Please Do Not Tap On the Glass

Oh, I have been looking for this information for days now and this week two sources made their way to my inbox courtesy of DawnWatch and the mysterious pepromene.

Those who care about animals and the planet will love Dr. Patrice Green’s op-ed in the Thursday, July 19, Baltimore Sun, headed, “Save the Planet with a Vegetarian Diet.” (p15a)

She tells us that “most people are neglecting one of the most important steps toward stopping global warming: adopting a vegetarian diet.”

We read:
“Animal agriculture, a major source of water pollution and deforestation, has become one of the biggest culprits in global warming. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report this year showing that farmed animals are a top contributor to today’s serious environmental problems, including greenhouse gases.

“The report found that livestock produced 35 percent to 40 percent of all methane emissions (which have 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide), 65 percent of nitrous oxide (which is 320 times as warming as carbon dioxide) and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes to acid rain.

“Nearly 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface is used for grazing animals, and that number is expected to increase with the global livestock sector growing faster than any other agricultural subsector. That’s because in almost every region of the world, consumption of animal products is on the rise.

“This trend has another disturbing consequence. The global increase in meat consumption has caused rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses to soar.”

She writes about how easy it is to go veg, and about the terrific health improvements she sees when people in her practice change their diets.

You’ll find the article on line at: http://www.pcrm.org/news/commentary070719.html

It will take you just a moment to go to that link, scroll down the page, and give the story a five star rating. Please do!

You can also post a comment. Those doing wonderfully on veggie diets should also consider quick letters to the editor to keep this discussion alive on the editorial page. The Baltimore Sun takes letters at letters@baltsun.com and advises, “Be sure to include contact information, including your full name and both day and evening phone numbers.”

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

In addition to the DawnWatch information, please read Kathy Freston’s article “Vegetarian is the New Prius” at The Huffington Post. Here are some highlights:

• “… 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.”
• A report from the University of Chicago states “that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some 10 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 10 times as much fossil fuels–and spewing more than 10 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.”
• “Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70 percent of all agricultural land, and 30 percent 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 percent of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder.”
• “… 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 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37 percent of our methane, and a whopping 65 percent of our nitrous oxide.”
• The U.S. alone slaughters 10 billion land animals every year.
• “Animal agriculture accounts for most of the water consumed in this country, emits two-thirds of the world’s acid-rain-causing ammonia, and it the world’s largest source of water pollution–killing entire river and marine ecosystems, destroying coral reefs, and of course, making people sick.”

GO VEG. Save your planet.

s.

Filed under: animal rights, factory farming, global climate change, veganism