Quit Walking, You’re Wasting Gas!
August 27th, 2007 by AndrewIf you hadn’t realized it, the commercial production of meat is one of the most wasteful systems in our society. How wasteful? It turns out that if you’re eating the typical American diet, the food you’re consuming has twice as many embodied fossil fuels as a vegetarian diet, roughly the equivalent of driving an extra 11 miles every day.
Doesn’t sound like that much? Put another way, it is actually more energy efficient to drive than it is to walk if the calories you burn are coming from that meat-rich diet. How’s that for a mindfuck?
(some more detailed information and sources, here)
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
[...] Can walking really be worse for the environment than driving a car if you eat a lot of meat? Can mercury-filled compact fluorescents really reduce net mercury emissions? Can trains really have a greater footprint than airplanes? Can planting trees really promote global warming? Can nuclear power really reduce the amount of radioactive material in the environment? Can eating local really produce more greenhouse gases than importing food? The answer to all of these is a resounding “maybe.” Or, “it depends.” [...]