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21/05/13 10.31
21/05/13 10.31
Eating Meat Causes More Global Warming Than Everything Else Combined When United Nations' scientists evaluated the vast quantity of resources required for meat production, they came to the conclusion that eating meat causes almost onefifth of all global warming, which is forty percent more warming than all cars, trucks, planes and other forms of transport -- forty percent more than all transport! World Bank and International Finance Corporation agricultural economists Dr. Robert Goodland and Jeffrey Anhang, however, point out in a study published by the WorldWatch Institute (and cited by Bill Gates), that meat "has been vastly underestimated as a source of greenhouse gases, and in fact accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases." For one thing, the U.N. ignored respiration, which is a huge cause of warming (these are domesticated animals who would not exist if they weren't being raised for meat). Once you crunch the numbers more scientifically, the proportion of global warming caused by farm animals surpasses fifty percent -- that's right, as much as all other human sources of warming combined. This alone should cause everyone who cares about climate change to cut back (or out) animal product consumption. The Meat Industry Causes Global Poverty Because meat is so resource intensive, competition is created for crops "between affluent meat-eaters and the world's poor" (WorldWatch). As Oxfam's Ben GrossmanCohen explains, It takes massive amounts of land, water, fertilizer, oil and other resources to produce meat, significantly more than it requires to grow other nutritious and delicious kinds of food. . . If we don't reduce our environmental footprints as we increase production, poor people ... will be the first to suffer. Eating less meat is a simple way to reduce the pressure on global resources and help ensure that everyone has enough to eat. To say it simply, eating less meat helps fight hunger. What About Eating Meat That Isn't From Factory-Farmed animals? The U.N. and WorldWatch reports indict the inefficiency and waste that are inherent in meat production. No matter where meat comes from, raising animals for food will require that exponentially more calories be fed to animals than they can produce in their flesh, and it will require all those extra stages of CO2-intensive production as
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well. Only grass-fed animals eat food from land that could not otherwise be used to grow food for human beings, and even grass-fed animals require much more water and create much more pollution than soy, oats, or wheat (and most are raised in climates where they're only eating exclusively grass for a fraction of the year). Conclusion It's true, of course, that vegetables are also resource intensive. But the substitute for meat is not broccoli, bananas, or bok choy. Vegetarians needn't consume any more fruits and vegetables than meat-eaters; we consume more grains and legumes as a substitute for meat. Eating these crops directly, rather than feeding them to animals so that humans can eat meat, requires exponentially fewer resources and causes exponentially less global warming and pollution. Every time we eat meat, it's as though we're throwing away 6-20 calories worth of grains and legumes for every calorie we take in. Plus, we're contributing to exponentially more water use, desertification, air pollution, global warming, global poverty, and more. Share the health benefits of vegetarianism with Bill Clinton, Carrie Underwood, Forest Whitaker, Natalie Portman, Steve-O, Ellen DeGeneres, Alec Baldwin, Emily Deschanel, Paul McCartney, Alicia Silverstone, Russell Simmons, Anne Hathaway, James Cromwell, and millions of other Americans by clicking here. Need some inspiration? Watch this video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/meat-consumption-impact-environment_b_3274251.html
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