Responsible Travel IV
You can compensate the CO2 emmisions of your flights with different kind of rganisations, but there are more cost and travel effective solutions that you can can undertake right here and now in your own life.
First interesting to know is that:
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the livestock sector is a mayor player in climate change, responsible for 18% of greenhouse emissions measured in CO2 equivalent; this is a 40% higher share than the transport sector (FAO, 2006),
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livestock is the largest user of land in the world amounting to one third of all the land on the planet (FAO, 2006),
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of all the deforested land in the Amazon basin, 70% is covered by pastures for cattle (FAO, 2006),
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production of meat needs 5 to 27 times more water per gram protein than grain (Reijnders & Soret, 2003),
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the average conversion of plant based protein to animal protein is 10 to 1, implying that you need 10 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of meat (Reijnders & Soret, 2003),
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the US livestock population consumes more then 7 times as much grain as is consumed directly by the American population; the amount of grains fed to USA livestock is sufficient to feed 840 million people on plant-based diet (Pimentel & Pimentel, 2003),
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one day of average meat consumption emits the same as 24 km driving by car; the replacement of meat only one day per week on year basis saves the same amount of CO2 as a return travel from Amsterdam to Berlin; replacement of meat for plant based protein, 2 or 3 days per week on year basis saves much more (VU, 2007), etc etc…
The Free University in Amsterdam has calculated that 18% of the CO2 emissions worldwide is from the meat industry, and that if a population of 16 million people would not consume meat for 3 days a week in a year, it has the same effect of taking out 3 million cars from the traffic; if it would be for 5 days a week, we would save 32 million returnflights from Amsterdam to Nice (2 return tickets per person)…
Small changes in our attitude can make a big difference
We Love our Planet, it could be a paradise…
You do not have to pay anything extra, you only have to act by reducing your meat consumption: it is for the wellbeing of our Planet and our future generations…
If you like to recieve a factsheet, with scientific references, about the effects of cattle raising on our natural resources worldwide, please contact us by mentioning “factsheet”
