To a cleaner environment

Rachel Bernstein’s article, “How our home is slowly becoming uninhabitable” (September 17), should be a wake-up call for every Israeli on the urgency of Israel “[making] up for lost time… in the wake of climate change.” It is the latest of many similar articles in the Post with a similar theme.

These articles are very welcome and highly commendable, but they leave out “the elephant (and, more literally, the cow) in the room” – that the only way that a climate catastrophe can be prevented is through a societal shift to plant-based diets.

• There would be a sharp decrease in the emission from cows and other farmed animals of methane, which is up to 120 times as potent as CO2 per unit weight,;

• The over a third of the ice-free land area of the

world that is currently used for grazing and raising feed crops for animals could be reforested, sequestering much of the CO2 in the atmosphere;

• There would be an end to the setting of fires in

the Amazon to clear land for animal agriculture;

• Oceans would be revitalized, adding to their

capacity to absorb CO2.

Fortunately, it is much easier to be a vegetarian or vegan today due to the many plant-based substitutes for meat and other animal products, some with an appearance, texture and taste so similar to the animal products that long-time meat eaters can’t tell the difference.

Dietary changes can help leave a decent, habitable world for future generations, while also improving our health, reducing the current massive mistreatment of animals, and being more consistent with basic Jewish teachings on compassion, health and environmental sustainability.

RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ, PH.D.

Professor Emeritus, College of Staten Island