I will progressively increase my greens- vegetables, and fruits consumption while reducing my meat consumption. With something so routine like meat, which forms the foundation of our daily meals, something which is the number one food on the tables of people worldwide, contributes significantly to climate change. Moreover, animal culture for food production is regarded as the most disastrous invention of humankind. The rationale underlying being the inefficiency in meat production. The production of meat involves an immense burden on the ecosystem. To cultivate one kilogram of beef, it improvidently demands 25 kilograms of grain or fodder to feed the livestock (Kehoe, 2016) and nearly 15000 liters of water (World Water Development Report,2019). Pork is comparatively less exhaustive, and chicken is less still. Furthermore, about 30% of the earth's arable land is used to foster livestock (Steinfeld,2006), collectively responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions (FAO, 2007). These resources could be progressively used for the reconstruction of the socio-economic fabric.
Meat production and consumption are escalating progressively – The Global meat production has quadrupled over the past 50 years – The total production was roughly 71 million tons in 1961 to over 340 million tons in 2018 (Hannah Ritchie, 2019). And to support this extravagant production, more than 80billion animals are slaughtered each year for meat at an unsustainable rate to feed the rapidly multiplying population- The current global-human population of 7.6 billion is estimated to attain 8.6 billion in 2030. And then to 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by the end of 2100 (The World Population Prospects, 2017). Without opting for prescriptive measures to mitigate carbon-emissions from a population that continues to grow and consume more than in the past, exceeding the biosphere's absorption capacity leading an unhealthy amount of emissions left unabsorbed by the ecosystem as a consequence.
Meat production is predominantly a hefty check written against our planet's dwindling reserves and is solely accountable for World Hunger, Environmental Degradation, Human Health, and Animal Welfare; All at Once (Friedrich, 2018).