Eco-Eating

Eating meat contributes to the destruction of rainforests, often called the “lungs of our planet” for the way they absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. What we breathe out (carbon dioxide), trees breathe in; what trees breathe out (oxygen), we breathe in. We breathe each other into life and we are actively destroying that life support. Rainforests are the major source of oxygen for the planet; their survival and our survival are closely linked. Rainforests also provide food and medicine.

Rainforests are home to about 90% of all plant and animal species on the planet. The Amazon Rainforest alone holds about 20% of the world’s fresh water and emits about 20% of the world’s oxygen. Every year, gigantic amounts of rain forest, including 5000-11000 square miles [13000-28500 sq. km.] in the Amazon Rainforest, are lost and more than 1,000 plant and animal species that live there become extinct. About 2/3 [60-70%] of that land is currently used for grazing about 165 million cattle. 1/5 [20%] of the Amazon Rainforest has already been cleared. An estimated 80% of annual world deforestation is related to animal agriculture. While some Amazon rainforest in Brazil is also being cut down for soy fields, much of this soy is being fed to animals being raised for meat – an even more inefficient and wasteful use of essential and irreplaceable rainforest. The meat production-and-consumption cycle is essentially transforming the world’s precious and mega-biodiverse tropical rainforests into carbon dioxide and cholesterol, thereby increasing disasters on both the personal and planetary levels.

Some extremely deadly viral diseases—including Ebola, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, and AIDS—have been called the “revenge of the rainforest”, as they have erupted and spread via the building of roads into forests, paving the way for deforestation and the hunt for bushmeat, especially primates, but other amazing animals as well, increasingly threatening many of these animals with extinction.

Further, underwater “forests” of coral reefs and mangroves are being decimated by “rape-and-run” shrimp farming (exploiting and polluting coastal communities for 2 to 5 years before abandoning them), commercial fishing, industrial shipping, and other meat and fish-related mega-activities.

Each vegetarian saves more than an acre (0.4 hectares) of trees every year as well as protecting valuable ecosystems, saving vanishing species, and maintaining precious biodiversity. Your dietary choices make a difference!

“In Central America, 40% of all the rainforests have been cleared or burned down in the last 40 years,

mostly for cattle pasture to feed the export market—often for U.S. beef burgers”.

World Rainforest Report

“In a nutshell, cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil’s Amazon rainforests.”

Center for International Forestry Research

“Raising cattle for beef not only damages the rainforests in Central and South America,

it also impacts the environment closer to home.”

Rainforest Action Network

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• 2. Global Warming:

Global warming is a mega-disaster. We are overheating our planet to alarming levels with potentially catastrophic consequences. Eating meat increases global warming, one of the most dangerous threats to our planet, at least according to reports by and for Greenpeace, Oxfam, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Pentagon, the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and a vast number of other scientists, political economic analysts, and environmentalists – and there are no scientific organizations or any published scientific articles that dispute global warming and that humans are causing and contributing to it.

The Pentagon report, for example, states that climate change in the form of global warming “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern”, higher even than terrorism, warning of riots and declaring that “future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor”. The UK’s chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, agrees. “Extreme weather conditions in many parts of the world, including a record 10 typhoons in Japan and the first-ever hurricane in South America [in 2004], are being blamed on global warming”, states the BBC News, as is record hurricane levels, record temperatures, and melting polar ice caps and glaciers. 2005 was the hottest year in over a millennium. Most of the hottest years on record have been in the last 20 years.

Further, the world has seen a melting of the polar ice caps, glaciers, and permafrost with potentially disastrous consequences for people, animals, cities, islands, and other coastal communities, as well as arctic areas, which will likely lead to rising seas, suffering, death, extinction, and the forced migration of people and animals. These extreme weather events and other eco-spasms have become more frequent and are projected to multiply with dire consequences for the world.

Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases which together account for over 90% of US greenhouse emissions, significantly contributing to global scorching (what is euphemistically called global warming). Methane is less abundant that carbon dioxide, and degrades much quicker, but is 23 times more potent. Nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas that accounts for about 6% of global warming, is about 300 times more potent that carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is emitted from manure and fertilizer. The effects of the livestock industry on our “warming globe” are strong, undeniable, and disastrous, and yet the place where we can have a major and relatively quick impact.

Power production, passenger and other vehicles, international shipping, militarism (the U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s largest polluter), and other major users of fossil fuels are also the biggest contributors to global warming. Deforestation is a major contributor. Smoking is also a factor and is intimately related to deforestation. Global warming is already having grave effects on our planet and we need to take action as soon as possible. No violence, no war, no warming—we need to increase the peace!

Meat eaters are contributing to global warming, which is “Another Inconvenient Truth”. It’s Another Inconvenient Truth that switching to a vegan diet can reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more than switching to a hybrid car. Scientific studies (including a major one by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO)) are piling up showing that what one drives, while quite important, is less significant than what one eats. Let’s fight global warming with our forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks! Meat —> heat.

Vegetarianism is a “global cooling cuisine” and is the ultimate “low carb(on) diet”. Vegetarians help keep the planet cool in more ways than one! Be cool.

“There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.”

United Nations Environment Programme, Unit on Climate Change

“Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16% of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.”

State of the World 2004

“The animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity.”

Alan Calverd, Physics World</