The single-most effective thing a person (that means YOU) can do to stop global warming is to switch to a vegetarian/vegan diet. Not only will you live longer and feel better all around, but you will actually be reducing the effect of Global Warming. What Al Gore hasn’t yet told you…
- In the U.N.’s recent report Livestock’s Long Shadow, scientists concluded that the meat industry generates nearly40% more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, ships, and planes in the world combined. The report also found that the meat industry is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”
- Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Toyota Prius (in fact, it’s 50 percent more effective).
- Environmental Defense also recently reported on its Web site that if every American substituted vegetarian food for chicken meat in just one meal per week, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as if more than half a million cars were taken off U.S. roads.
If we ever want to seriously address global warming, we have to acknowledge the catastrophic impact caused by factory farming — wasted resources: land, food, energy, water, rainforest, animal suffering; pollution: feces, water, air, global warming. The only reason factory farming is generally overlooked as a primary cause for global warming is because acknowledging this inconvenient truth would bring a feeling of shame to those not ready to take personal responsibility. And that’s most people.
Do you love your planet enough to stop eating animals?
*This information was extracted from a letter to Al Gore from Ingrid E. Newkirk, President of PETA
–> visit: www.GoVeg.com/eco
–> also visit: http://www.veganoutreach.org (source of image)
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November 4, 2007 at 9:50 pm
rahul
Thanks for having the boldness to put this post up.
The wars of the 21st century will be, and are, about two things: energy and water. According to this International Herald Tribute article the CIA and British Ministry of Defense Acknowledge this fact.
Given that the meat industry is one of the leading consumers of water and petroleum, becoming vegetarian saves humans from senseless slaughter by averting warfare over resources uselessly depleted and made scarce.
There is a great set of statistics excerpted from John Robbins book Diet for a New America that has all sorts of interesting facts on the meat-centered diet vs. the vegetarian diet.
At my present level of understanding, I believe that the top 3 things any American can do to save human lives includes:
1. becoming vegetarian
2. not paying Federal taxes [half your taxes go to the military, and American military spending represents 43% of global military expenditure] [yes, there is a legal way to do this]
3. smart transport [bicycling, mass transit, carpooling, etc]
So, what’s for lunch? :-)
August 7, 2008 at 8:52 am
Ganesha
Thank you for your declaration above about vegetarianism – what about those of us whose bodies are saying hey stop being a vegetarian, your body is no longer able to digest your food intake in fact is becoming allergic to it?
A vegetarian who had to take a vacation from vegetarianism.
August 7, 2008 at 2:47 pm
js
Ganesha,
It sounds odd to me that you would be allergic to a vegetarian diet. There may be certain things that you have trouble digesting or are allergic to, but a vegetarian diet contains vast possibilities.
This post is about global warming. The number one factor in global warming is factory farming. If what you are saying is accurate and that there are people who must eat meat for their well-being, then this is a personal decision to make. My hunch is that the number of people who genuinely fit into this category are nominal, and do not add up to much of a factor in the global warming equation.