So, what would happen to the world if everyone became vegetarian?

The production of livestock for human consumption generates a third of all greenhouse emissions worldwide. A third!

An average American family of four emits more greenhouse gases because of the meat they eat than from driving two cars. People talk about cutting back on car usage (and so they should), but no one talks about cutting down the number of steaks on the barbie. There are about one and a half billion cows on earth, and each cow produces between thirty and fifty gallons of methane a day. That is … I’m no good at maths, I’ve already told you … a lot of methane. It comes from their manure, their burps and their farts. Methane is a greenhouse gas. So, that steak you buy down at your local supermarket is making the planet warmer because of its history of poos, burps and farts.

Livestock takes up a huge amount of space that could be used for other things. There are about twelve billion acres of agricultural land available in the world. Nearly seventy per cent of that is used for rearing livestock that we then eat. One third of the crops we do produce worldwide goes straight down the throats of those animals, to fatten them up. If that land was used for other crops, it could feed the hungry of the world. Nearly a billion people struggle with hunger every day. Each year over two and a half million children die from hunger-related causes. They die, in large part, because we in first world countries want to eat meat.

I haven’t even mentioned animal cruelty yet. But I will. You can trust me on that.

I learned all of this in ten minutes.

I Goggled it on my iPatch.