I hate how now whenever it is hot people on the news are like "so, weatherman, is this due to global warming?" and they always say something evasive-sounding like "well climate change is going to make extreme events like these more likely so we can't say for sure blah blah blah".
Of course it is! Ugh. Don't beat about the bush. Saying "we can't be sure" just lets people ignore it.
I want to congratulate you for trying. It's important and while many people will rightly say that it's not anywhere near enough, you have to start somewhere!
However, I just want to caution you. My wife unplugs all the electrical appliances when we aren't using them so that the led indicators don't waste electricity. Then she drives 40 km a day. I can't quite get her to understand that the amount of energy she's saving from those led indicators is absolutely and completely inconsequential compared to her car. The problem is Al Gore said it in a famous documentary, and some other person told a friend of my wife, who told my wife and my wife really trusts her friend. Nobody in that chain has a clue what a watt hour is or how many they use in a day or what they use them for. But they have satisfied the minimum requirement for being "eco" according to somebody's recounting of somebody's recollection of somebody's movie watching and that's all that matters for them. I'm slowly educating my wife, but it's really hard work.
Don't fall prey to that kind of thinking. It's going to take real effort to figure out how each of us can reduce our energy consumption to a point where we aren't causing a problem. Nobody is going to be able to give you a quick fix -- it's going to be one thing after another after another after another and you are absolutely going to get sick of it before it is done. Starting with the meat is great. You have to start somewhere. Just don't stop there.
Also, assuming reasonable values for the weight of your wife and the power draw of your appliance LEDs, if she has to bend down to unplug an appliance she burns through an appreciable fraction of the power savings. For example, if she's 50 kilos above the waist, and the appliance LED draws 50 milliwatts, then the energy she burns straightening up after bending down 1 meter is equivalent to nearly 3 hours of leaving it on:
Of course, your wife doesn't run on pure electricity - the energy she expends probably took a very inefficient route to get to her. On the other hand, depending on what she eats and where you live, agriculture may still be a greener form of energy than wall current. If she's vegan and your power comes from coal, it might be worth it; if she eats beef and your power is hydroelectric, it definitely isn't.
Easy solution: install switches at waist height. But be sure to factor in all that extra resistance from the longer power wires!
On the other hand reducing your meat consumption is a very low effort / moderately high impact thing to do. (Compared to the led thing for example)
Everyone can do it at no cost. Getting rid of your car once your dependent on it is not that easy. I agree with the general sentiment though, we shouldn't do the bare minimum and think it's enough.
If people stopped most meat eating, it would have a big impact. I laud if someone makes the personal choice. It is hard for me to understand why some people take such a negative attitude towards that.
I expect people to do less flying in the future as well.
Livestock and manure account for 5.1% of global CO2 production. Agriculture on the whole account for 13%. Although the 5.1% is a large chunk, it's just nowhere near enough. Air transportation is also sitting at a cool 1.6%.
In order for us to make large changes, we're going to have to make fairly substantial alterations to the way we do things. I'm totally happy if some people don't eat meat. Heck, I was vegan for 10 years! But, I don't think it's a terribly effective approach to addressing global climate change. The 5% isn't enough and it doesn't force us to make the other cultural changes that are necessary to succeed.
From a person's personal emissions point of view, the math could be a bit different. It's something that you as a person can have more an immediate effect on than, say, what kind of district heating fuel your city uses or if your apartment building is doing an energy saving renovation or not. Flying is another case like that - a relatively personal choice.
EDIT: looking at your picture, which is great, it seems almost none of the parts are over 10% alone.
Deforestation is huge, 18.3%. I don't know how big is dairy and beef farming's impact on that.
I think the way to look at it is that the vast majority of the graph is taken up by industry -- either manufacturing, or shipping/transportation. I think the actual key to making a difference is reducing consumption. Buy something once in your life rather than every few years. Go for higher quality items rather than disposable. These days, energy is the controlling factor in cost -- automation having reduced labour costs. Every time you buy something a good proportion of that cost is just energy. If you change from spending, say, $30K per year to spending $10K per year, you will reduce overall energy expenditure massively.
There are 2 problems with this: 1) our economy isn't designed to deal with a reduction in demand. 2) our culture is geared to fill up our houses with new things every year.
So that's my suggestion if you want to make a personal contribution.
Edit: There is a small line for "Agricultural Energy Use" and another for "Other Agriculture". All agricultural energy use is 1.4% and the total for all agriculture other than rice production is 0.9%. So I suppose the milk industry is some proportion of the 5% of livestock and the 2.3% of everything else. However, in some parts of the world it does contribute to deforestation. In fact, my understanding is that the vast majority of deforestation is actually for agricultural use -- but a lot of that is for chemical products as well (palm oil for use as an emulsifier in detergent as an example). Probably easiest way to deal with that is to buy local, traditional goods and to avoid luxury imported items.
