Isabella Tree's Article - Relationship Between Animals And Carbon Emissions
I am writing to respond to an article written by Isabella Tree named If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer. In the article, Isabella believes that graving and eating meat is a way to help the planet as it has various advantages towards the environment while there are drawbacks if all human beings change their diet to veganism. However, as a vegan, I do not agree with her arguments with the reasons below.
First of all, Isabella claims that keeping animals to eat is acceptable as it may not harm the earth by releasing much carbon while changing to veganism cannot really reduce carbon emission. As there are ways to reduce carbon emitted by graving animals and ploughing causes 70% carbon in soil released to the air (2017 report in the science journal Nature as cited in Isabella). However, I do not agree with the logic. Animals which provide meat to us are usually herbivore feeding on grass and other vegetable grown. Ploughing was said to be releasing carbon but as we are growing large amount of grass and straw for livestock, the same process is actually required in order to keep animals healthy for selling later.
Furthermore, according to BBC, 1 hectare of land can produce only 0.3 tonnes of beef while it can produce 7.5 tonnes of wheat grain. This is because of the process of energy loss. The food chain of meat eating is longer than vegetable by some trophic level. As energy is lost from one trophic level to another trophic, the energy efficiency in producing meat is lower. In order words, more vegetables can be grown using the same amount of resources. If human change their eating habit to veganism, less ploughing is needed as less land is required for growing vegetables. This may lead to lower carbon emission in the end with lower emission from growing and also that from animals, especially beef and lamb.
Isabella also claims that by adding fumaric acid into food of lamb, the methane produced will be greatly decreased. However, I believe that it is morally unacceptable to add other non-natural ingredients to animals’ diet just because of human wants for reducing carbon emission while humans are not willing to change their habit into a greener veganism. Animals have the rights to eat what they are naturally eating. Also, human has choices not to eat meat and this method reduces the carbon emission more than adding acid to animals’ diet. I believe the previous is the one human should choose.
The third thing Isabella claims is that keeping livestock contributes the income for all people while growing crops only benefit those people who are near arable land. Although growing in land full of nutrition seems to be better than that in lands like highland, there are many various species of vegetables that can be grown. Even in Low Weald clay as cited in Isabella’s article, fruits can be grown in order t earn a living. Also, in a technological era like today, vegetation can be started in a greenhouse. With artificial lighting, heater and carbon dioxide controller, various kind of vegetables can be grown in places where soil condition is not suitable for planting.
