Giving up meat for lent helps save the planet?

So we haven't eaten much meat this year anyway, as it's generally packaged in lots of unrecycled stuff, but I decided we'd go all out during lent and totally skip meat to see how we'd cope. (As you can see the kids seem to be enjoying it :-)


I also thought I'd start to do some reading up on the carbon footprint of meat, and I've been astonished.  I'm not sure if I've just been blinkered to lots of news about this, or it's just not news, but when we talk about reducing our carbon footprint, I always remember hearing lots about reducing your air miles, insulating your home, double glazing, walk more, etc.  But not eating meat (or even reducing how much you eat) also has a huge impact.

Just google 'carbon footprint of meat' and you'll be drowning in the info.  

At the start of this year I listened to a TED talk by Graham Hill about being a 'Midweek Veggie', which was where we started, and I'd recommend it as a listen: http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian

And having felt a few weeks ago that the issues of climate change were insurmoutable, I was interested to do the WWF Carbon Footprint calculator this weekend (I haven't done one in years), and by the time we don't fly, we've gotten rid of the car, and we've cut out meat, along with lots of boring things such as insulated the house, double glazing, shop local, buy organic, grow a few bits, recycle/share things, we've somehow managed to get our use of the earth to less than 1.  So if we all lived like that (according to WWF) we'd be OK.  I was amazed, as I thought we'd have to live much more extremely.  (of course we will if others don't get on board!)

So in future I'm going to approach carbon footprint conversations differently, as often people have great excuses why they can't give up flying, or driving, but do we really have a good excuse not to give up some meat from our lives?  (And I don't count 'but I like it' as much of an excuse :-)

So yet again, perhaps an 'inconvenient truth', but how about cutting out meat at least one more day next week, and see how it goes.   And you might find my pinterest pages with recipes helpful:
http://www.pinterest.com/southseamum/2014-meat-free-lent-recipes-for-this-week/
http://www.pinterest.com/southseamum/midweek-veggie-ideas/

And if you do buy meat, try and get it from the local farmers market, butchers, or the counter at a supermarket, and take along your own container.  I've asked our local organic butcher who comes to the farmers' market each month, and he had no problem at all with not using his bags to take it home in (saves him money too).