Page 20 - UK The Official Veganuary Starter Kit
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THE OFFICIAL VEGANUARY STARTER KIT
WHY VEGAN?
PETER EGAN, ACTOR
THE HEALTH OF AND VEGANUARY
AMBASSADOR, SAYS:
OUR PLANET
“I believe in love and respect for all.
Evidence is increasingly revealing just how I can’t think of a kinder, gentler life
big an impact our food choices have on than that which wishes to preserve
the living world, and environmentalists are our planet and all the species that
switching to plant-based diets to minimise the inhabit it.”
damage caused in food production. Because
animal agriculture impacts our planet in so
many ways Joseph Poore, an environmental
researcher at Oxford University, concluded In Sweden, researchers analysed 39 peer-
that ‘A vegan diet is probably the single reviewed articles, carbon calculators and
biggest way to reduce your impact on planet government sources and came up with the
Earth’. 18 four most impactful ways each of us can
CLIMATE CHANGE reduce our footprint. These are: adopt a
plant-based diet, limit flying, stop driving
Animal agriculture is one of the leading and limit the number of children we have.
20
contributors of climate-changing emissions. In These four key actions are not usually
fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture included in government and environmental
Organization has stated that animal recommendations, which instead tend to
agriculture is responsible for 14.5 per cent of advocate small, incremental changes, such as
human-induced emissions – which makes recycling or switching to reusable shopping
animal products more damaging than the bags, which, while positive, are not enough to
direct fuel emissions from every car, plane, bus, avoid catastrophe.
truck, train and ship on the planet. 19
We must take meaningful action now. The
United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that
urgent and profound changes to the way we
live must be made if we are to keep global
temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees
above pre-industrial levels. Anything beyond
this will significantly worsen the risks of
drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for
hundreds of millions of people. 21
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