It’s an astounding fact that animal agriculture takes up to 80% of the world’s agricultural land and provides just 18% of the world’s calorie needs. Yet most national policymakers tend to ignore it.
To fill this void, organisations like Plant Based Treaty and cities like West Hollywood, California are stepping up to sway their constituents’ eating habits and cut emissions. West Hollywood adopted the treaty in late 2024, increasing public outreach and organising community food events to help cut land, water, and carbon footprints.
The timing couldn’t be critical . Livestock are accounts for 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions and the way the world currently eats is enough to push warming past climate goals.
But it got me thinking - should climate really be the only reason to choose a plant-based diet?
I recently came across an insightful line by Acharya Prashant in his book Is She a Food to You?: “Turn vegan in your own self-interest. You’re not killing the other; you are killing yourself.”
It made me realize that environmental arguments only cover half the story. If we aren't alright internally, we will keep making choices that harm both ourselves and the planet.
When we already know what is right and what needs to be done, what is it within us that actually stops us from making the right choice?
A SpaceX Starship (upper stage)/Super Heavy (booster) launch consumes an enormous amount of chemical energy—on the order of tens of petajoules.
The Raptor engines burn methane and oxygen in a staged-combustion cycle. SpaceX currently lists approximately 3,650 metric tons of propellant for Super Heavy and 1,600 tons for Starship, or about 5,250 tons total when fully loaded. This consists of approximately 1,140 tons of methane and 4,110 tons of liquid oxygen.
How much energy is that?
Methane contains roughly 50 MJ/kg of chemical energy. The Starship/Super Heavy carries about 1.14 million kg of methane or approximately 57 petajoules (PJ) of chemical energy. That's about:
· 15.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of chemical energy or 15.8 billion kWh
The 57-PJ figure is equivalent to about 1.8 years of continuous electricity generation from a 1-GW power plant, a relatively large generating plant.
A striking comparison is the scale implied by SpaceX's proposed launch rate: At 145 Starship launches per year, the chemical energy released would total approximately 8.3 exajoules (EJ) per year—equivalent to the energy produced by a continuous 1-GW thermal power source operating for about 262 years.
Where does that energy end up?
The energy released by the rocket is initially distributed among:
· kinetic energy and potential energy of the exhaust and rocket
· heat in the combustion products
· atmospheric heating and turbulence
· aerodynamic drag, gravitational losses
· acoustic energy and other smaller energy pathways
Ultimately, most of the chemical energy released by the rocket will be degraded into low-grade thermal energy. Energy initially carried as rocket and exhaust kinetic energy, atmospheric motion, turbulence, and other forms is eventually dissipated as thermal energy within the Earth system, while some energy is ultimately radiated away from Earth as infrared radiation.
A more consequential environmental effect of Starship launches isn't the direct heat from combustion. Starship's exhaust is primarily CO₂ and water vapor, with smaller amounts of CO, NOx, and particulate material. These combustion products—including water vapor and particles—are injected directly into the upper atmosphere, where their radiative and chemical effects can be substantially different from those of emissions released near the Earth's surface.