Vegetarians - Saving the World!

It was announced today in The Times, that becoming a vegetarian will eventually help to save planet Earth from becoming a desert wasteland. Being a vegetarian myself, I am greatly pleased to say that I am finally doing my part in saving the planet. I must admit that I dont always turn the light off when leaving the room, I boil way more water than I need to when making tea and I do run a petrol car that is not a hybrid. So you can imagine my pleasure when I read the headline, "Climate Chief: give up meat to save the planet." I am finally doing something positive towards the climate and green house gases.

The report claimed that, "direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. methane is 23 times more powerful than carvon dioxide as a global warming gas." Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I.G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He said that, "meat is a wasteful use o water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the worlds resources. A vegetarian diet is better." Ofcourse I completely agree with this but my meat eating source thinks that, "Is it fair for the UN to ask us to stop eating meat when it's happy to encourage the industries of countries such as China (the world's biggest emitter of CO2 from power generation) without making serious efforts to control their greenhouse gas production. And let's not forget the USA (the biggest CO2 producer per capita) who still have not ratified the Kyoto agreement." This is yet another argument, the government are starting off small, and starting with restricting the UK's populations dietary habits but isn't concentrating or trying to change the larger picture and massive corporations. should the restrictions start with the entire population or with large companies distributing more green house gases than individual people?

After talking this over with a few people I have found that the main question is that, "what happens to the cows we are not eating?" I don't have the answer to this but some possibilities could be: phase them out, simply don't impregnate cows anymore, thus when they die of old age after a few years we will have none left, another possibility is that they simply have a mass murder of the 1.4 billion cows on the planet. Another little note that doesn't make this idea logical is that we still need cows to produce milk. The government won't be asking the whole of the UK to become vegetarians but vegans instead. Milk from cows produces pasta, yoghurts, creams, cheese and ice-cream! a world without ice-cream? What are we going to eat when it becomes 5 degrees hotter each year due to the greenhouse gases?

Another advantage for cutting out the meat is that it takes 20.9 square meters of land to produce 1kg or beef whereas it is only 1.3 square meters for vegetables. This massive land reduction would mean there being a LOT more food for everyone. Livestock takes up 67% of agricultural land, if replaced with vegetables, not only would every bit of the land be used but there would be over double the amount of vegetables, the UK would become healthier and obesity wouldnt be as much a problem as it is now.

Another question to be asked is, becoming vegetarian buts out chicken, duck, game, fish etc, does this mean that the population wouldn't be able to eat this either or if they would be allowed and not strictly vegetarians. we would get a build up of the animals not being eaten. Would there be a mass slaughter of them too?

For countries such as India, becoming vegetarian wouldn't be too much of a problem. India's vegetarian population is 399 millions, 40 % of the country whereas the UK's population is 3.7 million, 6% of the population. This leaves 94% of the population as meat eaters, people that the government would have to stop letting eat meat. Other countries such as France have even more of the population to turn vegetarians, with only a vegetarian population of 1.2 million, less than 2%.

My personal reason for becoming a vegetarian is that the way that the animals are looked after and killed. My reason is within the top 38% of peoples reasons. Other reasons include: don't morally or spiritually approve of killing animals for food, 35%, concern over the environment, 11%, health reasons, 8%, religion, 5% and other reasons stand at 3% of the populations reasoning. When I first saw pictures and youtube videos as to how animals were looked after, is what made me more aware and made me become completely certain that I don't want any part in the inhumane lives of animals.

I leave it up you, my reader to have your own opinion on this matter, myself however, shall wait and see what the government chooses to do next; and if it will actually work, or if it is too simple an answer to a very large problem.

A strong advert for becoming a vegetarian, a youtube video for KFC chicken abuse - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxv7PPGZqg