Forget the Prius, go veggie

Writing on the Huffington Post, author Kathy Freston quotes a UN report that says raising farm animals for food is the primary cause for all sorts of disasters, the least of which are air pollution and global warming. Does that mean we can stop blaming the internal combustion engine for all the world's woes? Hardly. It just means there's another whipping boy on the block, and this time it's my tri-tip bar-b-que.

Freston says the gold standard for environmental image building was driving a Prius. Now it's eating bulgur and edamames.

"Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels--and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide--as does a calorie of plant protein," Freston blogs. "The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius."

Freston says the methane and nitrous oxide emissions produced by animals are more problematic than CO2. That's because there are 10 billion land animals slaughtered every year for food.

"We are eating our planet to death," she says.

[Source: Kathy Freston / Huffington Post]