Manipal, India — Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore may have lost his bid for the U.S. presidency, but he did beat current President Barack Obama into the Nobel laureates’ club as the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy of climate change awareness.
He is also on track to become a "carbon billionaire" by investing in companies that will see revenue and profits zoom as a direct consequence of the carbon-specific measures that he champions.
Watching television channels or reading the world’s major newspapers, one may be forgiven for thinking that it is the carbon generated by manufacturing and transport that is causing global warming. But such a view would be false. Actually, it is the so-called "carbon equivalents,” primarily methane, that are responsible for much of the current increases in greenhouse gases.
The human diet is an important reason why so much methane is being generated. Each kilogram of beef uses up about 10 pounds of grain, not to mention 2,500 gallons of potable water. Lamb is even more wasteful of these precious substances than beef. Livestock developed for food consume seven times more grain than the human population of the United States, for example.
There is on average about 30 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent released by every kilogram of beef consumed, even before more energy is expended in cooking the meat. This makes the world's livestock industry a much more deadly emitter of greenhouse gases than the much-discussed transportation industry. Hence, a true carbon warrior must do more than just cancel a flight now and then and switch to videoconferencing; it would be better to switch from meat to a vegetarian diet.
