Here’s another attempt at CO2e: I see 2.5 tCO2e for a typical diet and 1.5 tCO2e for a vegan diet [1] and a typical American household carbon footprint is ~48 tCO2e [2]. So going vegan shrinks your footprint by about 2%. If you told me I needed to shrink my footprint by 2% I can think of lots of things I’d much rather give up than eating animal products.
But it also doesn’t have to mean giving things up: electricity is something like 10% of my footprint, and I could pay to convert some of that to solar, which wouldn’t be that expensive.
Here’s another attempt at CO2e: I see 2.5 tCO2e for a typical diet and 1.5 tCO2e for a vegan diet [1] and a typical American household carbon footprint is ~48 tCO2e [2]. So going vegan shrinks your footprint by about 2%. If you told me I needed to shrink my footprint by 2% I can think of lots of things I’d much rather give up than eating animal products.
But it also doesn’t have to mean giving things up: electricity is something like 10% of my footprint, and I could pay to convert some of that to solar, which wouldn’t be that expensive.
[1] http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
[2] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet