There Are Three Simple Changes We Can Make To…

1. Reduce humanities total greenhouse gas emissions by 55%.

2. Reverse the mass extinction of our planet’s nature and wildlife. 

3. Transform half of the planet’s surface into a global network of pristine national parks. 

Humans produced about 55 BILLION tonnes (Gigatonnes/Gt) of CO2 equivalent emissions last year, and it’s continuing to increase.

Approximately 36 billion tonnes of this is direct CO2 emissions, with the rest of the warming coming from methane (9.5 GtCO2eq), destroying forest for farmland (4 GtCO2eq), nitrous oxide (3 GtCO2eq), and refrigerant gasses (1.5 GtCO2eq).

1. Adopt A Plant-Based Diet.

26% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from our entire food system. If the world were to swap to a vegan diet by tomorrow, we’d reduce those emissions by a half, that’s 7.1 BILLION tonnes of CO2eq. 

What’s even more amazing is that the switch to veganism would free up 76% of the land we’re currently using for agriculture! 

That’s 30% of the total land area of the planet, which when naturally returned to nature would pull another 8.1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. 

Stopping the consumption of animal products would be a double win for preventing the collapse and asphyxiation of much of our ocean life. Stopping fishing would cut the cause of 46% of ocean plastic pollution; nets.

No longer would countless dolphins, sharks, turtles and many other fish die pointlessly by being caught in active or discarded nets. We’d also hugely reduce the amount of fertilizer and manure run-off that makes its way into oceans, causing algal blooms that suffocate all other life in the ecosystem.

3. Support Agri-Tech Foods & Invasivorism.

Agri-tech broadly covers the new wave food production systems including vertical farming, lab-grown meat, and bacterially fermented products. 

Vertical farming is the process of growing crops in carefully controlled “plant factories”, sometimes many stories tall. They regularly produce yields fifty times better than crops in a field, with the state of the art facilities producing 350 times the yield! That means that for a fraction of a percent of the planet’s land area, we could produce all the food we’ll ever need. 

Vertical farming requires no pesticides, little transport, can grow year round, produce no fertilizer run-off, and use 200x less water! That last one is incredibly important considering that 70% of global freshwater is used to grow crops. 

Currently only leafy greens such as kale, lettuce and herbs are produced at a meaningful scale, but this is quickly changing. 

Meat’s profit margins are so slim, and it is so heavily subsidized, that the production of cheap lab-grown mince meat is predicted to cut profits by such a degree that the industry is in a state of collapse by 2030! 

No “perfect” lab-grown steaks required. 

Fermentation foods might produce some of the largest benefits. Genetically engineered bacteria can produce certain molecules (such as milk and egg proteins, palm oil, generic protein to replace soy animal feed) with hundreds of times less resources than plants can via photosynthesis. 

Even ignoring direct consumers; the ability for food companies to swap to cheaper milk and egg proteins to bake with, or make chocolate with, could cut into the dairy and poultry industry’s profits enough to kick them into a death-spiral.

Invasivorism

Finally, invasivorism is the practice of eating non-native plants and animals that are wreaking ecological havoc. Wild boar, feral deer, goats, rabbits, Japanese knotweed, kudzu, Asian carp in the Mississippi, pythons, iguanas and lionfish in Florida, cane toads and camels in Australia, the list goes on, and on, and on. 

Invasive species are an ecological scourge with a huge environmental justification, and even ethical justification for their removal. Invasive species burn through the environment, leading to the death and often extinction of countless creatures. They’re often so successful that if introduced to an island they will consume all available food before starving to death themselves. 

While many vegans may flinch at the thought of killing sentient creatures that are merely following their instincts, the destruction they cause cannot be ignored. It’s our fault that many of these species end up halfway around the planet, and we truly must take responsibility to right our wrongs, to prevent the tsunami of extinction they are causing. 

Along with genetic engineering, our only real chance at removing invasive species from non-native environments is to offer an economic incentive for doing so. Enter invasivorism. 

Passenger pigeons, dodos, Tasmanian tigers; we’ve sadly proven our ability to exterminate entire species when we see them as food or threats. Invasivorism is our opportunity to do this in surely the only way that the act can be justified (even by an ethical vegan).

Governments have the power to create this demand by offering bounties for invasive animals, as well as opening up potentially millions of jobs globally for people to work outdoors, protecting and restoring our beautiful natural world. 

It’s important to “vote with your wallet” whenever possible, seeking out and purchasing these products. Though new, agri-tech holds massive efficiency benefits that will cut into the tiny profit margins of ecologically destructive agriculture and hasten their end. Invasivorism will ensure the land we free up from doing so, is available for rare and endangered species to inhabit and flourish in.