Paul McCartney Promotes “Meat Free Mondays”
Guess how many cows are killed every hour in the US, just so you can have your burger? A whopping 660 000 of them.
Paul McCartney, best known from his part in the Beatles, wants to change this. He believes we can fight global warming simply by not eating meat on Mondays.
McCartney supports the Meat Free Mondays campaign in order to encourage people to give up eating meat or at least to reduce their meat consumption. He states, “Having one designated meat free day a week is actually a meaningful change that everyone can make, that goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues all at once.”
Sacrificing meat just once a week could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, according to Greenpeace. But can sacrificing a burger or chicken sandwich just ONCE a week really affect change?
The answer is yes! 3 times as many fossil fuels are needed for a diet that includes meat than are needed for a vegetarian one. Depending on where and how it is produced the FAO estimates that the livestock industry is responsible for between 13.5 and 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions…Some of these are from the methane emitted from livestock. Half of all US water-usage is devoted to livestock, with each cow needing enough water to float a destroyer!
If every human on Earth ate meat, our oil supplies would only last another 13 years, whereas if humans no longer ate any meant it would last 260 years. Still need more convincing? 20 million people will die of malnutrition this year. Yet if Americans reduced their meat intake by just 10%, the land freed up could be used to feed an extra 100 million people! You do the math–that’s 5 times as many people as die each year!
Paul McCartney is not alone in his quest to decrease meat consumption. Celebrities including Sheryl Crow and Alec Baldwin support the Meat Free Monday campaign as well. Even famous chefs such as Giorgio Locatelli and Yotam Ottolenghi have contributed meat-free recipes for the cause.
As stated by the campaign,“To build a better world in the future we all need to make changes in our lifestyles now. Not all the changes we have to make are easy; and not all the easy changes we can make are meaningful. But making just one day a week a meat-free day, really is the little thing that can make a big difference.”
