Why be a Vegetarian? To save the world.
74Why be a vegetarian?
One of the best things to do as an individual to help the environment is to stop eating meat. The best way to argue this point is by looking at the facts:
1. Deforestation -In order to make room for the vast amount of grassland needed to support cattle, forests are clearcut throughout the world. In South America, home of the widest variety of species, 40% of the total amount of rain forests have been cleared in the last fifty years. In another fifty there will be no amazon rain forest. Not only will thousands of species go extinct, with their possible cures to disease, but all the oxygen produced by the Amazon literally regulates oxygen levels in the atmosphere. We could all suffocate ourselves slowly.-Also, in order to feed all of the cattle and chickens we have to grow food. 80% of all the grain grown in the US goes to feeding cattle. That means more forests must be cleared to make room to grow corn, which isn't even used for human consumption. In order to produce a pound of meat, the animal has to consume 5 times that. In other words, if we all avoided eating meat, we could feed 4 times more people without changing our current techniques.2. Water Use-One of the most pressing environmental issues around the world is fresh water. Currently humans have appropriated about half the available fresh water on the planet. Much of this water will be renewed each year because of adequate rainfall. But humans live in such a variety of climates that, in many areas, water is becoming more scarce. The amount of water used every day to sustain a vegetarian diet is 300 gallons/day and for a meat-based diet is 4,000 gallons/day.3. River pollution from waste-Cattle produce 130 times more waste than the entire human population. This is too much waste for the earth to absorb, and therefore it is more often washed away, over top the clearcut fields, and into the rivers. This changes the chemistry of the rivers, affecting nitrate/oxygen levels. It is estimated that over 27,000 miles of river ways have been polluted due to animal waste alone.4. Global Warming-the amount energy needed to produce and transport meat is exorbitant compared to the same nutrition levels in plant-based products. 1/3 of all the energy consumption in the US goes to meat production. As the largest contributer to greenhouse gases, eating mean in the US is one of the worst things you can do for Global Warming. It takes more energy for a meat eater to walk to a restaurant and order meat than for a vegetarian to drive a hummer and order a veggie sandwich.5. Disease-In history, most of the worst epidemics to the human population can be directly traced back to the meat industry. The unsanitary conditions these animals are raised in can harbor new diseases, which can spread to the human population quickly.-Also, the amount of hormones and chemicals injected into the animals to keep them healthy raise the question of what kinds of chemicals are we now ingesting? The hormones in mild have been connected to girls getting their periods earlier, cancer, allergies, and more.So why eat meat when our economy and our environment would improve drastically? Why eat meat when the fake meat equivalents taste almost the same?What often happens over time, once meat is no longer the center of every meal, one becomes more aware of what process took place to get the food on your plate. There is almost an instant connection with the earth, and an ideological shift is forming. You no longer take the role of a dominant predator on the earth, but take more of a side role and become part of nature.CommentsLoading...
a very timely and wise suggestion
thanks for your info! i am going to use it on a poster i am making about being a vegetarian!
Im a vegeterian and Ecolgist and semester a way from becoming qualified, I agree with all points made above, however if your going to center your agrument on eating meat is better for the environment, firsly you should cite some references and secondly, unless you refering to a vegan diet, many vegeterains eat eggs and or diary products. which unfortunatley as stated in 1. require space and grain, 2. will still contribute to water use and 3. contrbute to water pollution, 4. global warming; cows major prodcuer of Co2 and 5.disease. Its not to say that a vegeterian diet is not better for the environment, indeed the impact of points 1-5 would be greatly reduced, however unless eating a vegan diet, A vegeterian diet alone is not silver bullet. furthermore critics will slam this view with the above facts that i just outlined as being obscured and exaggerated, I do however comend smithrt3 for the points outlined, I just feel that these factors need to be taken into consideration. I do fully agree a vegeterian diet would be more perferable and better for the environment. To smithrt3 thank you for your article, and i ment no offence, if offence was taken
I agree with Jamie - particularly on the point about references.
I would like to point out that eating meat is not the problem, eating animals that have been fed massive amounts of grain and then had their meat flown halfway around the world is.
Beef cattle in the UK are mainly fed grass that grows on the ground, or silage made from crops grown on the farm. Otherwise it is uneconomic to raise them. They are fed some additional feeding but way less than the amount that is implied. Dairy cattle eat more grain than beef cattle, which live natural, free-roaming lives.
Only a proportion of land in the UK is suitable for growing grain crops. The majority of land is not, but does support cattle and sheep as well as a vast amount of other wildlife and wild plants. These animals are raised in an environmentally sustainable way. In fact, they live in harmony with the environment - otherwise farming would be too expensive.
Any farmer that can grow grain crops in the UK does, because that's where the money is. Livestock farmers on the other hand, have a modest income.
The message I want to get across is that these blanket statistics are often misleading. Eating home-reared beef and lamb in the UK is good for the environment. However, eating chickens raised in sheds or imported meat flown in from south America (eg McDonald's and Burger King) is, unsurprisingly, bad for the environment.
I agree with what has been put forward by the writer however,I beg to differ on how the problem will be tackled
so we stop eating meat,does it warrant the reduction in the number of animals being produced worldwide?
secondly i understand that the effect of methane from livestock is not as negligeble,however i also understand that nature has a natural process of purification ,it has happened before as animals have been in existence since time immemorial.This therefore is a lesson to us human beings that we should not try to control the food chain but we should control our interfering with it by the anthropogenic aspects that alter the natural mechanism.
i think if everybody wakes up and stop eating and buying meat, groceries shop and supermarket chains will notice a decrease in sales and they will start buying less and less meat. Maybe one day we will all wake up and no one is gonna buy meat, milk, eggs etc.. anymore. they will stop selling them, buying them and producing them. This is my dream.
you want meat? go and hunt it.
Thou shalt not Kill
Somebody said That
Ban all Armies, Guns, and Weapons etc.
This wasted activity by the Military Indutrial complex is Stuffing the Planet.So is the meathead diet.
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christine 4 years ago
It's sad how ingrained the practice of meat-eating is in our species. We must collectively awake from centuries of sleeping...