Whether you eat meat or not (or how much) is a private matter, they might say. Maybe it has some implications for your heart, especially if you’re overweight. But it’s not one of the high- profile public issues you’d expect presidential candidates or senators to be debating—not up there with terrorism, the economy, the war, or . Yes, there have been those reports of tropical forest being cut down to accommodate cattle ranchers, and native grassland being destroyed by grazing.
But at least until recently, few environmentalists have suggested that meat- eating belongs on the same scale of importance as the kinds of issues that have energized Amazon Watch, or Conservation International, or Greenpeace. Yet, as environmental science has advanced, it has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease. To begin with, per- capita meat consumption has more than doubled in the past half- century, even as global population has continued to increase.
As a result, the overall demand for meat has increased five- fold. That, in turn, has put escalating pressure on the availability of water, land, feed, fertilizer, fuel, waste disposal capacity, and most of the other limited resources of the planet. A brief summary observation for each category is accompanied by quotes from a range of prominent observers, some of whom offer suggestions about how this difficult subject—not everyone who likes pork chops or ribs is going to switch to tofu without a fight—can be addressed. Large swaths of forest were cleared for agriculture, which included domestication of both edible plants and animals.
Farm animals take much more land than crops do to produce a given amount of food energy, but that didn’t really matter over the 1. In 1. 99. 0, however, the World Hunger Program at Brown University calculated that recent world harvests, if equitably distributed with no diversion of grain to feeding livestock, could provide a vegetarian diet to 6 billion people, whereas a meat- rich diet like that of people in the wealthier nations could support only 2. In other words, with a present population over 6 billion, that would mean we are already into deficit consumption of land, with the deficit being made up by hauling more fish from the oceans, which are in turn being rapidly fished out.
In the near term, the only way to feed all the world’s people, if we continue to eat meat at the same rate or if the population continues to grow as projected, is to clear more forest. From now on, the question of whether we get our protein from animals or plants has direct implications for how much more of the world’s remaining forest we have to raze. Meat is too expensive for the poor in these beef- exporting countries, yet in some cases cattle have ousted highly productive traditional agriculture.
In a review of Richard Manning’s 1. Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie, Pulitzer Prize- winning writer James Risser observes: “Many experience anguish at the wreckage of clear- cut mixed- tree forest, destined to be replaced by a single- species tree farm. Few realize, says Manning, that a waving field of golden wheat is the same thing— a crop monoculture inhabiting what once was a rich and diverse but now .
Antelopes, unlike cattle, are adapted to semi- arid lands. They do not need to trek daily to waterholes and so cause less trampling and soil compaction. Antelope dung comes in the form of small, dry pellets, which retain their nitrogen and efficiently fertilize the soil. Cows, in contrast, produce large, flat, wet droppings, which heat up and quickly lose much of their nitrogen (in the form of ammonia) to the atmosphere. An experimental game ranch in Kenya has been a great economic success while simultaneously restoring the range. Ehrlich, and Gretchen C.
Daily in The Stork & The Plow. Fresh water, like land, seemed inexhaustible for most of the first 1. So, it didn’t seem to matter how much a cow drank. But a few years ago, water experts calculated that we humans are now taking half the available fresh water on the planet—leaving the other half to be divided among a million or more species. Since we depend on many of those species for our own survival (they provide all the food we eat and oxygen we breathe, among other services), that hogging of water poses a dilemma. If we break it down, species by species, we find that the heaviest water use is by the animals we raise for meat. One of the easiest ways to reduce demand for water is to reduce the amount of meat we eat.
- Will overpopulation and resource depletion force us to make drastic changes in our diet? Will veganism be the lifestyle of a dedicated minority or the obvious choice for an uncertain future?
- What are some of the issues with our diet? Our Standard American Diet (SAD) is not contributing to our health.
- What Foods are Good for Energy? Introduction How does my body keep energy flowing through my system all of the time? How does my body make energy from food? Carbohydrates and the glycemic index.
- MediLexicon, Intl., 3 Nov.
- Forests & Energy Context - In coming years, the world. Forest plantations are another major source of wood energy that will likely increase in the future. To be such plantations.
A person on a vegan diet requires only 3. Richard H. Schwartz in Judaism and Vegetarianism. A report from the International Water Management Institute, noting that 8. The report notes that it takes 5. You would use, at that rate, . When you compare that figure, . In California today, you may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for six entire months.
1 Interim Summary of Conclusions and Dietary Recommendations on Total Fat & Fatty Acids From the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Fats and Fatty Acids in Human Nutrition, 10-14 November, 2008, WHO, Geneva Introduction and Definitions There are.
There were always new places to dump, and for centuries most of what was dumped either conveniently decomposed or disappeared from sight. Just as you didn’t worry about how much water a cow drank, you didn’t worry about how much it excreted. But today, the waste from our gargantuan factory farms overwhelms the absorptive capacity of the planet.
View the latest news and breaking news today for U.S., world, weather, entertainment, politics and health at CNN.com. Breaking News Home + U.S. World Politics Money. Carbohydrates are the most important source of energy for athletes. No matter what sport you play, carbs. Athletes often talk about carbohydrate loading and carbohydrate depletion which refers to the amount of carbohydrate energy we can store in our can. New Interactive Map Shows Big Potential for America. How a Wind Turbine Works Part of our How Energy Works series, a.
