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Meat: An Environment Killer MAG
We’ve all seen our share of scientists in white coats, explaining what global warming is, why it’s dangerous, and what we can do to stop it. We encounter protests against fossil fuels and auto emissions. But the one industry that produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, ships, planes, and trucks in the world combined, according to GoVeg.com, has carefully avoided this scrutiny. The meat industry is an often-overlooked factor in environmental destruction, existing unnoticed as a major source of deforestation, wasted natural resources, and pollution.
Rainforests hold a wealth of plant and animal life. Trees are natural air filters, pulling harmful carbon dioxide from the air and converting it to oxygen. The meat industry, particularly cattle ranching, kills millions of acres of rainforest each year.
Just one quarter-pound hamburger requires the clearing of six yards of rainforest and the destruction of 165 pounds of living matter, including 20 to 30 plant species, 100 insect species, and dozens of birds, mammals, and reptiles, according to ChooseVeg.com. Small amounts of beef in an individual’s diet soon add up and do great harm to the environment.
Cattle farming turns fertile land into barren desert, threatening or eliminating more plant species in the U.S. than any other cause. Livestock grazing can be a huge threat to endangered species and may contribute to extinctions.
There is no doubt that the meat industry causes immense, irreversible harm to the earth’s rainforests. But this is not the only victim of the meat industry. Meat consumption also produces a massive amount of waste.
Four hundred and forty-one gallons of water is required for each pound of cattle raised, compared to just 14 gallons to grow a pound of grain, according to ChooseVeg.com. Three days of a typical non-vegetarian diet requires as much water as the average person uses showering for an entire year. An individual can save more than 3,700 gallons of water per day by eating a plant-based diet. Ogallala, the largest aquifer in America, is depleted by 12 trillion gallons a year, mostly due to soaring meat production. Besides draining our water supply, meat production leads to food shortages as well.
World hunger is a severe problem, with millions of men, women, and children going hungry each day. Most people do not realize that not eating meat could relieve starvation worldwide. Meat production takes up 70 percent of the world’s agricultural land. A single acre of farmland can, over a year, produce 250 pounds of beef or 40,000 potatoes. Yet it is not only land usage that prevents food from getting to the people who need it most. Twenty percent of the world’s population (1.4 billion people) could be fed with the grain and soy beans currently consumed by U.S. cattle alone. By adopting a vegetarian diet, individuals could cut the amount of land used to produce their food by a magnitude of ten.
Another unpleasant side effect of meat production is the pollution it produces. Animal agriculture creates five tons of waste per person over a typical lifetime in the U.S., according to ChooseVeg.com. That’s 87,000 pounds of waste each second. Animal waste from factory farms seeps into groundwater, contaminating it. Chicken, hog, and cattle manure has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated water in 17 states. The EPA reports that pollution from livestock farming is a leading cause of water contamination in the U.S., killing marine life and making drinking water unsafe.
Meat production is also a major cause of global carbon dioxide and methane pollution. These greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Colossal amounts of fossil fuel are used to grow food for livestock, dispose of remains, and transport the meat. Cows are a major cause of methane pollution because their waste contains large amounts of the gas. In America, cattle have altered the environment more than all the highways, strip mines, dams, and power plants combined, according to ChooseVeg.com.
Producing a single pound of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving an SUV 40 miles – 500 pounds of carbon dioxide for just a quarter-pound hamburger. Worldwide petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 11 years if the rest of the world started eating meat like the United States does. But if Americans skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted a vegetarian meal instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be equivalent to taking more than half a million cars off U.S. roads (ChooseVeg.com)! Despite these undeniable statistics, some people defend eating meat and deny the impacts of an omnivorous diet on the environment.
There is no doubt that meat production harms the environment by contributing to deforestation, global warming, wasted resources, and pollution. The United Nations has said that going vegetarian is the greenest thing individuals can do to save the environment. The University of Chicago reports that going vegetarian is 50 percent more effective than switching to a hybrid car in reducing greenhouse emissions.
What did the great thinkers Aristotle, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Mohandas Gandhi, and John Lennon have in common? They were all vegetarians. But don’t worry, there is no need to swear off meat all at once! By simply reducing your meat consumption (especially beef) you can take steps to help save the environment and stop global warming. Cut down a little bit each week at a pace that suits you. Refrain from eating that hamburger – our earth will thank you for it!
