I decided to quit my previous job recently, the main reason being they required international travel (flying) at least once a year, and that flying has an enormous impact on global warming. To give some inspiration and raise awareness I said this in my thank you/goodbye-email to around 120 people:
Finally, I would like to give you some food for thought. Sorry if it is too lengthy -- it is worth a read. I am more and more concerned about global warming, and take many steps in my personal life to reduce my impact - including being vegan, travelling to visit family in Sweden via train instead of flying, commuting by train and bus, using renewable energy from Ecotricity, etc. The average global footprint per person in UK is 10 000 kg of CO2 [1] - this is living as we lived on 4 (!) planet earth. In order to avoid global warming with several degrees with severe consequences for our planet and us living here [6], each person needs to reduce their emissions 4 times (or by 400 percent) (to around 2500 kg per year) which involves radical changes, but changes that are quite easy to do with some determination. This is a good website [4] to see your ecological footprint by answering some questions.
According to WWF humans have wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970 the last 50 years. They write in their new report that the biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland used for farming animals. Furthermore, killing for food is the next biggest cause – 300 wild mammal species, including some chimpanzee and bear species, are being eaten into extinction – while the oceans are massively overfished. Researchers warn that the oceans will be depleted of fish by 2048 [7]. If we all went vegan we would no longer pay into the three major causes of what has been labelled as the 6th mass extinction in the history of this planet.
Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, EU and Australia combined – and still feed the world. There is an increasing number of people who realize that we can easily live and be very healthy on a vegan diet. Since we can do this, the intense suffering that many animals go through for animal products, is completely unnecessary [8]. They all want to live in freedom and be happy just like us, however the process of being reduced to meat, dairy, eggs, honey, wool, etc., typically involve a lot of suffering (e.g. cows get their babies taken away from them within a day from when their calves are born, so that we can have cows milk instead of their calves, and never get to see them again). Being kind and compassionate we can decide to make peace with animals and be vegan. There is a one month vegan challenge I highly recommend called Veganuary, with plenty of delicious recipes and other advice [5]
I gathered all the footnotes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hCkTtuP3a9XxXFvfMU92IDEFAoWC-ugrvFUF8p8eWOw/edit?usp=sharing
(Photo from one of my walks from the bus to their office.)
