Losing Weight Helps the Planet?

Here's an interesting idea. Edward Humes, author of Monkey Girl, has a new book out called Eco Barons. It's a series of profiles about environmentalists who devote their lives to saving the planet. I was listening to a podcast on IT Conversations discussing the new book and I heard a couple interesting tidbits that he said he discovered in working on the book.

For example, eating less red meat helps save the planet. Yeah, your steak cookouts is contributing to ruination of the planet. I wouldn't have thought of that either.

Articles are here, here, and here to help illustrate the point. I'm definitely not of the hippie tree-hugging variety consumer, but some of what they claim makes sense. It takes a lot of land to raise animals for meat and so there's more deforestation related to farming, but as we increase production of animals for consumption (or overconsumption in the case of the U.S.) there is also an increase in greenhouse gases due to animals passing gas. Yes, all those little puffs of methane add up, apparently.

Guess that can be added to the list of things that are bad about meat along with the obligatory "increases risk of heart attack and stroke and cholesterol and..." stuff we hear periodically.

There was also a claim about losing weight helping the environment. Lose 10 pounds, and you help the environment.

Apparently the production of food is a significant contributor to environmental damage. Think about it; we in the U.S. don't eat food that is in season anymore. The cost of growing food out of season for an area has associated storage and transportation costs, both of which impacts the environment. We also tend to overeat and overconsume, so anything that helps reduce the amount of food that must be produced, stored, and transported would be beneficial to us as a whole.

The podcast (linked near the beginning of the post) is about 1/2 an hour long and Edward Humes comes off as being very moderate in his environmental views. He is sharing in the interview the various things he's learned in doing the book; not preaching that we should all join communes and sing Kum-By-Yah. Believe me. If I thought it was what I've come to call Hippy-Dippy, I can't stand listening to the whole thing. I found his insights to be fascinating, right down to the reminder of Carter's incentives for reducing our country's dependence on foreign countries for energy (we had solar panels on the White House? Yes, yes we did. They were promptly removed by the next administration) and George Bush's endorsement for hydrogen energy as being eco friendly with a twist (yes, it's clean burning, except the technology for producing it isn't...). There were a number of tidbits that were educational and interesting.

I strongly encourage everyone to take half an hour and listen to what was said on the podcast. Go here and download it or listen to it from the page! It's free, no obligations, no strings attached. Go and learn something for the cost of a half hour of your time.