More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of NYC on Sunday in the largest climate-change demonstration in history. Clearly this is something many people feel passionate about. Yet the most major contributor to the climate crisis doesnt have to be protested--it can be solved by simple lifestyle changes, rather than pointing the finger at faceless corporate bad guys. The United Nations scientific committee has urged societies to become more plant-based in diet, in order to save the environment. Anything less, and with todays current (let alone growing) population, will be entirely unsustainable. Why? 1. Animal agriculture is the main contributor to deforestation, responsible for 260 million acres of U.S. forests alone. Globally it currently taking up 30% of the Earths surface, and 70% of its agricultural land, and yet still demands more forests to be cleared for room. 2. Animal agriculture is the number one source of water pollution (in the US alone, the EPA reports that animal farm runoff has polluted more clean rivers and groundwater than every other industrial source COMBINED). 3. Animal agriculture uses up 70% of the worlds clean water--it takes about 2,400 gallons to generate 1 lb of meat. By comparison, it takes 25 gallons to make 1 lb of wheat. Yet we are called wasteful if we dont take shorter showers or hold off on watering our lawn, to save a mere fraction of this. 4. Animal agriculture is one the highest, if not THE highest, cause of greenhouse gas emissions. It is currently responsible for at least 18% (which is higher than all the worlds transportation COMBINED). Some sources claim that number could be lowered to 13% if things were done in the most efficient (and sometimes hypothetical) ways possible, while a more recent study by the United Nations World Bank Group factored in the long chain of knock-on effects of animal agriculture and and says it is more likely responsible for 51% of greenhouse gases. 5. Animal agriculture is the largest waste of food imaginable. It takes anywhere from 10-20 lbs of vegetation to generate a single lb of meat. The US alone sells over 90 billion lbs of meat per year, multiplied by the conservative estimate of 10, this is over a TRILLION lbs of food wasted--wheat, corn, oats, barley, alfalfa, soy, and other foods edible to humans (not that we would have to continue growing those foods specifically, or even anywhere close to the amount). This also requires a severely increased use of potentially hazardous fertilizers and pesticides, as well all knock-on effects of their irrigation, harvest, transport, and refining. 6. If the animals were instead fed a purely grass diet, it would require a tremendously larger amount of space (further deforestation than we already have), and not solve any of the other problems on the list. Claiming to care about the environment while continuing to support this industry is akin to claiming to care about lung cancer while continuing to smoke three packs a day. Of course we care. Of course we wish it wasnt there. But even if we hope for the best, even if we protest that cigarettes are bad, and even we if do everything else to help cure the cancer, we are just putting drops in a bucket compared to the actual thing thats causing the problem. theguardian/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 21:44:12 +0000
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