veganhealth:

Some quick facts about meat consumption and the environment:

18% of greenhouse gases are caused by livestock farming.

Transport only contributes to 13% of emissions.

Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 emissions.

While a cow is eating it regurgitates often. Each time this occurs more methane is released.

A cow produces 8-10 thousand liters of milk will produce 5-700 liters of methane every day.

An average cow will produce 700 liters of methane each day. This is equivalent to CO2 emissions produced by a 4x4 vehicle traveling around 35 miles each day.

40-50% of all cereals are eaten not by humans but by livestock. 75% of soy is fed to livestock.

China is the biggest meat increaser. China’s meat consumption is doubling every ten years.

In one year a cow in the Netherlands will produce just as many emissions as a car that drives seventy thousand kilometers. This is equivalent to driving around the earth 1.5 times.

Scientists say that it takes up far more land and energy to produce animal protein than it does to produce plant based protein.

To produce animal products you need up to 10 times as much land that is needed to produce vegetabe products.

In the U.S. the meat industry uses 1/3 of fossil fuels that we generate.

If every American replaced chicken with vegetarian food for just one meal a week it’d be the equivalent in CO2 of taking about 500,000 cars off U.S. roads. 

Since 1950 over 2 million small family farms have disappeared. If they continue at this rate no family farms will remain.

10 billion animals are raised for food each year in the U.S. the average European will consume 80-85 animals per year.

The FAO calculated that between 1950 and the year 2000 that then world population grew from 2.6 billion to 6 billion people, yet meat production increased from 45 to 233 billion kilos of meat each year.

It’s predicted that there will be 9 billion people living by the year 2050. During this time meat production will double to 450 billion kilos (Or 990 pounds) of meat.

The average person consumes 18,000 animals in their lifetime. 

Going vegetarian for 7 days a week is the same as taking all cars off the U.S. roads.

Going vegetarian for 6 days is the same as the total electricity use off all households in the U.S.

Going vegetarian for 5 days a week is the same as planting 13 billion trees and letting them grow for 10 years.

Going vegetarian for 4 days is the same as halving the domestic use of all electricity, gas, oil, petrol and kerosene in the U.S.

Going vegetarian for 3 days a week is the same as saving 300 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a greater reduction than if all U.S. cars were replaced with Toyota prius’s.

Going vegetarian for 2 days a week is the same as replacing all household appliances with energy efficient appliances.

Going vegetarian for just one day a week is the equivalent as saving 90 million plane tickets from New York to Los Angeles.

Source.

*Just to note, these are facts from the source I linked. You might have different information/statistics. Don’t blame me for the differences. I am only taking what I got out of the documentary.