Animal agriculture is not just unethical, it’s also an environmental disaster. That’s the vegan trump card, right? Even if you’re not an ‘animal person’, it’s likely you care about the future of the world your children will inherit, and the contribution made by meat-eating to greenhouse gas emissions has received increasing scientific attention over the last five years. Consequently, we’ve seen widespread acceptance of the link between meat consumption and climate change paving the way for plant-based diets to become mainstream. However, COVID-19 may be interrupting this trajectory in an unexpected way. As the imposed reduction in transport and industry appears to be dramatically improving air quality, some are touting this as evidence that farming isn’t a real cause of climate change after all. People are still eating meat in lockdown and, look, the air is getting cleaner!
It’s true that transport makes up 23% of global carbon emissions and, of course, these have fallen in the short term as we’re forced to avoid unnecessary travel. In the US, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are forecast to drop 7.5% this year and, in the EU, daily emissions have fallen 58% since lock-down: driving and flying, two things most of us are no longer allowed to do, contribute 72% and 11% of the transport sector’s greenhouse gas emissions respectively. In both China and Italy, locked down industrial areas are also showing strong drops in nitrogen oxide (NO2).
But, when it comes to CO2 at least, the picture is more complex. Food, primarily livestock and the crops grown to feed them (in 2018, the industrial agriculture industry used over 70% of soy crops to feed livestock animals), accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions(1): more than travel. Look at the infographics below(2) for a detailed breakdown. New research suggests that the livestock industry is responsible for at least 37% of all GHG emissions (3), and methane (responsible for nearly one-fifth of all the global warming potential over the next 50 years) largely comes from animal agriculture. Methane warms the planet at up to 86 times the rate of CO2. So if everybody in lockdown who stopped travelling also stopped eating meat, we’d be seeing an even more dramatic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, not just right now but into the future. Nobody’s claiming that animal agriculture is the only cause of greenhouse emissions. Nonetheless, the reduction in emissions from travel doesn’t make the former any less polluting.
As you can see from the charts above, the majority of food emissions result from land use change or at farm level: methane emissions from cattle, management of manure or use of fertilizer. Significantly, dairy, meat and eggs account for 83% of greenhouse gas emissions from the average EU diet. Only 17% results from plant-based foods.
This isn’t to take away from our celebration of the short-term improvements caused by reduced transport emissions. But short-term is the key phrase here. Most of us need to travel in ‘normal’ life, to get to work, to attend meetings, to socialise. So these carbon emissions are going to go up again as soon as lockdown ends, probably more than usual as we take advantage of our returned freedom with holidays abroad and travel to visit loved ones. There’s a historical precedent too: the financial crash of 2008-9 led to an overall dip in emissions of 1.3% but this rebounded by 2010 as the economy recovered, leading to an all-time high. The same situation applies to emissions from industrial processes like manufacturing and construction. Right now, demand for oil and steel has fallen more than demand for meat and dairy, but there are record-high stockpiles. As soon as the world returns to normality, fossil fuel production will quickly pick back up.
I hope that the improved environmental
Still, what we don’t need to do, in or out of lockdown, is eat meat. While I see zero-waste bloggers understandably giving in to the occasional plastic grocery bag, I don’t see any vegan Instagrammers eating a bacon sandwich because the supermarket didn’t have seitan. This is because it’s easy to avoid meat during the pandemic, and eating plant-based doesn’t increase your risk of transmitting disease. In fact, now might be a great time to try a vegan or vegetarian diet, given that fresh meat is less available in supermarkets and corner shops than plant-based alternatives, fresh fruit and veg, or pulses and grains. But most importantly, moving to an animal-free diet has the potential to cut carbon emissions in the long term, whereas what we’re seeing now in the reduced transport and manufacturing emissions is a short-term solution.
Climate change and environmental destruction isn’t just about greenhouse gases. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture while 94% of all non-human mammal biomass is livestock. These livestock consume enormous amounts of water (agriculture uses 70% of global freshwater withdrawals(4)) and the pesticides used to grow the crops that feed these cows, pigs and chickens contribute to pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes (agriculture causes 78% of global ocean and freshwater pollution). Natural resources aren’t the only victim: of the 28,000 wild animal species listed as ‘threatened’ with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture and aquaculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them.
Have the reduced emissions from other sectors made any of these facts any less true? No, of course not. We can celebrate this temporary silver lining, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture in doing so. That is: the single, most impactful thing you can do to fight climate change is to reduce – or eliminate – your meat consumption.
Personally, I feel the same way that researchers Oksanen and Kortetmäki express in their paper here: “There is no need for any extra arguments for vegetarian or vegan diet. The global warming dimensions are merely accidental additions in the pro-vegetarianism or pro-veganism toolbox”. When I see a photograph of a sow standing in a concrete-floored gestation crate, unable to turn around, gnawing hopelessly on metal bars, I don’t think “Great that she’s kept inside so her emissions are less”. Finally, let’s not forget that it was eating animals that caused the pandemic in the first place, and that industrial animal farming is a hotbed for potential future viruses. If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there are more responsible ways of doing that than keeping people (and animals) locked indoors.
References:
(1) Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992
(2) https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
(3) https://sentientmedia.org/the-climate-crisis-secret/
(4) FAO (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome
