Is it possible to stop climate change by going vegan? Here’s why experts say it is.

In Unearthed, Yahoo Life discusses some of the most pressing issues facing our planet — and reveals what you can do to help make a real difference.

The good news is: Veganuary, the annual worldwide go-vegan campaign happening now in an aim to aid the ailing planet — held every January since 2014 — has made an impact.

By going vegan for just a month, according to the campaign, the cumulative million-plus participants have saved an estimated 1.6 million gallons of water (equal to flushing a toilet about a half million times) and 103,840 tons of carbon emissions (equal to driving around the world about 15,000 times) — not to mention 3.4 million animals.

Plus, the newfound eating habits tend to stick, according to this year’s Veganuary strategy report, which notes: “Participants report that they continue to reduce their consumption of animal products even after January, and food companies keep a larger and better variety of plant-based options on the shelves after successful product and menu launches during Veganuary.”

Science journal the will launch in 2020 EAT-Lancet Report, indeed found that by “transforming eating habits, improving food production and reducing food waste” — admittedly a tall order — it is entirely possible to feed a future population of 10 billion people “a healthy diet within planetary boundaries.”

So, what’s the bad news? Brace yourself: There’s a lot.

That’s because animal agriculture is one of the largest sources Global greenhouse gas emissions are directly connected to global deforestation, polluting, hunger, antibiotic resistance, and species extinction.

Some sobering facts: Meat and dairy provide only 18% of the calories humans consume but use 83% of global farmland and are responsible for 60% of all agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2018 watershed study Joseph Poore, University of Oxford, is a food sustainability researcher.

Further, his research found, farmed animals occupy 30% of the planet’s ice-free land and consume roughly the same percentage of all fresh water.

Large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by livestock farming. Although the specific percentages vary greatly depending on the source — from 14.5%, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)Poore found that 26% of respondents were interested in the study, while 51% are interested, according to a recalculation of FAO’s finding’’ from the now-defunct environmental World Watch Magazine, which called out the FAO for its private sector partnerships with the meat, poultry, egg and dairy industries — we’re talking about more annual greenhouse gas emissions than all global transportation combined.

“Very simply, even if we were to stop fossil fuel emissions immediately, today, emissions from our feeding systems alone would take us past the 1.5 degrees Celsius [34.7 degrees Fahrenheit],” says Nicola Harris, spokesperson for the global grassroots Plant Based Treaty, refers to the Paris Agreement on climate change goal — to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. “If we’re serious about the Paris Agreement and combating the climate emergency,” Harris tells Yahoo Life, “we have to take action on fossil fuels and the feed system in equal measure.”

This might seem all new to you. 2021 New York University study, the world’s biggest meat and dairy companies have spent a large amount of time, money and effort “into downplaying the link between animal agriculture and climate change, and into fighting climate policy more generally.” The report claims they’ve done it by lobbying Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency to block legislation that might limit production and by funding research that minimizes the link between climate change and animal agriculture, something explored further in the 2021 documentary Eating Our Way to Extinction.

This has resulted in Poore to an insight that’s become a touchstone for activists: “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication [excessive plant and algal growth that lowers oxygen levels in water], land use and water use,” he said. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”

Here’s a breakdown of how animal agriculture is damaging the planet, and how to make positive change.

Deforestation

These are the pristine Amazon rainforest stretches that were once unspoiled. millions of farms related to animal agriculture — land cleared of trees either for grazing cattle or to grow grain that is then shipped around the world to feed livestock.

Poore, who was unable speak with Yahoo Life, pointed to a recent YouTube lecture he presented on his findings, explains in that video, “Most of this deforestation has been for beef for the local South American market and for soy to feed pigs, especially in Asia.” To put it another way, he said, “The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has largely taken place because many humans prefer the taste of animal proteins to vegetable proteins.”

Using satellite data to track annual tropical forest lost to agriculture since 2000, Poore and his researchers found the planet has lost an area equal to the size of the “U.K., Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland combined” — all of which has released massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, threatening 13,000 known species with extinction.

Permanent deforestation is also possible. “When the animals finish grazing, they light pasture maintenance fires to prevent the forests from coming back,” Dr. Sailesh Rao, founder and executive director of Climate Healers Producer of documentaries on climate issues, Cowspiracy, Yahoo Life.

Eutrophication

After forests have been cleared, crops are planted to feed cows or pigs. The nitrogen fertilizer is then used to spray the fields. This creates toxic runoff that eventually reaches the ocean and causes algae blooms. These blooms choke marine life and create dead zones. The main cause of oceanic dead zone is agriculture. according to the EPA.

“Since the demand for meat has grown, these low-oxygen dead zones have been growing and growing,” Sylvia Earle, former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationAccording to the documentary To Extinction, Eat Our Way. “‘OK,’ people say, ‘that’s too bad for the fish,’ … but we need to understand that what we do to the ocean, we’re doing to ourselves.”

