What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
The impact our diet has on the environment
Climate change is a huge problem in today's world and it’s only going to get worse if everyone does something to combat it. But what can we as individuals actually do to stop or slow climate change? There are some more long term goals that we could all work together for such as switching to renewable energy and cutting back on the effect of the transportation industry on the world through clean energy, but those would require government action or the help of a large corporation rather than ordinary people. One almost immediate change we could make however would be focusing on what we eat. It is estimated that around ¼ of all CO2 emissions in the world are from the food sector. With about 15% of total CO2 emissions coming from livestock specifically. This equates to 8.1 gigatons or almost heavier than everyone in the world…times 20.
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food … /livestock
Cows contribute the most substantial portion of any animal, emitting almost 3 times as many greenhouse gasses as #2 which is sheep. Each singular cow produces 220 pounds of methane a year, a gas which is 28 times better at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/makin … ustainable
This level is unsustainable and because of cows also being used for dairy, cows are becoming a major problem for our environment and something needs to be done to combat it worldwide. But Cows aren’t the only problem, pigs and sheep also contribute a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions and while not quite as severe as cows they also have a major part to play in the livestock sector and the greenhouse gasses from it. If we all worked together, to cut back on meat and dairy products, it would slash a lot of greenhouse gas emissions off of the ever increasing load we are putting into our atmosphere. This is why everyone around the world must band together to cut back on our collective use of animal products in order to do what we can to save our planet and maybe even convince the leaders of the larger sectors to take action and reduce their carbon footprint as well.