Greenhouse Gases - One person switching to a vegan diet reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 million tons per year - If every American dropped one serving of chicken per week from their diet, it would saves the same amount of CO2 emissions as taking 500,000 cars off the road. - Methane is 20x more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows combined are the largest producers of methane on earth - Nitrous oxide is 300x more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and the meat, dairy, and egg industries produce 65% of the world's nitrous oxide - I calorie of animal protein takes 11x as much fossil fuel as 1 calorie of plant protein - An omnivorous diet releases 7x more fossil fuels than a vegan diet
FUN FACT: Animals made for food create about 89,000 pounds of excrement per second. Not only does this pollute the groundwater, but feces from factory farms have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 different states. Pig feces are kept in large ponds that are so deep and have such toxic fumes, people fall in and drown.
Water Use - About half of the water used in the US goes to animal agriculture - 1 pound of meat=2,400 gallons of water; 1 pound of wheat=25 gallons of water - The amount of water you save from not eating a pound of meat is equivalent to not showering for 6 months. - Vegan diet: 300 gallons of water per day; Omnivorous diet: 4,000 gallons of water per day on average
FUN FACT: It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat
Land Use - Raising animals takes up about 30% of the earth's land, which is about equivalent to the size of Asia - An area of land about the size of 7 football fields is bulldozed every minute to create room for farming - Just the Brazilian cattle industry, which has around 200 million cattle, is responsible for 14% of the world's annual deforestation
Ocean Depletion - Mass fishing fleets use large fishing nets that are dragged through the oceans grabbing anything in their path - 53% of the world's fisheries are fully exploited, meaning that the rate of death equals the rate of births - 32% of the world's fisheries are overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion - Worldwide 90% of large predatory fish populations are already gone - Billions of other fish and other animals, including dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, seabirds, and corals, are threatened - We are losing species and ecosystems - At current exploitation rates, many important fish stocks will be removed in the next 25 years - A healthy ocean is fundamental to reducing climate change and its impacts - Ocean vegetation takes in 25% of the carbon dioxide released