Cowspiracy: As The World Tackles Climate Change

This August, a friend of mine who is passionate about climate change and food justice recommended to me the documentary Cowspiracy because it played a huge role in her becoming a vegan. I watched it with my mom, and both of us immediately became vegetarians. The documentary discussed, analyzed, and brought to light animal agriculture’s significant role in climate change. I used to love meat—particularly hamburgers and bacon—but the evidence that the film presented on animal agriculture’s impact on the environment, was terrifying. In this weekly post, I decided to look more into the role of animal agriculture on the environment through Alexandra Clark’s, a sustainable-food campaigner at Humane Society International, article “As the World Tackles Climate Change, is Meat Off the Table” in LiveScience.
To back up her argument, she examens everything that leads up to the meat that we eat, including the land used, the animal feed, and the quantity of water used. I learned that “animal agriculture is the greatest reason for land use globally, and that 69.9 lbs of feed will produce 2lbs of beef. In Cowspiracy, this phenomena is discussed through two images 1) eating a hamburger uses as much water as two months of showering, 2) if all of the feed in Africa went to humans instead, there would not be an hunger in Africa. Clark also cites the FAO, who state that “animal agriculture is responsible for approximately 14.5% of human-induced greenhouse gas