Does going vegetarian help the enviornment?!
Does going vegetarian help the enviornment?
i just went veg a month ago i wonder if it makes an impact.
Answers:
-Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.
-Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.
-Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.
-Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water.
-Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment.
-In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year.
-Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year.. - Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water.
-Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.
-A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US.
-If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest.
-It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources.
-Livestock in the US produce 130 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams.
-Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere.
-.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food.
-Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.
-The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year.
- Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.
-A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.
-Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day).An acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef.
-In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person).
-Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds.
-Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. For every one acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.
Source(s):
More at
http://www.cspinet.org/eatinggreen/index...
It helps your Karma.
Yea you are doing your part to help. Thanks!
duhhhhhh!
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recycle more ,too
Meat causes POLLUTION!
yes it does.
consumers create a market for goods. if more ppl were vegetarians, ppl wouldn't raise cattle and pigs that create more waste products, such as carbon dioxide and methane gas
its also a lot healthier, just make sure you get your complete proteins
Yes it does
Check out the Cook Book "The World In Your Kitchen."
Its a great Vegetarian cookbook that promotes vegetarianism for both environmental and world hunger reasons.
“If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat”, Paul McCartney has said. “That’s the single most important thing you could do.”
"The FAO study reports that the livestock industry, in total, uses and abuses roughly 30% of the planet’s surface, thereby “entering into direct competition [with other activities] for scarce land, water and other natural resources.”
"An animal-based diet also uses energy very inefficiently. It requires 78 calories of fossil fuel for each calorie of protein obtained from feedlot-produced beef, but only 2 calories of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of protein from soybeans. Grains and beans require only 2-5% as much fossil fuel as beef. The energy needed to produce a pound of grain-fed beef is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline."
"The production of meat contributes significantly to the emission of the three major gases associated with global warming: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), as well as other eco-destructive gases such as ammonia, which contributes to acid rain."
"the July 2005 issue of Physics World: “The animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat and other animal products directly contributes to the environmentally-irresponsible industry and its devastating impact on the environment, including the dire threat of global warming."
"It has been said that “eating meat is like driving a huge SUV… a vegetarian diet is like driving a [hybrid], and… a vegan diet is like riding a bicycle.” Shifting away from SUVs, SUV lifestyles, and SUV-style diets, to energy-efficient, life-affirming alternatives, is essential to fighting global warming. Planetary sustainability and the well-being of humanity are greatly dependent on a shift toward plant-based diets. One easy and effective way to fight global warming every day is with our forks, knives, and chopsticks!"
Congrats on going Veg! Well, according to alot of research and 8 years being a vegetarian...it helps alot. I have a gazillion sites i've been to and so many books i've read...wish i knew where i stashed everything, would have loved sharing it. You may think you're not making much of an impact 'cause you're just one person...but alot of ppl think the way we do and have compassion towards animals and the well being of this planet. Just make sure to rinse/re-use/recycle...if you're a lacto-ovo-vegetarian...make sure to buy free-range and organic products. Opt for a canvas bag when shopping, instead of plastic...and and...actually you could just go to sites like WWF and read about it. I'm just rambling now...Good luck! <3
It takes twenty pounds of soybeans to feed to a cow to make one pound of meat. Those same amounts of soybeans could help fed all the starving people of the world. The vast grazing of animals is killing the enviroment. Over fifty percent of our water consumption goes to raising animals for slaughter. The land and soil is being raped of nutirents. Thirty years ago you used to be able to eat one peach and get all of your nutrients, but now you would have to eat 53 to get the same effect. Meat consumption makes part of the world fat, but it makes other parts of the world starve due to drought and unusable soil.
Absolutely! You definitely need to do your research...so many people will ask, "Why are you vegetarian? Are you crazy?" Trust me, Ive been a vegetarian now for 7 months and everyone looks at me like Im stupid! Do research and blow them away. Be very proud of being veg! Yah for you!
hehe
That's my science project =)
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Yeah;
It does help the environment.
A LOT.
yes it does!! Since you are not eating meat, their are possibly less animals getting killed, which means less trips for trucks to take loads of live animals 1/2 way across the country. also the materials that are used to process animals and to raise animals take fossil fuels to make.
for every quarter pounder cheeseburger, part of the rainforest gets killed, to be more concise the amount of land that is deforested and stripped to used to be raise and graze cattle is insane, so obviously not eating meat would mean less cattle and less destruction of land