Poore found that food production causes about 80% of eutrophication — including in a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is “almost the size of Belgium, that doesn’t have enough oxygen for fish.”

The documentary states that since the 1950s, references to a have been made. Nature journal studyThe planet has lost almost 90% of all species of large fish in the ocean — the leading cause of which is overfishing, with a third of all edible fish Poore notes that fish are now being caught in the ocean and fed to livestock or farmed fish (which can produce more methane than cows). “While some believe switching from a meat- to fish-based diet will help the planet,” notes the film’s narrator, Kate Winslet, “this simply could not be further from the truth.”

Toxic emissions

According to a recent study Publié in PLOS Climate journal, ending meat and dairy production would “pause” the growth of greenhouse gas emissions for 30 years, effectively canceling out emissions from all other economic sectors. That’s because animal agriculture is responsible for 65% of the world’s nitrous oxide emissionsAccording to the U.N., 33% of methane emissions are caused by animal farming. “Animal farming is the largest cause,” says Harris. “And what we know is we need to cut it by about 45% a decade to even have a chance of the 1.5 [Paris Agreement] target.”

Harris says carbon dioxide is more complicated because different studies reveal different numbers. “But what we do know is our feeding system, overall, is responsible for a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and the largest contribution is from animal agriculture,” Harris says. “It’s also the largest driver of deforestation. So we’re not only looking at direct emissions from animalsBut carbon is going back into the atmosphere [from deforestation] … with 83% of farmland used for raising animals but offering just 18 percent of our calories.”

Human fallout

While people go vegan for many reasons, from animal welfare to health to wanting to help the planet, it’s common to keep such reasons siloed, points out Isaias HernandezThe founder of Queer Brown Vegan, a platform focused on educating how “social, racial and environmental issues are deeply interconnected.”

Hernandez recently appeared alongside Billie Eilish who is veganIn a Vogue video about climate change, grew up food insecure in California’s San Fernando Valley, going to food banks and driving half an hour to get to the nearest grocery store offering fresh produce, eventually learning the term “food desert,” he explains. “I saw that racism was deeply interconnected into food systems,” Hernandez tells Yahoo Life.

As an environmental science major at University of California Berkeley, Hernandez and his fellow students “talked about the fact that so many migrant farm workers choose to pick produce, as it’s less traumatic than slicing animals, which is a truly traumatic process,” Hernandez says, “and how it leads to mental health issues for people of color, or Latinos, like myself, including high rates of PTSD.”

He also stated that animal agriculture is responsible for a large portion of the environmental damage. affects indigenous lands and communities of color — including through manure pollution and runoff into Black and brown communities, “which then becomes a children’s issue, with high rates of asthma, like near North Carolina hog farms.” The bottom line, Hernandez stresses, is that “veganism was a way for me to divest away from this extractive system,” and to highlight that “these systems are products of colonialism and white supremacy.”

What we can accomplish

Harris believes that more people would be able to understand the facts and make better decisions if they did. “I’m not sure enough people understand the gravity of the situation and how dangerous the emergency is, and we need more politicians to communicate it,” she says. Because other causes of the climate crisis have gotten through, she said, with people learning to turn off lights, walk instead of drive and recycle, she’s hopeful.

“The biggest individual action you can take is to adopt a vegan diet,” Harris says. “There isn’t time for baby steps. This is like a do or die decade. What we do in the next couple of years will determine future of planet … so we need to do everything and we need to do it now.”

To get there, activists stress the importance of learning about all the reasons for going vegan — including intense and wide-scale animal suffering. “I think everyone has their own individual motivating factors to go vegan,” says Harris, who was first moved to change her diet after seeing horrific undercover footage from slaughterhouses — similar to the 49% of Veganuary participants The campaign was told by the woman that animal welfare was their primary concern. “But I took it upon myself to learn about all the different reasons — the climate crisis, food deserts — and you realize everything is interconnected,” she says.

To get started, Rao stresses, “Find help. … You must know someone in your circle who is vegan. Have them as a buddy” for shopping, cooking and eating tips. You can also find support through vegan “buddy” programs, social mediaPublished starter guides, including Main Street Vegan the Veg News Guide to Being a Fabulous Vegan. There’s also a wealth of information on The Veganuary website.

Aside from changing one’s diet, activists emphasize the importance of supporting policymakers working to change the systemic problems associated with animal agriculture. “Trying to bring out city-level changes, and in schools, prisons and universities, is key,” says Harris.

Poore believes there is room for this to happen through government incentives to farmers to be more responsible as well as digital tools that would enable farmers to measure their impact and alert consumers about the footprint of their food choices while they shop.

Rao agrees that making systemic change is key, and says he’s been “thrilled” to see plant-based policies created by vegan New York City Mayor Eric Adams, for example, who brought default-vegan menus to city hospitals and “vegan Fridays” to public school cafeterias. “To me, it’s a breakthrough of an institutional leader saying these things,” he says. “That gives me a lot of hope and faith in the future.”

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