Meat Consumption and CO2 Emissions

If you are interested in learning more about CO2 emissions from livestock, read the recent article below which appeared in Thursday's SF Chronicle, written by Elisabeth Rosenthal of the NYT. What I found interesting was the following data:

• Farm animals from around the world generate 18% of the emissions that are raising global temperatures.
  
• Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more that a carrot - Moral: EAT Less Meat.
• Developing countries such as China, India and Brazil has seen their red meat consumption rise by 33% over the last 10 years.
  
• Although in the US agricultural accounts for only 7.4% of greenhouse gas emissions, the pecentage is skewed downward due to the extraordinarily high levels of emissions in other areas, like transportation and landfills compared with other nations.

We need to be more Mindful of what we are eating and the effects it is having on our environment. Small changes in our eating habits such as eating more plant-based foods can make a big difference on the global scale.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/04/MNKP14H1NC.DTL&hw=meat+farm+emissions&sn=001&sc=1000