Overall, lamb and beef have the highest climate impact of all types of meat. Sheep have a global warming potential of 17 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every 1 kilogram of meat produced. Cattle fare somewhat better, with 13 kilograms of carbon dioxide produced for every kilogram of meat yielded. Pigs and poultry, meanwhile, have less than half of that. The solution, Greenpeace suggests, is that more of the world’s population need to become vegetarian so that the head count of livestock can drop. However, that’s unlikely to happen; developing countries logged a 77% increase in meat consumption in the three decades ended 1990.
