...Geneviève Metson, a doctoral student in natural resource science at McGill University in Canada, did the math for you. She wanted to find out how much of the phosphorus that's mined and turned into supplements for animal feed or fertilizer to grow feed crops goes to the meat industry.
Pretty unsurprisingly, she found that meat consumption is driving much of the phosphorus use in the food sector. And, she argues in a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the heavy phosphorus footprint of meat is good reason to eat less of it, given that phosphorous is a finite resource that might become scarce one day.
The full NPR story is linked here. The research study is linked here.
This seems like more great evidence in favor of the argument for eating less meat. One thing that struck me in the article was a quote from Juan von Gernet, senior consultant on fertilizers for CRU, a commodities research and consulting firm in London, that said “Peak phosphorous is a total myth, and I don’t think it’s anything to worry about in our lifetime.” This nearsighted thinking is part of what led to the environmental problems we are facing right now. Only caring about problems that will affect us in our lifetimes is selfish and wrong. If we see a potential problem, we should act now to prevent it so that future generations do not have to dig the planet out of a hole the way we are attempting to do now with global warming and the myriad other environmental problems being combatted today.
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