In some areas, there are concerns that even if all fishing stopped, the ecosystem would never return to it's former state. Part of the ...
nloewen's user avatar
  • 2,843
3 votes

Do I really help by eating no meat but still eating fish ? How much is my environmental footprint reduced?

There are many ways to assess whether human activities are "good for the environment" but when it comes to eating fish, the major concern is about rapidly declining fish populations in all oceans ...
Nic's user avatar
  • 7,118
3 votes
Accepted

How is Animal Rebellion connected to the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement?

They appear aligned, in that AR posts are in the same style and hosted on the same site as the XR events, e.g.: https://rebellion.earth/event/october-animal-rebellion/ About goals, they have ...
Cameron Brick's user avatar
3 votes

How much money do I need to donate to charity to justify not being vegan?

The animal welfare portion of this question already has a complex answer, before even beginning to consider the complexities of climate change and carbon offsets. Therefore in my answer I will focus ...
Nic's user avatar
  • 7,118
2 votes

How accurate are Cowspiracy’s claims about the livestock industry?

Its good to question as I think there is always more to any claims made by various docos, including Cowspiracy. Very hard to fully isolate and quantify the impact of meat production in one definative ...
Vijay Prema's user avatar
2 votes

Which pets could be kept by someone who chooses to be vegan for environmental reasons?

Vegans who follow an ethical lifestyle, who would however like to share that life with an animal, can have several questions – for instance which pets are vegetarian or vegan so that they can blend ...
Bilal Ahmed's user avatar

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