Letter to the editor: We owe it to our planet to change our diets

While the world watches COP27 unfold in Egypt, I’m reminded of when “Climate Change Threatens World Food Supply” was making headlines, prompted by the release of a summary report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report points out what COP27 overlooks.

The IPCC report detailed how climate change is threatening the world food and water supplies, turning arable land to desert, degrading soil and increasing devastating weather effects. It concluded that avoiding starvation and mass migrations requires fundamental changes in current animal agriculture and land management practices, which account for 23% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

The conclusions of the report matched closely those by Oxford University in 2017 and by Chatham House in 2015. A U.N. report (2010) blamed animal agriculture for 19% of greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 38% of land use. All reports recommend a shift to plant-based eating.

In an environmentally sustainable world, meat and dairy products in our diet must be replaced by plant-based options, just as fossil fuels are replaced by wind, solar and other pollution-free energy sources.

There are so many alternatives to meat and dairy available today that we owe it to our planet to make a change.

Eric C. Lindstrom

Bethesda, Md.

The writer is executive director of the Farm Animal Rights Movement.