Going Veggie Helps Save the Planet

[Doug]

Vegetarian is the New Prius

President Herbert Hoover promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens.

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

...The U.N. report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock--that's more emissions than from all of the world's transportation combined.

...Last year researchers at the University of Chicago...noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels--and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide--as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide--gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.

...What we're seeing is just the beginning, too. Meat consumption has increased five-fold in the past fifty years, and is expected to double again in the next fifty.
...Going veg provides more bang for your buck than driving a Prius. Plus, that bang comes a lot faster. The Prius cuts emissions of carbon dioxide, which spreads its warming effect slowly over a century. A big chunk of the problem with farmed animals, on the other hand, is methane, a gas which cycles out of the atmosphere in just a decade. That means less meat consumption quickly translates into a cooler planet.

Not just a cooler planet, also a cleaner one...Try to imagine the prodigious volumes of manure churned out by modern American farms: 5 million tons a day, more than a hundred times that of the human population, and far more than our land can possibly absorb.

...Ever-rising temperatures, melting ice caps, spreading tropical diseases, stronger hurricanes... So, what are you do doing for dinner tonight? Check out www.VegCooking.com for great ideas, free recipes, meal plans, and more! Check out the environmental section of www.GoVeg.com for a lot more information about the harmful effect of meat-eating on the environment.


Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It's the feedlot approach that is doing it - and that is driven by what the heck to do with all that corn is produced thanks to agribiz subsidies. And those feedlots - and the petroleum inputs into the subsidized corn - are predominantly in the U.S. Pasture-raised or wild-gathered (hunted) meat is not a problem - in moderation, of course. In general, not only do Americans drive the biggest, most fuel-wasting vehicles, Americans also eat too much meat, as well as factory-farmed meat.

You don't have to go so far as to become a vegetarian to reduce your "carbon footprint." You can reduce your meat intake to the 2.5-3.5 pounds a week recommended by research in the 1930s & 40s - and either purchase pastured meat (including pastured pork and chicken) which is expensive, or get your meat by hunting. (Although right now it would be cheaper to go vegetarian than to totally purchase "good" meat. I can give you a local source - Jubilee Farms. They are on the market, during the season, and do a "reduced" time Saturday market in front of Maisson de Tartes off season.)

[Betsy]

I agree w/Barbara - you don't have to become a vegetarian, just eat a more balanced diet. I was shocked to find out not long ago (within the last two or three years) that the average American eats a fast-food burger something like five times a week. I have one about once a month.

If the average were reduced to just one burger a week instead of five, that would make a tremendous difference in the environmental impact. If they only ate a fast-food burger once a month, like I do, we wouldn't even be talking about this.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Somewhere a neocon corporate-flunky economist is screaming about this concept, but reducing the amount of meat we eat (without necessarily becoming vegetarians) to what the "natural" farm movement can produce with a modern "tweak" on old-fashioned pasture methods, would solve a whole lot of problems. It would not only cut down on methane emissions (both from fewer number of animals and each animal producing less gas on the diet they evolved to eat - grass, not corn), but it would shut down the commercial-owned feedlots which are incredibly damaging to land and water, as well as air, in favor of small family-style farms and put America back on track for food self-sufficiency. The cost of meat would be somewhat higher, but not as high as "good" meat is now because there would be more of it, and the money would be going to a "lower" level than corporate CEOs, and thus pretty much back into the local economy. It's a win for everyone - except Agribiz.