Young people like me are becoming vegan. That's bad for the environment.

Going vegan is in fashion. I see it all the time. I'm in my early 20s and I've lost count of how many of my peers have switched to the so-called “plant-based” lifestyle.

Young liberals care deeply about the environment and want to do their bit to stop what they consider the “climate crisis.” They think going vegan will help. What they don't realize is that by giving up meat, they could actually be harming the planet.

Surveys show a huge rise in veganism in recent years, especially among millennials and Generation Z: 1% of all Americans now consider themselves vegan.

The trend correlates with radical views on climate change among young liberals. Left-wing environmental groups such as Greenpeace and PETA campaign aggressively to get people to stop eating meat and convert to veganism.

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The link between climate change and animal-based food products is cemented in the minds of young people. The narrative goes that because the agriculture and meat manufacturing industries cause greenhouse gas emissions, going vegan is a good way to reduce your carbon footprint and therefore help save the planet.

Unfortunately, the truth is quite different.

While it is true that the meat and dairy industries emit polluting gases that contribute to climate change, going vegan is not necessarily an improvement. Eliminating meat and dairy from their diets forces young vegans to switch to other products that are often much more harmful to the environment.

Take proteins as an example. Any healthy diet needs a good amount of protein. Meat, eggs, and dairy are major sources of protein, but they are off-limits for a vegan.

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There are plant-based sources of protein such as beans and lentils, but even a young liberal needs variety in his diet. Who wants to eat beans for every meal, three times a day, seven days a week?

Inevitably, young vegans turn to other sources of protein, often marketed as “meat substitutes.” These products are a way to make boring but plant-based protein sources, like beans, more interesting to consumers, for example by making them look and taste like meat. For example, many meat substitutes, such as tofu and tempeh, are made from soy, which is high in protein.

Soybean cultivation is a disaster for the planet. Focusing on greenhouse gas emissions, as vegan activists often do, ignores all the other ways a harmful product like soy can harm the natural world.

Volunteers serve vegan hot dogs at PETA's Congressional Veggie Dog Lunch outside the Longworth House Office Building on July 21, 2021, in Washington, DC (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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For example, soybean cultivation fuels deforestation. To grow soybean plants, farmers must cut down many trees to clear the land. Soybeans are very inefficient and therefore take up a lot of space. That means they require much more deforestation than other similar bean plants.

It is not limited to deforestation. Growing soybeans also causes something called soil erosion, which makes the soil where it is grown almost impossible to use to grow other plants in the future.

Soybean cultivation also consumes enormous amounts of water and is known to contribute to droughts. In fact, soy farming is so bad for the planet that even the WWF, an environmental NGO, is against it.

Little by little, soy is destroying the planet. Did young vegans consider this when they decided to give up their beef burgers for a soy burger?

Soybeans are harvested on a farm near Brasilia, Brazil, on March 4, 2022. (Andressa Anholete/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The problem is not limited to meat substitutes. Being vegan also means giving up dairy.

Young people who follow a plant-based diet should prepare their coffee with something other than milk. Popular choices include almond milk, which has caused droughts in California. Almond farming also requires so much pollination that it demands 70% of the US commercial bee population each year, killing about a third of them per season.

Instead, they could opt for coconut milk, which has disastrous consequences for soil fertility. Oat milk is another favorite of millennial vegans, even though it often contains glyphosate, a herbicide that nature calls kryptonite.

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Rice milk, a less common dairy alternative, emits methane, as do dairy cows. As if that weren't bad enough, it may also contain arsenic. And then there's soy milk, which is made from (you guessed it) soybeans.

Everywhere you look, vegan meat and dairy substitutes turn out to be much worse for the planet than the animal products they purport to replace. Millennials and Gen Z adopting a plant-based diet have been misled by the organic food industry, which is making quick money off of its eco-consciousness while harming the natural world.

The simple truth is that what is happening among young vegans has never happened before. For most of human history, our species has been omnivorous, eating foods that come from both plants and animals. Never before has a cohort of millions of people decided to become herbivores and abandon food products of animal origin.

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That's a recipe for disaster. Human beings need a balanced diet, and so does the planet. Giving up animal products may seem like a great way to stop climate change, but in reality it just means creating a whole host of new problems for nature.

If young liberals really care about the environment, they should think more carefully about their diet and lifestyle choices and not take the word of green campaign groups like Greenpeace.

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