A vegetarian is someone who eats a more plant based diet. There are six different types of vegetarians including lacto-ovo-vegetarians, lacto-vegetarians, ovo-vegetarians, pesco-vegetarians, semi-vegetarians, and lastly vegans. Most of these types of vegetarians do exclude meat, poultry, and fish altogether but some do have little amounts. There is even exclusion on dairy products as well. Climate change is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. There have been some steps made to help this issue but mostly people are just becoming aware of it. I believe that being a vegetarian can improve climate change because through the little amounts of food being consumed by vegetarians there is a great possibility for an immense decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.
Livestock emissions make up 14% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Being on a vegetarian diet could potentially reduce the gas emissions by 70%. In an article I found it said, “We humans eat about 230m tonnes of animals a year… We mostly breed four species – chickens, cows, sheep and pigs.” All four of these animals emit greenhouse gases like methane. They also need large amounts of food and water since we mass produce them. We need to stop the mass production of these animals. One of the ways we can do that is cut down our meat intake and eat a higher plant-based diet.
There are many ways that have come up about how to improve climate change but most are really hard. For example driving less by taking public transit is something that is emphasized a whole ton. I for one cannot get to where I need to go without driving because the public transit system is not near me. If the public transit system expanded more by maybe replacing a highway for its use then I would drive less. Becoming a vegetarian is an easier route than most. Plant-based foods like salads, steamed veggies, tofu are becoming more readily available to people. Being a vegetarian also helps with your overall health as well.
Cora,
I think your solution is very interesting and can be taken in very different areas about the environment and how being a vegetarian will help the body. I think being vegetarian will help lower the green house emissions and lower the process of climate change. I think you should consider that going vegetarian is more expensive than buying meat-based products in your counter argument and how it will not be accessible for being to become vegetarian.
Hi Cora, I loved your article and the solution it proposed. You can really tell you did your research and that you know what you are talking about and want to do what you can to help our planet earth. I had no idea that eating meat regularly was bad for the planet and how much green house gas it produces, Im glad that there are places we can go to learn more about issues like this and how we can be more eco-friendly. Here is another article I think you should read about vegetarians and climate change! https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49238749
Hi Cora!
This is such an awesome article. I really enjoyed reading your piece and agree with the points that you made. I personally am a vegetarian and one of my main reason for doing so is to decrease my role in global warming and climate change. Many people believe that in order to actually make a difference in changing the environment is to go all in, but it’s actually a lot simpler than that. Just by making small changes in our diets and actions we can decrease the climate change occurring on the planet. One article you should read is about the affects of doing “Meatless Mondays” https://www.meatlessmonday.com/for-the-environment/ and can help people ease into vegetarianism and or just consciously helping the environment. The vegetarian movement is becoming more relevant now than ever before. Awesome piece, definitely something that should be spoken of in a positive light 🙂
I really enjoyed this article, the topic is very interesting to me. I always thought being vegetarian would inevitably help the environment but I never actually did the research, so thank you for posting this now I know that it could very potentially help the environment. The only things I think you should change in the article to make it stronger would be to not state your opinion in the very beginning of the paragraph because it could make the reader think the article is untrustworthy because of possible bias. here’s where I got that from “I believe that being a vegetarian can improve climate change because through the little amounts of food being consumed by vegetarians there is a great possibility for an immense decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.” also there were some spelling error’s. Besides that very good article, amazing job.
Hi Cora!
First off I thought your post was very interesting because I never knew there were so many variations of vegetarians and I had no idea that we could cut down greenhouse gasses that much! I would like to read another post by you discussing what approaches are the most beneficial for converting meat eaters into healthy vegetarians. In fact it’s something that I’m curious about myself, I know that fruits and vegetables are not enough to sustain you alone and many substitutions for animal products contain nuts such as almond milk. Do you think that people with allergies could sustain a vegetarian diet too? Anyways it’s such an interesting topic and I’d love to read more about it, maybe this article will give you a kick start!
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian
Hi Cora. I really enjoyed reading your article. I both agree and disagree with the solution you have proposed to counteract climate change. I think that becoming vegetarian could help in small ways because there are less factories that are polluting the air in order to package and process the meat we consume, but I also believe that things such as driving less would have more of an impact on us directly. I understand that the vegetarian lifestyle has health benefits as well but we also need protein from meat and other foods for our bodies as well. However, I do think that vegetarianism could greatly cut down on the factories used to process the meat, but even at that point i’m worried that there would be more methane released into the air if we are not keeping it in check somewhat by consuming the animals as well.