Dia da Terra: Meat's Not Green! - muito importante ler e divulgar!

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Meat’s Not Green: This Earth Day, Go Vegetarian to Save the Planet

 

RaeLeann Smith - April 21st, 2009

 

Wathc the video / Veja o maravilhoso vídeo Uma Vida Interligada.

 

“Green living” is a popular topic these days. To many people, it means

recycling, taking short showers, using energy-efficient light bulbs, carrying

cloth bags, buying locally-grown foods, and riding public transportation. These

are all good steps, but they will not benefit the planet nearly as much as

switching to a vegetarian diet.

 

Living green ultimately means eating green. In order to call attention to the

meat industry’s devastating impact on the environment, People for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals (PETA)has designated the week of Earth Day, April 20-26, as

“Meat’s Not Green Week.” If you aren’t willing to go vegetarian for good, at

least consider eating a vegetarian diet during this time.

 

A 2006 United Nation report revealed that the “livestock sector” generates more

greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes in

the world combined. The livestock sector is one of the largest sources of carbon

dioxide and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide

emissions. Nitrous oxide is considerably more potent as a greenhouse gas than

carbon dioxide. According to the U.N., the meat, egg, and dairy industries

account for a staggering 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions.

 

To combat climate change, many environmental experts urge people to at least cut

back on the amount of animal products they eat. According to Chris Weber, a

professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University,

not eating red meat and dairy products is the equivalent of not driving 8,100

miles in a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon. (Buying local meat will not

have nearly the same effect, he says, because only five percent of food-related

emissions come from transportation.)

 

Environmental Defense estimates that, “If every American skipped one meal of

chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains … the carbon dioxide

savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S.

roads. … If every American had one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same

as taking more than 5 million cars off our roads. Having one meat-free day per

week would be the same as taking 8 million cars off American roads.”

 

Imagine what a difference you could make if you never ate meat. The Live Earth

Global Warming Survival Handbook points out that “refusing meat” is “the single

most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.” Researchers at

the University of Chicago have found that going vegan is more effective in

countering climate change than switching from a standard American car to a

Toyota Prius.

 

Of course, climate change is not the only environmental problem associated with

meat, egg, and dairy consumption. The U.N. report stated that the meat industry

is “one of the … most significant contributors to the most serious environmental

problems, at every scale from local to global.”

 

You Can’t Have Meat and Clean Water, Too

 

Nearly half of the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture.

Between watering the crops grown to feed farmed animals, providing drinking

water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning the filthy factory farms,

transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a

serious strain on our water supply. According to a special report in Newsweek,

“The water that goes into a 1,000-pound steer would float a destroyer.” It takes

more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce a meat-based diet, but only

300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce a totally vegetarian diet.

 

Eating a vegetarian diet not only helps conserve water, it helps reduce water

pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, animal factories

pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Cows,

pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food produce approximately 130

times as much excrement as the entire human population.

 

A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm

pollution issued this warning about animal waste: “t’s untreated and

unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased.…It goes onto the soil and into

the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes

with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick.…

Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas

where livestock operations are concentrated.… Every place where the animal

factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick.”

Animal Agriculture: Inefficiency at it’s Worst

More than one-third of all the fossil fuels produced in the U.S. are used to

raise animals for food. When you consider all the energy-intensive stages that

are required to turn cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys into beef, pork, and

poultry, you’ll understand why what you eat is more important than what you

drive when it comes to saving the planet.

Massive amounts of grains and soybeans are grown to feed farmed animals. (Around

1.4 billion people could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle

alone.) The Worldwatch Institute says, “[M]eat consumption is an inefficient use

of grain—the grain is used more efficiently when consumed by humans. Continued

growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating

competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world’s poor.”

We could produce more food for more people if we stopped squandering our

resources to raise animals. It takes 3 1/4 acres of land to produce food for a

meat-eater; food for a vegan can be produced on only 1/6 of an acre of land.

According to the U.N., livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all

agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet. The U.N.

report explains that the “[e]xpansion of livestock production is a key factor in

deforestation, especially in Latin America, where the greatest amount of

deforestation is occurring—70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is

occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder.”

Eating To Save the Earth

Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute says, “There is no question that

the choice to become a vegetarian or lower meat consumption is one of the most

positive lifestyle changes a person could make in terms of reducing one’s

personal impact on the environment. The resource requirements and environmental

degradation associated with a meat-based diet are very substantial.”

Commemorate Earth Day, and “Meat’s Not Green Week,” by eating a vegetarian diet.

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/04/meats-not-green-this-earth-day-go-vegeta\

rian-to-save-the-planet/

Environmental Impact

Latest News On The Environmental Impact Of Factory Farming

Click here to read " Cultivating Destruction: The global impact of

industrial cruelty "

Click here to see a map of factory farms in the U.S. from Food and Water

Watch's website!

Inevitably, intensive animal agriculture depletes valuable natural

resources. Instead of being eaten by people, the vast majority of grain

harvested in the U.S. is fed to farm animals. This wasteful and inefficient

practice has forced agribusiness to exploit vast stretches of land. Forests,

wetlands, and other natural ecosystems and wildlife habitats have been decimated

and turned into crop and grazing land. Scarce fossil fuels, groundwater, and

topsoil resources which took millenium to develop are now disappearing.

Meanwhile, the quantity of waste produced by farm animals in the U.S. is

more than 130 times greater than that produced by humans. Agricultural runoff

has killed millions of fish, and is the main reason why 60% of America's rivers

and streams are " impaired " . In states with concentrated animal agriculture, the

waterways have become rife with pfiesteria bacteria. In addition to killing

fish, pfiesteria causes open sores, nausea, memory loss, fatigue and

disorientation in humans. Even groundwater, which takes thousands of years to

restore, is being contaminated. For example, the aquifer under the San Bernadino

Dairy Preserve in southern California contains more nitrates and other

pollutants than water coming from sewage treatment plants.

http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/environment/

Não fique indiferente, não fique na ignorância, informe-se, não perde nada,

muito pelo contrário: ajude a sua saúde e a do planeta!

Sobre vegetarianismo em português:

www.avp.org.pt

www.centrovegetariano.org

www.sejavegetariano.org