Actually ...

There was some skepticism expressed about the sign at Veggie Pride that stated, "Meat consumption is the major cause of global warming." It’s not hilarious, it’s absolutely true. This fact has been proved in study after study and should be a major concern for everyone. I could quote scary facts and rhetoric from myriad environmental groups, but I thought you’d be more convinced if I prove it through articles in impartial magazines.

Two key quotes from a Time magazine article from September 2008 “Meat: Making Global Warming Worse:”

In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world's cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions.

The geophysicists Gidon Eschel and Pamela Martin have estimated that if every American reduced meat consumption by just 20%, the greenhouse gas savings would be the same as if we all switched from a normal sedan to a hybrid Prius.

And from a February 2009 Scientific American story, “How Meat Contributes to Global Warming:”

Eating and Driving: An Atmospheric Comparison

The greenhouse gas emissions from producing various foods can be appreciated by comparing them with the emissions from a gasoline-powered passenger car that gets 27 miles per gallon. The estimated emissions from food production incorporate the assumption that 1,000 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year (about 2,700 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year) would have been absorbed by forests or other vegetation if the land had not been cleared for annual food crops or fodder. Greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, for instance—trap solar energy and warm the earth’s surface. Quantities of greenhouse gases are often expressed as the amount of CO2 that would have the same global-warming potential: their CO2 equivalent.

The High (Greenhouse Gas) Cost of Meat

Worldwide meat production (beef, chicken and pork) emits more atmospheric greenhouse gases than do all forms of global transportation or industrial processes. On the basis of data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, the author estimates that current levels of meat production add nearly 6.5 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases every year to the atmosphere: some 18 percent of the worldwide annual production of 36 billion tons. Only energy production generates more greenhouse gases than does raising livestock for food.

Prime Cuts: How Beef Production Leads to Greenhouse Gases

The largest fraction of the greenhouse effect from beef production comes from the loss of CO2-absorbing trees, grasses and other year-round plant cover on land where the feed crops are grown and harvested. Second most important is the methane given off by animal waste and by the animals themselves as they digest their food. This analysis of the U.S. feedlot beef production system was done by ecological economist Susan Subak, then at the University of East Anglia in England.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of information on this. Google “meat production climate change” or any such terms, and you’ll learn a lot. The environmental harm is one big reason I’ve gone vegan, so don’t scoff before you’ve learned the details.

Photo above and satellite image below of Harris Ranch, a gigantic cattle factory farming operation I used to drive past all the time in Central California. Its smell alone should make everyone driving down I-5 into a vegetarian. Methane city.