THIS ESSAY FINALLY GOT PUBLISHED TODAY: All humanity is at the point of having to make a very difficult choice. We either end our consumption of animal foods or face two consequences: the planet not being able to feed people sufficiently to maintain good health into the future and the destruction of our environments that have provided for life for hundreds of millions of years. Here’s the present situation and future expectation. We have to recognize that the world has an increasing number of people who want and expect enough food, space to live as well as fresh water. Right now, that isn’t happening for at least a billion people out of the 7 billion presently inhabiting earth, and it is expected to get worse over the next years. Roughly 45% of all land surface worldwide is devoted to raising livestock for food. This includes growing the crops that feed the animals. Amazingly, some 80% of the corn grown in the US goes to feed cows, pigs and chickens, while 90% of the soybeans go for the same purpose. That’s a lot of cropland which could be used much more efficiently to feed people directly rather than through the wasteful process of growing animals. We need forests to produce oxygen and to remove carbon dioxide, but most of the world’s rainforests have already been cleared to grow soybeans and to raise cattle. Speaking of waste, cattle alone produce 130 times more waste than all the people in the US. What happens to it? Where does it go? It goes into the soil with all its toxins, bacteria, growth hormones and antibiotics, as well as into creeks, rivers and finally into the oceans. Much of it gets reused on farmland as fertilizer, without purification. In the oceans, it leads to dead zones where life cannot exist. We all know how desperate our Southwest is for fresh water, which is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. Alarming data: approximately 10,000 gallons of water are needed to produce 1 lb. of beef. Somewhat less to produce a pound of pork or chicken. This is mostly explained by the water needed to grow the crops, largely corn and soybeans, that become animal feed. Potatoes and broccoli, for example, need much less water. Consider that 40 million cows are eaten each year; that’s an enormous amount of water usage. Animal agriculture also produces many tons of carbon dioxide and methane, which go into our atmosphere as greenhouse gases. These gases, now increasing dramatically above healthy levels, are responsible for a major part of the climate change the earth is experiencing. The Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations calculated that 18% of total greenhouse gases come from the livestock industry. This compares with only 13% from all forms of transportation combined. Another calculation by the World Watch Institute came up with a figure of 51%. Whichever is correct, or some number in-between, that’s enough to be very worried. So many people around the world eat fish. But current commercial fishing practices are pulling some 90 million tons out of the oceans, more than enough to cause great declines in fish stocks and possible extinction for many species. Imagine what happens to the oceans when fish are no longer available for food for people as well as for other marine species. I find the above information profoundly disturbing. So now we come back to the original two choices. It is impossible to maintain our current consumption of animal foods without destroying our land, water and air. We now have the most resource-inefficient, wasteful and destructive system ever devised by man to feed ourselves. We will not be able to feed present and future human populations under these conditions. Since the development of factory-farming, which is an industrial approach to growing animals, we have reached the point of enormous excess. It is no longer sustainable; resources are being used up, polluted and destroyed beyond usability. There isn’t time to wait before catastrophes of some sort force humanity to change its eating habits. Many scientists state that we have a little time before we reach a tipping point, beyond which there is no hope of survival. Some think it is too late. But let’s be optimistic; world-wide switching from animal-based eating to plant-based eating is the only way that we have to see our children and grandchildren maintain reasonably healthy lives. That’s the choice we must make.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 13:22:35 +0000
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