Research -> Sustainability Web Page -> Was the Meat Worth It?

Climate Healers Training Course Homework

Most of the world is vegan (or mostly vegan) now in 2050, and climate change is under control. We can review how we got there: by expanding knowledge of climate change impacts to the research and public communities, and by reminding people in high-risk environments how their actions help or exacerbate their own safety and welfare.

Expanding Knowledge

Goal: Inform myself to ensure accurate and capable knowledge; expand truthful knowledge to public; and be able to effectively argue counterpoints.

As a newly-retired professor of Computer Science, I want to make sure that the research I perform in environmental science is informed and correct. Therefore, starting in May 2023 I started a 1-year training program:

Sustainable Gardening: As available at local college.

Certification qualified me to speak at vegetarian-vegan and environmental events and fairs, including Vegetarian Summerfest and local Chicago events or environmental clubs in high schools.

Web Presence: Sustainable Living

Goal: Inform the public of actions they can take and the impact they would have regarding their personal environmental footprint. Enumerate and quantify environmental effects of various climate-saving actions.

Years ago, recommendations to change a light bulb or recycling seemed insufficient to save the earth. According to 2016 statistics, www.worldometers.info indicates that the average American generated 15.32 Tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) per person per year; this was far beyond emerging nations such as China and India at 7.44 and 1.89 tons of GHG/year, or the average Earth resident. A problem was that no one discussed any metrics as to what you could do to minimize the environmental impact. As a computer science PhD and professor, I wanted to understand how to reduce to other nations’ levels, through numbers and statistics.

Like (or unlike) me, not everyone is willing or ready to take public transportation everywhere or go vegan – so this website informs and offers choices: what might they be willing to do this year? This website quantifies the effects of various actions in their lifestyle, not only for climate change, but for personal benefit. It also educates them of how they can personally calculate their footprint.

Around the year 2000, I calculated my personal environmental footprint. I obtained annual gas and electrical usage from Wisconsin Energy; calculated my driving miles average as total miles driven/years car owned; and calculated airline trips from web resources. By obtaining conversion metrics, I could translate this usage into GHG lbs (or tons) per year. What I learned that year was that I would do much better avoiding air travel. The one statistic I could not find was how my vegan diet stacked up against a traditional diet, although I knew veganism was much more efficient.

Between 2000-2023, with a very busy teaching career, I decided to do one major action for the climate per year. In the following years (before 2024) I sealed my house envelope and incorporated energy efficiency projects (windows, furnace, caulking, lights, insulation), then helped with my husband’s home and 3 non-profit organizations; bought 2 hybrid cars; planted four trees on my property and helped to fund trees on our block; purchased organics through Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA); learned to travel by Amtrak and Greyhound (to Amtrak-friendly locations); changed my electricity to the renewable option; occasionally presented on these topics; and integrated the teaching energy efficiency into my computer architecture classroom and published this classroom experience as research. Through these actions I could see that my electrical and gas use were way below my neighbors, saving me money and the earth GHG. When I changed my electricity to the 100% renewable option, my electricity went down to effectively 0 tons.

This 2024 website allows people to see the quantified impact and benefits of various actions on their personal environmental footprint (actual numbers), in the areas of:

Transportation: traditional/hybrid/electrical vehicles; how to survive the change to an electric vehicle; electric bikes, using trains (Amtrak), busses, planes to travel long distance.

Diet: Vegan/vegetarian/meat-eater, organic vs. conventional, local vs. long distance food travel.

Gardening: Planting trees, bushes, perennials, native plants.

Water Usage: Home use versus diet

In the summer of 2024, I purchased a URL and established a website that was informative and expanded through the years. An initial (not yet organized or researched well) website was developed fall 2023 in my Environmental Media course: https://publish.illinois.edu/sustainability-lincke/. In summer 2024, the IPCC reports AR5 and AR6 were used as primary information sources. The website will have links to other sites that can help (including Climate Healers and related sites).

Following the development of the website, I published a book on this topic that goes into more detail than can be achieved with a website alone. My credentials of having published a first and second edition book entitled Information Security Planning: A Practical Approach, helped convince publishers to review my book proposal.

Presence in Research

Goal: Extending, publishing, and training through Research to inform universities;

Also: inform my website with accurate statistics on personal environmental footprint.

When I read a number of studies indicating that vegans/vegetarians were maybe twice as efficient as meat-eaters, I thought something was wrong. A few papers calculated that a high meat eater ate 100 grams of meat a day. When a calculated that one McDonalds Quarterpounder was 114 grams, I knew something was wrong. I had found OECD data showing that most nations averaged well above 100 grams: Europe 185 grams and U.S. 270 grams. One day I sat down with Excel and worked through the math until I finally had a plausible model for projecting research by increasing the level of meat consumption in studies to where they should have been. I worked with a geographer-environmentalist professor, Dr Joy Wolf, to publish a conference and a journal paper on this topic. We showed that American meat-eaters generated 4+ times the GHG of vegans, using conservative 2013 UN numbers. But I had read that the UN numbers I used were conservative and outdated, so there was more research to come.

I helped to expand research in the following ways:

Research relating to the personal footprint related to water use in vegetarian, vegan, and meat-centric diet was researched as a later topic.

Regardless of how much gets published in research conferences or journals, most will be published on the website. List of all publications available on request. Summary of career: https://www.cs.uwp.edu/staff/lincke/

Was the Meat Worth It?

This Climate Healers campaign paid for a few billboards in the Southwest of United States in 2024. It shows someone turning on the faucet and looking surprised, because nothing is coming out. The billboard says: “Was the Meat Worth It?” Below it says: “50% of water goes to raise meat” (source: Carbon Yoga). These billboards place in people’s minds that the cause of their water shortage is meat. This message has the advantage that the connection between meat and water is more easily relatable than meat and climate change.

For every $100 spent by Climate Healers, the meat industry can spend $100,000 – and they do on commercials blaming other industries. However, climate healer and other vegan members hand out different fliers with different facts weekly on water shortages at grocery stores on weekends. They answer questions on facts, which Climate Healers has provided the research for. They can answer questions on which foods require less water, and can reference my website. Who are people to believe, the commercials or the people spending their weekends handing out fliers (maybe one weekend per month or more per store).

This has the effect of turning a lot of people in the dry, parched, southwest U.S. into mostly vegetarian or mostly vegan. Now instead of 3% of people being vegetarian, the number turns into 40% or more. While the percentages stay low until the water does run out, one dry summer the water bills fly through the roof and people ask questions. The issue has been planted in their heads and they carefully consider their options. This can be effective in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and other parched states.

Likewise, “Was the Meat Worth It?” can be launched in other states, where rising oceans or storms flood areas with manure (e.g, NC), showing photos reminding residents of the disaster. Here the importance of fliers may be to explain that plant-based is a healthier diet.

My part: Donating for billboards, fliers, and help in developing the various fliers (getting the facts correct) and help in giving out fliers in the Chicago and Southeast WI area, as appropriate. Also, Our World In Data and my website provides GHG and water numbers.

Funding

If I win a prize, money would be spent as follows:

Public access research journal, or conference costs where I present.

Whether or not I receive funding, any feedback on this proposal would be welcome.

Expanding Knowledge

Web Presence: Sustainable Living

Presence in Research

Was the Meat Worth It?

Funding

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