From newsweek.com
Most environmental scientists agree that producing food from animals has a much greater environmental and climate impact than producing food from plants with equivalent nutritional value. And, yet, all too often, when veganism is presented as an environmental action, it's accompanied by a caveat: we need systemic change, not individual effort.
As an interdisciplinary UCLA teaching team whose research focuses on the health, climate, and environmental impacts of food systems; the environmental impact of animal agriculture; the structure of activism; and life cycle assessments, we disagree with the claim that "going vegan" is unimportant to the fight against environmental devastation. An abundance of scientific research supports our position that both systemic and individual behaviour change are needed to support large increases in plant-based diets in order to save our planet, including from climate change.
Frequently, veganism is compared to recycling, as both are seen as individual actions that have limited effects. Building a plant-forward food economy is not, however, structurally comparable to recycling. Recycling is a downstream effort to mitigate the damage of a throwaway society. Veganism is an upstream effort to shrink the size of the animal agriculture industry by reducing demand for its products.
Compared with omnivore diets, plant-based diets cause less biodiversity loss, freshwater use, air and water pollution, antibiotic resistance, and human disease. Climate change is, however, the most often discussed, and studies suggest that switching to a vegan diet in the United States could reduce food system greenhouse gas emissions by 47 percent. Switching to plant-based food systems internationally could reduce global food system emissions by 49 percent. Since the food system accounts for 10-30 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and 34 percent of global emissions, this could reduce total U.S. emissions by 5-14 percent and global emissions by 16 percent.
If we pursued, for example, a limited substitution of beef with beans, we would achieve up to 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet climate targets, while also reducing land use. Similarly, our work at UCLA showed that after learning about the connections between food and the environment, students made voluntary, modest shifts in diet; extrapolated across the population, these small shifts would add up to 33 percent of the needed reductions to meet the Paris Climate Accord.
More importantly, we cannot meet climate targets without moving toward a plant- rather than animal-based food system. A recent study showed that by 2100 a business-as-usual food system would result in more emissions than the total allowable budget from all sectors if we are to meet the 1.5 C climate targets. Of five mitigation strategies studied, a shift to plant-rich diets was the most effective at reducing food system emissions. Similarly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has compared the mitigation potential of various dietary patterns, with the vegan diet having the highest potential reduction of 8 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
The argument that veganism lacks impact assumes that it is merely an individual lifestyle choice. In fact, while individuals may adopt a plant-based diet for their health or for ethical, religious, or spiritual reasons, veganism is also a social movement. For at least the last four centuries, veganism in the Global North has involved a stance against the exploitation of animals and in favour of improving human health and protecting the environment. Asia's dharma traditions have for centuries signalled the importance of an ethics of compassion in relationships of humans to each other, to non-human animals, and to the surrounding world.
Indeed, it is the mass movement nature of veganism that causes discomfort: veganism reminds us that food is political.
Veganism's influence is limited by a subsidy system that skews market signals. Here's where the emphasis on systems change is correct: market signals are muted by policies in need of alteration. However, activists concerned with animal rights, the environment, the rights of farmers, and human health are already working to ease the distortions of the subsidy system and align government subsidies with recommendations as to what constitutes a healthy, sustainable diet.
However, moving to a more plant-based food system does not depend only on "getting the price right" in the marketplace, because this is based on the discredited economic assumptions of neoliberalism. The motivation, for many vegans and plant-forward policies, requires values that go beyond the market—conserving natural resources and biodiversity for future generations, promoting social justice, reducing and stopping economic growth in high consuming populations, sufficient versus superfluous consumption, and extending compassion to all living beings.
The mainstream environmental movement spent decades encouraging individual change. When it became obvious this wasn't working, they changed tack, arguing that only systemic change could make a difference. However, social scientists and activists alike acknowledge that individual efforts and systemic change support each other. Theory and research suggests that this is true of veganism, with some studies showing that the majority of vegans are politically motivated, and with a growing number of organizations promoting more plant-based diets for animal welfare, health, environmental and equity reasons
Climate scientists agree that the only thing that can avert environmental catastrophe is massive societal change at social, political, and economic levels, including adopting plant-based diets, especially in the Global North.
Our food system harms consumers, workers, frontline communities, animals, and the environment. As more people connect the dots between animal exploitation, the exploitation of human workers, the spread of diseases from animals, the epidemic of degenerative disease in wealthy countries, the climate crisis, food insecurity, and other forms of environmental degradation, veganism is becoming part of an organized, coalitional effort to build a more just food system.
There is little that would be more of a systemic change than that.
David A. Cleveland is a professor at UCSB and UCLA whose focus is understanding and improving the environmental, health, and equity impacts of food systems.
Jennifer Jay is a professor of Environmental Engineering at UCLA, focusing on transport of contaminants in the environment.
Shanna Shaked is an adjunct professor in UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and has co-authored a textbook on quantifying environmental impacts of products.
Janet O'Shea, professor and chair of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA, researches the role of physicality and emotion in justice efforts.
https://www.newsweek.com/even-one-persons-food-choices-effect-whole-planet-opinion-2030211
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