Rivers carrying livestock waste are dumping so much excess nitrogen into bays and gulfs that large areas of the marine world are dying (see Environmental Intelligence, “Ocean Dead Zones Multiplying,” p. The easiest way to reduce the amount of excrement flowing down the Mississippi and killing the Gulf of Mexico is to eat less meat, thereby reducing the size of the herds upstream in Iowa or Missouri. In fact, in the United States, these “factory farms” generate more than 1.
Environmental Protection Agency, livestock waste has polluted more than 2. The dead zone stretched over 7,7. But as we give more attention to life- cycle analysis of the things we buy, it becomes apparent that the journey that steak made to get to your refrigerator consumed staggering amounts of energy along the way.
We can begin the cycle with growing the grain to feed the cattle, which requires a heavy input of petroleum- based agricultural chemicals. There’s the fuel required to transport the cattle to slaughter, and thence to market. Today, much of the world’s meat is hauled thousands of miles.
And then, after being refrigerated, it has to be cooked. Some of the energy was used in the feedlot, or in transportation and cold storage, but most of it went to fertilizing the feed grain used to grow the modern steer or cow. To provide the yearly average beef consumption of an American family of four requires over 2. Today, more than 7.
United States is fed to livestock, much of it to cattle. As noted above, the production and delivery of meat helps drive up the use of such fuels. But livestock also emit global- warming gases directly, as a by- product of digestion. Cattle send a significant amount of methane, a potent global- warming gas, into the air.
The environmental group Earth Save recommends a major reduction in the world’s cattle population, which currently numbers about 1. A dairy cow produces about 7. The cow, of course, is only doing what comes naturally. But people are inclined to forget, it seems, that farming is an industry. We cleared the land, sowed the pasture, bred the stock, and so on.
It’s a human business, not a natural one. We’re pretty good at it, which is why atmospheric concentrations of methane increased by 1. As beef consumption rises or falls, the number of livestock will, in general, also rise or fall, as will the related methane emissions. Latin America has the highest regional emissions per capita, due primarily to large cattle populations in the beefexporting countries (notably Brazil and Argentina).
When Paul Ehrlich warned three decades ago that “hundreds of millions” of people would starve, he turned out to have overstated the case—for now. That, combined with more complete utilization of arable land through intensified irrigation and fertilization, enabled us to more or less keep pace with population growth for another generation. A little additional gain—but only a little—may come from genetic engineering. Short of stabilizing population (which will take another halfcentury), only one major option remains: to cut back sharply on meat consumption, because conversion of grazing land to food crops will increase the amount of food produced. Assume that we feed it to cattle (as we do with about 7. U. S.). The cow will produce about 2,0.
That 2,0. 00 kcal of beef would support one person for a day, assuming a 2,0. U. S. If instead people ate the 2. Or, we could support the same number of people as at present, but with less land degradation because we wouldn’t need to have so much land in production. Department of Commerce, Census of Agriculture. Communicable Disease doesn’t travel from one place to another all by itself; it has to hitchhike—whether in dirty water, the infected blood of rats or insects, or contaminated meat. Globalization has vastly increased the mobility of all of these media, and one consequence is that outbreaks which in past centuries might have been contained within a single village or country until they died out are now quickly spread around the globe. When a case of mad cow disease was detected in the United States in 2.
The problem of containing outbreaks in a system of global distribution is exacerbated by the use of mass- production facilities that rely on antibiotics rather than more costly cleaning of facilities to fend off infection and disease. As antibiotic resistance increases worldwide, the movement of diseases becomes increasingly unimpeded.
The Environmental Food Crisis. Grid. Arendal A new rapid response assessment report released by UNEP warns that up to 2.
Prepared by the Rapid Response Assessment Team at GRID- Arendal and UNEP- WCMC, the report provides the first summary by the UN of how climate change, water stress, invasive pests and land degradation may impact world food security, food prices and life on the planet and how we may be able to feed the world in a more sustainable manner. The report concludes that we need to get smart and more creative about recycling food wastes and fish discards into animal feed. While major efforts have gone into increasing efficiency in the traditional energy sector, food energy efficiency has received too little attention. Maps & Graphics. The report offers seven major recommendations, including, short, medium and long- term.
Regulate food prices and provide safety nets for the impoverished; 2) Promote environmentally sustainable higher- generation biofuels that does not compete for cropland and water resources; 3) Reallocate cereals used in animal feed to human consumption by developing alternative feeds based on new technology, waste and discards; 4) Support small- scale farmers by a global fund for micro- finance in developing diversified and resilient ecoagriculture and intercropping systems; 5) Increase trade and market access by improving infrastructure, reducing trade barriers, enhancing government subsidies and safety nets, as well as reducing armed conflict and corruption; 6) Limit global warming; and,7) Raise awareness of the pressures of increasing population growth and consumption patterns on ecosystems. See also: PDF format Poster 1 (4mb)PDF format Poster 2 (5mb)PDF format Flyer (6mb)Tags: Rapid Response Assessment. Food Security. Read More.