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If you want to save the environment, start off by looking at what you put in your mouth.
Whatever your diet, and whatever reasons you have for eating the foods you do, there are clear consequences to what ends up on your plate.
Foods are not inherently neutral in the context of the earth, and most have an environmental toll. A few, however, can give mother nature a helping hand and reverse the chronic degeneration
underway on much of the earth. Your food can actually save the environment.
Our world has finite resources, though from the perspective of a single person it can seem impossibly vast and abundant.
Water, which is so critical to all life on earth, is one such resource. Ask an inhabitant of the perennially drought-stricken western United States if they have enough to go on if you have any doubts.
We can't save the environment without water.
The soil we walk on seems infinite, but billions of tons of topsoil have been lost in the last 50 years
due to unsustainable land management practices. We cannot save the environment if we can't feed
ourselves.
Our world is also vulnerable to toxic fungicides and pesticides which are liberally spread over crops,
endangering us and polluting the earth. We can'tsave the environment if we continue to pollute it.
It's clear that one diet actually helps the planet, and that's a raw, organic, fruit-based diet that also
includes plenty of vegetables as well as nuts and seeds.
Below, and in subsequent articles, I hope to show you why adopting such a diet is best not only for
you, but for the earth as well.
Eat all you care for, but choose foods that save the environment.
Lowermilk described a spot in Syria where old ruins sat atop barren rock in the section of his report entitled "A Hundred Dead Cities".
"Here, erosion has done it's worst," he wrote. "...If the soils had remained, even though the cities were destroyed and the populations dispersed, the areas might be re-people again and the cities
rebuilt, but now that the soils are gone, all is gone."
But despite such lessons, we're not listening. The United States loses seven billion tons of topsoil a year, which could coat an area roughly the size of Connecticut. About Eighty five
percent of this is caused by livestock grazing and the clear cutting of forests to create pastures and fields to grow food for animals. (1)
By 2005, 260 million acres of forest had been clear-cut for animal agriculture in this country. (2) With the population growing and per capita meat consumption increasing, deforestation is only
increasing.
It's clear that our other conservation measures will not equal the good that simply giving up meat would bring about.
There are few natural pastures in this heavily-forested land, so they're steadily being carved out of pristine woodland. A Smithsonian study estimates that the need for grazing land and grain feed
leads to the destruction of a land area equivalent to seven football fields in the Amazon basin every single minute (3).
This means that if you eat a hamburger carved from an animal raised in South America, you're meal has contributed to 55 square feet of rain forest destruction. (3)
We cannot continue this rate of forest destruction if we're to have any hope of saving the
environment.
Studies analyzing the effect topsoil loss on crop productivity find that losing an inch of topsoil
reduced corn and wheat yields an average of 6 percent. An inch of topsoil takes centuries to form
without human intervention, so losses at current levels are irreversible on a human-scale time
frame. (4) We are reducing our ability to feed ourselves as the population continues to grow, as well
as slowly degrading out breadbasket into something similar to what Lowdermilk saw in Syria.
If you find this a ridiculous claim, and you say that Middle-Eastern Syria has nothing to do with with
the Midwest, then I invite you to look at pictures of the dust bowl. In the 1930s, farmers were
plowing from "fencerow to fencerow".
They cut down trees and didn't allow the land to go fallow. When a two-year drought hit, the soil
just blew away. The humanitarian toll of this disaster is well recorded by history, and it wasn't until
the land was stabilized with tree, grass, and windbreak plantings that some degree of normalcy
returned to the region
But the U.S. is still bleeding topsoil at an alarming rate, and the dust bowl can happen again. The
middle east, after all, was covered with forests and renowned for its orchards until man cut them
down. (5)
An unbroken forest once stretched from Main to Texas, but much of that is gone too, with more
being cut down all the time.
If you shower for 7 minutes every single day, at 2 gallons of water per minute coming out of your
flow shower head, that equals 100 gallons a week. Eating a single quarter-pounder
hamburger, then, at 484 gallons of water, is the equivalent of giving up four weeks of
luxurious showers.
low-
The only more wasteful agricultural system imaginable would befeeding meat-fed humans to
cannibals.
Livestock feces is also a huge pollutant, and regularly gets into our water supply.
People in the U.S. produce 12,000 pounds of excrement per second, and we've got sewage
in just about every municipality to handle it. The country's livestock produce 250,000 pounds of
excrement per second, and almost none of it is treated (7)
Even the EPA identifies animal excrement and animal agricultural chemicalpollutants as a major
contribution to the destruction of the environment (8) The manure created from the billions of
killed for food has to go somewhere, and it often ends up in rivers and streams, killing millions of
Manure and agricultural chemicals seep into our waterways and groundwater, eventually making
into the oceans and creating massive dead zones, or areas so toxic that neither plant or animal life
survive there. These spots, like the dead zone created where the Mississippi spews animal waste
Gulf of Mexico, are visible from space.
systems
animals
fish (9).
its way
can
into the
If we want to save the environment, we need to control our water use and pollution.
about
fired
produce
Driving a hybrid car instead of an gas guzzler would conserve around a ton of carbon dioxide per
great thing if you're trying to save the environment.
year. A
A diet without meat and dairy, though, actually conserves a ton and a half. A hybrid will cost you
and a leg, but giving up unhealthy, expensive meat and dairy will cost you nothing, and help you
the environment. (11)
an arm
save
(10)
It's absolutely clear that the single easiest thing a person can do to help save the
environment is to give up meat and dairy. This will free up millions of acres now used for
animal agriculture that could then be replanted with trees.
Here's some food for thought:(12)
Cost of common hamburger meat if water used by meat industry was not
subsidized by U.S. taxpayers: $35 a pound
1 Apple- 18 Gallons
1 Quart OJ -5 Gallons
Orchards absorb C02, thus reducing the problem of global warming. They also stop soil erosion with their extensive root systems and start to regenerate it through the annual leaf die off. Leaves fall
to the ground, rot, and add to the topsoil. Jim Sloman, author of "A Global Vision," writes, "If the earth were covered with orchards (much like Tikopia) it would be possible to feed humanity using
even less water and soil while most likely greatly increasing overall health."
He mentions Tikopia, an island settled 3,000 years ago. By 100 B.C., Tikopia was throttling towards
destruction, much like the Easter Island civilization that wiped itself out by destroying its own trees.
(14).
The difference is that Tikopia pulled back from the brink. Its people halted the practice of clear
cutting their forests for agriculture and in its place turned the entire island into a huge fruit orchard,
with dozens of fruit varieties. They even unanimously decided to slaughter all the pigs becuase it
took so much food to raise them. (13)
In their own small way, they were able to save the environment, and in doing so saved themselves.
If you're at all environmentally aware, you can't help but look at a meat habit with some sense of disgust. Its toll on the earth is simply too great. We can't save the environment while eating meat at
this volume.
Even a grain-centered vegetarian diet has its flaws.
The best way to go, for your own health, and for the health of the planet, is a delicious diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
Eat Fruit, save the environment. Simple as that.
And remember, it's tasty, as well as healthy. The raw food diet that will save the environment can also fight disease.