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This article has 241 comments.
Oatmeal has 6 grams of protein
Soymilk 7 grams
5 oz of firm Tofu 11 grams
1 cup of cook lentil 18 grams
add all of this up and it is 42 grams of protein and the amount of protein supposed to be consumed for a 150 pond person is 55 grams and that is just four different foods
Hooray for this one! I especially admire the connects you made so well. I was raised a vegetarian, not only for the animals and the environment, but also for my own safety. There are a lot of things in meat that can be hazardous (given there are hazards in anything you eat, of course) and it's expensive. I have never had any health problems, never been sick because I was 'malnourished' and it's no problem. I don't support the way it's made and I don't think, even if someone gave me a supply of organic, local, meat of any kind, I would eat it. The nutritional value can be made up for if you're not adjusted to it. I have a friend who is a vegetarian for her love of animals, and she does have to eat a lot of protein-rich foods, but I think that it's the right decision to make, whether for you, the earth, or the animals.
(PS I really like your mentioning of the dropping of meat meals once in a while. If it's hard to not eat meat, (and I can't really empathize because I've never had it) then don't kill yourself by trying to hard - or worse, by not trying at all. Vegetarian meals cannot dissapoint.
Well written article! (:
To everyone who is complaining that the facts aren't right: Why does it matter? Overall, meat is bad for the environment. It's true. Maybe a few facts were off, but the concept is the same and she is right about it in general.
And she is NOT asking everyone to become vegetarians. Everyone seems so hung up on that, but that isn't what she said. She said just to cut down. Just reduce your meat intake and you'd be helping.
With that said, I've been a vegetarian for a few months and it's surprisingly easy and I feel like I'm actually helping work toward something important (not that my being a vegetarian alone will do much, but still...If no one becomes a vegetarian, how will we help as a whole?)
i agree! its not the actual maet that is a problem but were we get it from, factory farms are wrong but if we switched to more wholesome methods (such as organic farming) then it would approve!
Someone understands what i'm saying!
i don't believe it is a selfish need. I agreew that people everywere should have food, its awful that they dont.
as to the predator comment i think that saying being a protector is like asking a lion to defend zebras. Before you get going on how that is innacurratre and not the same as humans i know, but it is simmilar. I think that being a vegitarian is fantastic, don't get me wrong there. I think that its a good choice. Predators are designed to eat meat and we havn't been evolved to be herbavores.
as i said before, i think the matter isn't the eating of meat but were the meat comes from. If we switched to organic meat rather then factory made stuff then it would improve a lot. The factory meat is bad but with organic farming there is less wase, because it fertalized the grass they eat, its more eco-friendly and a much better chioce.
the argument here isn't wether or not to eat meat, its about were it comes from.
Great article! Very well written, and I agree completely!
I know this is a very controversial subject, but personally, I think being a vegetarian is great! Have you heard of Escherichia coli (E-Coli)? Think about that next time you dig into your hamburger. Speaking of ham, consuming undercooked pork can actually give you brain worms! Suddenly that crispy bacon doesn't look too good either, now does it? And furthermore, there is a reason that many royalties don’t eat seafood, especially shellfish, because of the risk of red tide and food poisoning.
Additionally, have you ever been to an industrial dairy farm? I have, and it’s just horrible what those cows have to go through. They need to wait for days, weeks, even, to be milked, and then by that time, they are supremely uncomfortable. I’ve seen the metal milking machines suck the teats to the point that they bled. How’s that milk tasting right now?
Factory farms are just disgusting, too. Imagine being a chicken, destined for slaughter, shoved in a tiny metal box along with thousands of your kin, being injected with chemicals to increase your growth, and covered in the feces of the other doomed creatures around you.
We breed these creatures until they have no resistance to any diseases and have terrible existences. There is Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which we, as the “wisest” creatures on Earth, seem to have deemed worthy for only ourselves. So no, the animals wouldn’t overpopulate the Earth, they would simply choose their own mates, instead of two fertile animals being trapped in a cage to mate, with no choice of their own.
The bottom line is that, in my opinion, humans should step aside and let actual NATURE take place, as opposed to our sick and twisted ideas of the world. It’s okay to be an omnivore once and a while, but seriously, is it necessary to eat meat every day?
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