Did you know that adopting a plant-based diet is the fourth most effective way to combat global warming? That's the scientist-backed conclusion in the best-selling book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken.
Hawken spoke on a Zoom call attended by three FCM members on May 26 to a meeting of the Pachamama Alliance, an international climate justice group, and said that today's rate of global carbon emissions could be reduced by as much as 70 percent if the world's residents adopted a vegan diet and 63 percent with a vegetarian diet, which includes cheese, milk and eggs. The Western meat-centric diet causes one-fifth of global emissions. "If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases," his book says.
Hawken's book is being used by groups around the world in "challenges" in which they select local actions to reduce their carbon footprint. A number of groups in the U.S., including high school classes, have adopted plant-based eating as their Drawdown challenge.
FCM's healthy living initiative is certainly a parallel step. Hawken's website quotes Thay as saying that making the transition to a plant-based diet may be the most effective way an individual can stop climate change. We can benefit ourselves so that we may benefit others -- in keeping with our bodhisattva path.
