The oceans! The site of another front in the war on the planet. And remarkably a plant-based diet, if widely adopted, is an effective weapon against the myriad assaults of rising temperatures, pollution, overfishing, seafloor dredging and acidification.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [1] explain the issue of ocean acidification : around 30% of the Carbon Dioxide that humanity emits into the atmosphere dissolves into the oceans. There it forms carbonic acid, making it increasingly difficult for marine species such as corals and shellfish to build shell and skeletons, eventually degrading ecosystems, and leading to drastic reductions in fish stocks.
Compared to pre-industrial times, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. This might not sound like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, so this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity.
This is now moving towards a zone of increasing and dangerous risk.
This boundary would not be crossed if the climate-change boundary of 350 parts per million (ppm) CO2 were to be respected. But in March this year CO2 concentration had reached 425 ppm.
A report in Nature indicates ocean acidification cannot be reversed at any significant scale except by reducing CO2 emissions; there are no quick technological fixes! [2]
It seems to me the conclusion is clear : taking up a plant-based diet is not only an important way to tackle ocean acidification, but a necessary one : today’s food supply chain creates ~13.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq), 26% of human generated Greenhouse gas emissions [3].
Plant-based diets can cut the CO2 footprint from food by almost three quarters [4]
For myself, I can already feel the benefits. But in a global context, efforts towards reducing Carbon footprints can only be effective if increasing numbers of people make the transition away from meat and dairy to a plant-based diet.
References
[1] https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19410
[3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html
