From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Skirt Steak at Martiniburger in Tokyo, Japan, Modified. Original by Eliot Bergman (Martiniburger) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

“… Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our climate and our environment should become vegans …”

‘We are gambling with the future of our planet for the sake of hamburgers’: Peter Singer on climate change

Published: June 15, 2023 6.11am AEST
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics in the Center for Human Values, Princeton University

I wasn’t aware of climate change until the 1980s — hardly anyone was — and even when we recognised the dire threat that burning fossil fuels posed, it took time for the role of animal production in warming the planet to be understood. 

Today, though, the fact that eating plants will reduce your greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most important and influential reasons for cutting down on animal products and, for those willing to go all the way, becoming vegan.

A few years ago, eating locally — eating only food produced within a defined radius of your home — became the thing for environmentally conscious people to do, to such an extent that “locavore” became the Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year” for 2007. 

If you enjoy getting to know and support your local farmers, of course, eating locally makes sense. But if your aim is, as many local eaters said, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you would do much better by thinking about what you are eating, rather than where it comes from. That’s because transport makes up only a tiny share of the greenhouse gas emissions from the production and distribution of food. 

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/we-are-gambling-with-the-future-of-our-planet-for-the-sake-of-hamburgers-peter-singer-on-climate-change-207605

I don’t know what the professor is complaining about.

When you think about it we’re all vegans – just some of us let the cows, pigs and sheep pre-process and concentrate the vegetable nutrients before consumption.