Calculating Impact
1) Reflection on the 2nd week
- Describe (IN DETAIL) how your 2nd week went with your behavior to reduce your environmental impact?
- What did you do? How did you do it? How often did you do it?
As I complete this second week of my environmental habit project I feel that it is necessary to further underscore the numerous ways that cutting meat from your diet will help contribute to reducing my carbon footprint. For such data will help me commit to sticking to my environmental habit.
To start, according to the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems, creating a four ounce serving of beef, pork, or poultry produces an estimated 6.61 (beef), 1.72 (pork), or 1.26 (poultry) pounds of Carbon Dioxide per serving respectively. As such by simply swapping out beef for pork or poultry alternatives one could save as many as 68.46 pounds of carbon with strictly pork or 74.9 pounds with only poultry. Additionally if one was willing to make the commitment cutting meat completely would save as many as 92.54 pounds of carbon per week or 4,825 pounds over the course of a year. For perspective, this amounts to roughly 52% of the annual carbon emissions of the typical American car.
Thus, given this data, and the fact that cutting meat consumption from current levels can lead
to healthier, ethically sourced diets, a meatless diet looks like an increasingly attractive option.
By extension, in a perfect world, if every American committed to a meatless diet we could cut
our carbon emissions by as much as a quarter and free up as many as 654 million acres
of US cattle pastures (equivalent to 25% of all land administered by the federal government).
In short, given the wide variety of thoroughly researched articles from sources such as the Stanford Medical School (a premier medical research institution) & Oxford University (basically Stanford but British) I have been able to uncover a well reasoned argument against our current levels of consumption. As such this has helped me to continue to commit to my initial habit, completely challenged the ways I view the food I eat on a near daily bias, and persuaded me to spend more time researching the impacts that many of my other habits may unknowingly inflict on the environment.- Describe (IN DETAIL) how your 2nd week went with your behavior to reduce your environmental impact?
- What did you do? How did you do it? How often did you do it?
As I complete this second week of my environmental habit project I feel that it is necessary to further underscore the numerous ways that cutting meat from your diet will help contribute to reducing my carbon footprint. For such data will help me commit to sticking to my environmental habit.
To start, according to the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems, creating a four ounce serving of beef, pork, or poultry produces an estimated 6.61 (beef), 1.72 (pork), or 1.26 (poultry) pounds of Carbon Dioxide per serving respectively. As such by simply swapping out beef for pork or poultry alternatives one could save as many as 68.46 pounds of carbon with strictly pork or 74.9 pounds with only poultry. Additionally if one was willing to make the commitment cutting meat completely would save as many as 92.54 pounds of carbon per week or 4,825 pounds over the course of a year. For perspective, this amounts to roughly 52% of the annual carbon emissions of the typical American car.
Thus, given this data, and the fact that cutting meat consumption from current levels can lead
to healthier, ethically sourced diets, a meatless diet looks like an increasingly attractive option.
By extension, in a perfect world, if every American committed to a meatless diet we could cut
our carbon emissions by as much as a quarter and free up as many as 654 million acres
of US cattle pastures (equivalent to 25% of all land administered by the federal government).
 |
| Taken from Bloomberg's 2018 map of US land allocation |
Sources
1. http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet
2.https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/inventoryexplorer/#transportation/allgas/source/current
3. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
4. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-02/have-a-meaty-new-year-americans-will-eat-record-amount-in-2018
5. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/07/5-questions-randall-stafford-advocates-a-plant-based-diet.html
6. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/ethical-arguments-against-eating-meat
7. https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/eating-less-meat-essential-to-curb-climate-change-says-report
8. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/
Good Start by having some resources that the readers can reference to. You just need to make sure that you show us your understanding of what your impact actually is.
ReplyDelete-Oscar
As Oscar said above, you have a great start. I know you are cutting down your meat consumption on Mondays. If you are calculating your impact, maybe try implementing how much more of your carbon foot print will be reduced if you ate no meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?
ReplyDeleteThis is a great start! Try to talk about more of the results you've gotten! Things that changed in your body, how you feel, different patterns, etc.
ReplyDelete