2022 convinced me we are in a climate emergency, including how overwhelmed I felt (and feel) seeing flooding in Pakistan displace a third of the country.1

The emergency is already here, but we still have the potential to make things substantially less bad.2 Climate change is not binary: every emission we avoid now keeps the world that much more liveable.

The urgency—but also tractability—of addressing climate change has inspired me to donate 60% of my income in 2023. (As disclosed in that blog post, this is possible due to privileges like a high income as a software engineer.)

In this blog, I explain why I am allocating 40% of my donations to ending animal agriculture as a promising and still neglected strategy to mitigate the climate emergency.

Food production makes up a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.3

Within food production, animal agriculture is responsible for 57% of emissions,4 yet only contributes 18% of the calories we eat.5

One reason animal agriculture is so inefficient: trophic levels and energy flow. All the energy we use starts with the sun, which plants convert through photosynthesis. When animals eat plants, about 80%–90% of the original energy from the sun is lost due to the plant using it to live and inefficiencies like heat loss.6 When an animal eats another animal, yet another 80%–90% of the energy is lost. And so on. So, it’s far more efficient for us to eat plants directly than animals.

Read the full article about animal agriculture by Eric Arellano at Animal Charity Evaluators.