UNEP Report

The new United Nations Environmental Programme released a report on June 2nd, 2010 that calls for a shift towards plant-based diets in an effort to curb carbon emissions of the meat industry.

The following is a direct quotation from the site on its proposal :

[…] the priorities for achieving transformational change are:-

• Agricultural goods, particularly products from animals, which are fed more than half of all world crops. Agricultural production accounts for 70% of the global freshwater consumption and 38% of the total land use. Food production accounts for 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 60% of the phosphorus and nitrogen pollution and 30% of toxic pollution in Europe;

• Users of fossil fuels, especially electrical utilities and other energy-intensive industries, residential heating, and transportation. Fossil-fuel production and consumption dominate as the world's leading cause of environmental degradation. Extraction from alternative fossil fuel sources, such as tar sands, poses potentially even heavier environmental consequences."

• Materials, especially plastics, iron, steel, and aluminium, use of which is growing, not least in the unsaturated emerging economies; and the energy requirements for which are rising because of declining grades of ore as they get used up.

'Agricultural Goods' gets FIRST MENTION. This is another huge success for vegetarian and vegan activists everywhere.

Here’s even an FAO report from 2006 that I just stumbled upon that illuminates the damages of animal agriculture.

The amount of administrative support for vegetarianism on at least a sustainability angle is enormous, and that’s pretty awesome. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the awesomeness of this.

Moment over. Let’s go kick some ass.