What if the World Went Vegetarian?
Have you ever thought of a life without meat, milk, honey, and other animal-sourced products? According to environmentalists and researchers, going vegan is more relevant than ever. What’s astonishing is that many of the world’s population have started to adapt to a vegan diet. This may sound extreme, but people following plant-based diets have risen to 340% in the UK alone, which is ridiculously high.
And if everyone becomes vegetarian, by 2050, there will be a significant drop of 70% in food-related emissions. This can be a big boost to our fight against climate change. To begin with, fisheries and livestock account for 31% of food-related emissions. Animals raised for dairy, meat, eggs, and seafood production contribute to food emissions in numerous ways.
For instance, cattle and other ruminant livestock produce significant amounts of methane gas through their digestive processes. Also, pasture and manure management, along with fuel consumption from fishing vessels contribute to food related emissions.
If the world went vegan, hunger would become a thing of the past!
It is about freeing up resources and space for growing food. A non vegan’s diet requires ten times more energy, 14 times more water, and 17 times more land than a vegetarian’s diet. According to the United Nations, in 50-years’ time, the world population will grow to 10.5 billion compared to today’s 7 billion. So, there is a dire need to grow food more sustainably in order to feed us all.
Talking about the farm animals, when people ban animal-sourced products, the farmers will have no choice but to slow down breeding or completely end it. The animals might return to the wild or taken care of in sanctuaries. Livestock like goats, sheep, and pigs could possibly survive the wilderness and find their own population levels.