• Why Plant-Based?
    • Overview
    • Sustainability
    • Better health
    • Compassion for animals
  • Resources
    • Virtual speaker series
    • Speakers program
    • Pamphlets
    • Newsletters
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • Who we are
    • Contact us
  • How to Help
    • Join us
    • Donate
  • Subscribe to Newsletter
Earthsave CanadaEarthsave Canada
  • Why Plant-Based?
    • Overview
    • Sustainability
    • Better health
    • Compassion for animals
  • Resources
    • Virtual speaker series
    • Speakers program
    • Pamphlets
    • Newsletters
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • Who we are
    • Contact us
  • How to Help
    • Join us
    • Donate
  • Subscribe to Newsletter

Meat just doesn’t cut it in today’s environment

Meat just doesn’t cut it in today’s environment

Meat just doesn’t cut it in today’s environment

June 11, 2017 Posted by David Steele

By David Steele and Denise Swanson

There’s little doubt about it. Humans evolved as omnivores. The shapes of our teeth, the lengths of our intestines, and a wealth of fossil evidence (arrowheads, butchered animal bones, et cetera) all point to an omnivorous past.

Natural selection favoured meat eating because it allowed our ancestors to survive where edible plant supplies were in short supply. Our forebears could flourish on fruits and grains and berries when those were plentiful and switch to meat when edible plants were scarce. Had early humans not led omnivorous lives, they almost certainly would have died out.

But that was then. This is now.

In the past, humans were few and far between. The pressure we exerted on the world around us was slight. Today, with our population approaching seven billion, the pressures we exert are enormous. No longer a boon to humanity, our hunger for meat has become the single biggest contributor to planetary degradation. Be it global warming, fossil-fuel depletion, water depletion or desertification, meat consumption is a prime factor in the problem. And meat takes food out of the mouths of the hungry.

On today’s factory farms, it takes 2.4 pounds of dry corn, soy, and oats to produce a pound of chicken; eight to 10 pounds of similar feed is required for every pound of beef. According to Cornell University’s David Pimentel, nearly 800 million people could fill their stomachs for a year on the grain fed to U.S. animals alone. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

According to Pimentel’s careful reckoning, modern western diets could not exist at all were it not for the enormous amount of fossil fuels we pour into them. Just getting nitrogen into our fertilizers takes the equivalent of nearly one million barrels of oil each day. Add in the other components-the pesticides, the herbicides, the combines, the tractors, and all the rest-and the numbers become astronomical. As Pimentel shows, the way we raise meat, it takes some 28 calories of fossil fuel input to generate one calorie of food value. Even modern lacto-ovo vegetarian diets, he warns, can’t be maintained in our world without excessive amounts of oil and gas.

Meat production accelerates global warming, too. All those burned fossil fuels have to go somewhere. Worse, our cows and sheep and other ruminants emit methane as they digest their feed. Together, Canada’s 10 million cows release the methane equivalent of a half ton of CO2 for every man, woman, and child in the country. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture is responsible for a bigger share of global warming than all of the cars and trucks and ships and planes in the world combined!

And animal agriculture emits other pollutants, too. Nearly three-quarters of North American ammonia emissions are due directly or indirectly to animal farming. Manure contaminates our ground water. The Worldwatch Institute reports that farm animals in the United States generate 130 times more bodily waste than humans.

Animal agriculture destroys land and habitat, too. Raising livestock and the soybeans to feed them is easily the biggest contributor to rainforest destruction. More than two acres of tropical rainforest are cleared per second to graze or feed farm animals. Around the world, tens of billions of tons of topsoil are lost each year to cultivation of animal feed crops.

Fish are no solution either. We’ve mined the oceans so badly that almost all of the world’s fisheries are in serious decline. Hunting? Sorry. All of North America’s wildlife would be wiped out were we to satisfy our current hunger for meat that way.

In the past, the meat eating was a boon to us. But today, the opposite is true. Natural selection operates on the here and now. If we don’t curtail our consumption of meat and eggs and milk and cheese, natural selection will eventually work in the strongest way against our meat-eating habits.

But we’re lucky. We evolved as omnivores. We can choose what we eat. Plants or animals.

Choose plants. There’s an awful lot at stake.

Share
Avatar photo

About David Steele

David is a molecular biologist retired in 2013 from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He has also held faculty positions at Cornell and Queen’s Universities. Dr. Steele is a frequent public speaker and a regular contributor to Earthsave Canada's publications. He is also an occasional contributor to various other publications.

You also might be interested in

Bill Gates is right: the argument for veganism <i>is</i> appealing – and he should take it more seriously as part of the solution to our climate crisis

Bill Gates is right: the argument for veganism is appealing – and he should take it more seriously as part of the solution to our climate crisis

Mar 15, 2021

In his new book, Bill Gates outlines a plan for the world to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. While emphasizing meat and dairy as the main culprits for emissions in the agricultural sector, he gives short shrift to veganism as part of the solution, instead claiming it is unrealistic. Veganism should be viewed as one of the easiest to achieve and most sensible changes humanity will need to make in order to avoid the impending climate disaster. It is hoped that Gates’ views will evolve as the explosion in popularity of plant-based diets worldwide continues, and he will recognize that veganism is necessary if we are serious about getting to zero.

The Plant-Based Cities Movement: Taking climate action to the municipal level

The Plant-Based Cities Movement: Taking climate action to the municipal level

Aug 29, 2022

How The Plant-Based Cities Movement is combating the climate emergency one municipality at a time. Learn how you can become empowered to make change in your hometown.

Food waste

9 tips to decrease your diet’s environmental impact

Feb 1, 2021

Wasted food is an important issue that we can all take action on. 63% of food thrown away by Canadian households could be avoided. Small changes can help the environment and save you money!

Recent Posts

  • How can we continue to honour our planet after Earth Month?
  • No, Bill C-293 on pandemic prevention is not the “Vegan Act”
  • Estimating the True Costs of Our Foods
  • CBC’s coverage of plant-based issues is all too often outrageously flawed

Follow us

If you found this helpful please consider donating.

Donate

Engage with us on facebook

Earthsave Canada

Earthsave Canada

13 hours 50 minutes ago

"Scientists have discovered that many baby animals experience grief in ways remarkably similar to humans, especially when they lose a parent, sibling, or close companion.

6
View on Facebook
Share
Earthsave Canada

Earthsave Canada

16 hours 8 minutes ago

Bottom line: Meat industry 'science' amounts to mostly lies. Quoting the study, "Our findings highlight that using animal protein as a comparator in industry-funded studies,

6
View on Facebook
Share

Earthsave Canada

18 hours 53 minutes ago

"Switching to plant-based diets could help protect our environment—and ocean life—in meaningful ways. A 2023 analysis from the University of Oxford, which studied data from

New Research Shows What Our Diets Are Doing to the Oceans: “An Existential Crisis”

New research reveals how ocean warming threatens thousands of species. Here’s how our diets could help protect them.

3
View on Facebook
Share

© 2025 · Earthsave Canada.