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DCL
We've detailed the impact that your diet has on the environment and on your personal carbon footprint dozens of times, with the message being pretty clear: Eating less meat (good) or eating a vegetarian or vegan diet (better) is one of the easiest and most powerful things you can do to reduce your ecological impact. Well, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization has just released a report breaking down how much the world dairy industry contributes to global warming. The headline gives it away, but this is why...
Depending on who's calculating it, and what emissions are considered to be part of it, raising livestock for both meat and dairy is somewhere between 18% (the UN) and 51% (Worldwatch Institute) of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Either way, that's a really big chunk of the total. On the personal level a vegetarian has about one ton lower emissions from their diet per year than a meat eater and a vegan has even lower emissions. That's because of the omission of dairy and eggs from the diet.
The report says the dairy sector as a whole was responsible for just under 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007, with global milk production, processing and transportation accounting for 2.7% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Globally, the report says, the average greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of milk and "related milk products" is 2.4kg of CO2 equivalent.
Read more: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Dairy Sector: A Life Cycle Assessment [PDF]
