It’s a new dawn in America, and for the world, as President Joe Biden and Madam Vice President Kamala Harris enter The White House.
Approximately 75% of American vegans voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the election according to a poll conducted by vegan app Veggly. The app polled its members to determine their voting behaviour.
Since taking office, former President Donald Trump overturned several Obama-era environmental and animal protection laws.
Most vegans are pro-environment and want better protection for animals.
President Joe Biden will take immediate action to combat the climate crisis on his first day as US president by immediately re-joining the Paris climate agreement the US will also convene an international climate summit in Biden’s first few months in the White House
Biden has outlined the most ambitious climate plan in US history including an injection of $ 2trillion into clean energy to shift the country to carbon-free electricity by 2035 and overhauling transport, building and manufacturing, creating new jobs along the way.
“I believe in this team, and together, we will show the world that America is once again ready to take a leading role in the fight against climate change,” Biden said in a statement.
The list has been largely welcomed by climate scientists and activists. “We’re pleased that Biden’s nominees support renewable energy, climate justice and keeping fossil fuels in the ground so that they can work with him to really come through on his climate agenda”
While the world continues to try to overcome the pandemic, the climate crisis has not disappeared, it’s just receiving less attention. Human-caused climate change has already been proven to increase the risk of floods and extreme rainfall, heatwaves and wildfires with implications for humans, animals and the environment.
New areas of Doha such as Msheireb is an example of how Qatar — and the rest of the Middle East — can cut emissions to help fight climate change, by using fewer fossil fuels and less water. More than 100 buildings in Msheireb, including apartments, offices, hotels, a shopping mall and a school are fitted with solar panels, solar water heaters and overhangs designed to shade the surrounding areas and walkways.
Similarly, the new Lusail City is an example of a project with sustainability at heart. Lusail is being designed with plenty of trees and green spaces, perfect to boost Qatar’s ecosystem. But climate change is a global problem, and action by many countries across the world, including the entire Middle East region, will be needed to successfully address the problem.
Sea levels are rising at the fastest rate in 3,000 years, an average three millimetres per year — and as a peninsular nation, this should be of a concern to us all.
Climate change and increase in temperature is making Qatar even more vulnerable to the lack of water and food insecurity. Every single drop of water that is used in Qatar currently needs to be desalinated.
It’s at this point I would like to highlight that eating a vegan diet is one of the ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your environmental impact on earth, studies suggest. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent.
If everyone stopped eating these foods, they found that global farmland use could be reduced by 75 percent, an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined.
Not only would this result in a significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions, it would also free up wild land lost to agriculture, one of the primary causes for mass wildlife extinction.
The new study, published in the journal Science is one of the most comprehensive analyses to date, looking into the detrimental effects farming can have on the environment and included data on nearly 40,000 farms in 119 countries.
The findings reveal that meat and dairy production is responsible for 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, while the products themselves providing just 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein levels around the world.
* The author is an expert in vegan well-being and health. Instagram handle: @Ghanim92
Ghanim al-Sulaiti
