One of the main addictions Americans and many other first world countries are entwined with is eating red meat. In the most recent USDA study done in 2019, they found that Americans eat on average, one pound of beef per week. A burger at a fast food restaurant is a common meal for many since it so cheap and accessible. The rate by which we consume meat is far too high for many reasons. A convincing argument is that red meat is just not the healthiest form of protein, as consuming too much of it can cause heart problems long term. However, the more important reason we need to cut down our meat consumption is because our way of life may depend on it. About 40 percent of greenhouse gases come from agricultural practices. These include deforestation and land use changes, and many processes within these are caused by the raising of cows for human consumption. One of the biggest reasons is that cows emit methane, a prominent greenhouse gas. Methane is a hazardous air pollutant, approximately 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to warming. Another reason is that many forests are torn down in order to create land for cows to graze. Many amazon rainforests were forcefully changed to cattle land during the 2020 pandemic because the global demand for beef rose. Raising cows also takes an enormous amount of water. It takes two gallons of water per 100 pounds of body weight. This use of water to satisfy the overly high demand for meat is inefficient and unsustainable. In this sense, if people could accept a small lifestyle change of eating less meat, the demand would lower, and deforestation could also go down. The issue does not even lie in simply eating meat or cutting it out completely. If we just cut our meat consumption by 25 percent, we would reduce our yearly greenhouse gas emissions by one percent.  We would also be able to better allocate water if we didn’t have to raise as many cattle. If everyone could try to reduce their meat consumption to once a week, it would make a big difference in the long run. Change in this manner can often times be contagious, and that one percent could rise to higher numbers in the future. Reform in the food industry is certainly not unprecedented, as the organic and non-GMO movements caught on pretty quickly and those products are now in every grocery store. Just thinking about our own health as well, plant based options are simply healthier for us than a cheeseburger. I think in order to ensure that this mindset gets more widespread, we should create incentives for eating less meat at first. Raising the price by a significant amount could also help, since it is so much cheaper than other options a lot of the time. I think reducing the amount of meat served in schools could also help, as it would help reverse the dependency that so many Americans have on meat as such a big part of their diet.