...but you still eat meat. I respectfully submit that you are doing it wrong.
By all means, continue to fret over carbon dioxide while ignoring methane. Solarize your home, bike to work, compost, and recycle your beer cans. Those things are all fine and good, but when it comes to climate change, doing them without addressing diet is like watering your garden while your house burns.
Now, I could spend the next month crafting a detailed rationale for this prescription, but it would be much easier and more enjoyable for you to simply watch Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, which is available on Netflix. Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn do a masterful job explaining the problem and outlining a path forward.
This diary is not simply a plug for that film, though. Since you took the time to read this far, allow me to “flesh out” the major angles on modern animal agriculture:
1. The environmental damage. In 2006 the UN published Livestock's Long Shadow, a widely-cited report that pinned 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the major types livestock. This put it ahead of transportation and made it the single largest contributor.
A few years later some researchers at Worldwatch did their own analysis and calculated the GHG footprint of animal agriculture to be 51% of emissions. And that says nothing of water and loss of biodiversity.
Put another way, you aren’t benefiting the planet when you buy a Prius and then head to the drive thru at McDonald’s.
2. The toll on animals. The slaughter industry in the United States alone kills about 9 billion (with a b-) animals per year. If I were to put that in human terms, it would come out to just over two holocausts each day.
At this point in the diary I could link a ton of links to stories, videos, and images detailing the living (and dying) conditions in factory farms, the places where >99% of meat comes from, but it would be pointless. You simply won’t click on them. You don’t have the gonads. Why ruin the sizzle of a good steak with the knowledge of where it came from?
But what about dairy, you ask? They say happy cows come from California, but I’m not sure happiness comes from being constantly pregnant, having half your offspring become veal, and ending up in a crock pot. Call me crazy.
3. The toll on humans. Ask yourself a simple question: who the fuck would work in a slaughterhouse? The answer is easy: people who don't have a choice. “The meatpacking companies hire immigrant workers because they are often the only ones who will work under such terrible conditions.” Consider that the next time you purchase meat, your money is probably going to a very large company that is systematically screwing over its bottom rung employees while they do the worst job imaginable. And you’re complicit to the point of funding it. If something needs to die for you to have a meal, step up and kill it yourself, preferably with your bare hands.
So there you have it. Eat your burger, eat your fried chicken, eat your Christmas ham, but don’t call yourself an environmentalist, and animal lover, or an advocate for the disempowered while you chew.