Kathy Freston of the Huffington Post recently posted about the tremendous effects of reducing meat consumption on our planet. Her post, who’s titled I stole for my post, because frankly it works, garnered much attention. What I love most about this post is not the actual statistics that she gives, (which are still great) but the absolute fury in which people commented on the post. Nothing, not anything, except maybe racism or sexism, gets people more riled up than conversations about eating meat.

In her post, Kathy points out that if everyone went vegetarian for just one day, the U.S. would save:

* 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;

* 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;

* 70 million gallons of gas–enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;

* 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;

* 33 tons of antibiotics.

She then goes on to mention that the meat industry causes approximately 40% more greenhouse emissions than all of the worlds transportation combined (including planes, trains, cars, trucks, ships, etc). These are not disputable facts, but they seem to be lost on so many of the people who posted comments on the site. They argue not about the validity of these facts but instead fall back into that age old argument: whether we are designed to eat meat in the first place, and the validity of vegetarian or vegan diets. What strikes me as funny about this reaction is that a) it’s so common, and b) it’s not even what the article was talking about!!

Freston merely was aiming to point out how much energy and how many resources would be saved if we ate LESS meat. She did not dive into sustainably produced, organic, pasture raised meat because that was not the point of her article. But still, through their comments, readers attacked her for failing to mention alternatives. Even if you don’t eat organic, pasture raised meats, cutting back on the meat you do it will still have a tremendous impact. It’s this point that so many people missed. Perhaps they were too busy feeling guilty?