Adopting a vegetarian diet is better at preventing global warming than driving a fuel-efficient car, said San Jose State University sociology professor Dan Brook in a lecture Monday.
Speaking as a guest invited by Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Brook stressed that the practices of the international meat and dairy industry are the leading cause of greenhouse gases, which consequently result in global warming. He also cited a few sketchy statistics, the Emerald has found. To prevent these greenhouse gases, Brook said that individual consumers can make a huge difference where government and industry have not.
“Every time you buy something, you’re saying ‘I support this process; I vote for it,’” he said. “Every time you purchase a hamburger, you’re saying ‘I support the meat industry, I support global warming,’”
Quoting statistics taken from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Brook said that about 30 percent of the world’s surface is being used for components of the livestock industry, such as pasture land and crops for cattle feed. In actuality, the Emerald has discovered, 30 percent of the world’s land surface – not total surface – is being used in livestock production. This huge geographic infrastructure based on meat and dairy products ultimately results in approximately 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
Brook noted that oil-guzzling cars, trucks and other vehicles cause only 13.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. While cars produce tons of carbon dioxide daily, livestock produces large quantities of methane and nitrous oxide, he said, both of which are enormously more damaging than carbon dioxide in regard to global warming. Here the numbers got a little sketchy again. Methane, he said, is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. This is false. According to the United Nations statistics he cited, Methane is only 10 times more damaging; nitrous oxide is the chemical compound that is 300 times more damaging.
“Even more important than switching from a SUV to a Camry, is switching to a vegan diet because you’ll be saving far more resources,” he said.
The process of bringing meat from other countries for American consumption is rife with inefficiency, Brook said. In a weight-for-weight comparison, he said to produce and import one pound of beef from outside America it takes about 16 pounds of grain for cattle feed, in addition to thousands of gallons of water and large amounts of petroleum-based fertilizer and fuel.
“Using fossil fuels for the meat industry is a large carbon footprint,” Brook said. “It’s the number one cause of greenhouse gases.”
In response to a question from journalism major Josh Welch on whether seafood and dairy are as harmful to the environment as the meat industry, Brook didn’t hesitate in his answer.
A vegetarian himself for the last 26 years, Brook said that all large-scale animal products – whether beef, pork, poultry, seafood or dairy – have that same destructive consequence on the environment.
“If people were to drastically reduce their consumption of meat, we would actually see an impact in global warming,” Brook said. “We would see the polar icecaps stop melting.”
Brook used graphic descriptions of what the global community is already facing because reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are not being made. Species of animals and plants that could have undiscovered applications are being endangered or going extinct because of global warming, he said. He said that last December the Indian island of Lohachara in the Bay of Bengal disappeared from rising ocean water, and all the inhabitants had to be evacuated.
“Global warming is the most important scientific, cultural and moral issue of our times,” Brook said. “Unless you’re George Bush or Michael Crichton, you can’t deny global warming.”