Yesterday I gave a short presentation to the Penn State Ve*an club on the effects of eating meat and the environment. Below is a fact sheet and a short comment on why these numbers are so high. If you want the sources, please E-mail me or Google it.
Note: Top 4 contributors of global warming are carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide. These account for the top 95% factors of global warming.
Fossil Fuels:
Switching from an SUV to a hybrid is estimated to conserve one ton of carbon dioxide per year. Switching to a Vegan diet will save one and a half tons a year.
More than 1/3rd of all fossil fuels produced in the US go towards animal agriculture
Reason: Animals are fed with grains soy and other crops—these crops must be harvested and transported to feed lots. The animals are then transported from feed lots to slaughter houses then the carcasses are then shipped to a processing and packing plant, then to a store.
In a 2006 UN report: “raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.”
Methane(2nd largest contributor of global warming):
Methane is more than 20 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.
40% of all methane emissions worldwide come from animal agriculture.
Nitrous Oxide(4th largest contributor of global warming):
Nitrous oxide is 298 times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide.
According to the U.N., the meat, egg, and dairy industries account for 62% of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.
Water usage:
Animal production consumes an amount of water roughly equivalent to all other uses of water in the US combine. (some studies show up to 60% of all water in America used goes to meat production)
One pound of beef requires an input of 2500-12,000 gallons of Water (depending on the diet)
One pound of soy requires an input of 250 gallons of Water
One pound of potatoes requires an input of 60 gallons of Water
One pound of wheat requires an input of 25 gallons of Water
Runoff from agriculture:
80% of stream and riparian habitats in the western US have been negatively impacted by livestock.
Pesticides and nitrates seeping into ground water, streams, and major waterways cause dead zones.
Reason: Pesticides and nitrates used in fertilizers and manure seep into ground water and streams eventually leading into major waterways which lead into the ocean. This creates area’s called dead zones (areas which plants and animals cannot survive because of phosphates, nitrates, decreased dissolved oxygen—bacteria thrives in this environment). All of this is when farming goes correctly—not when there are chemical spills or manure dumps.
Inefficiency:
Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% soy meal and 80% of the corn crop.
It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. (Just imagine cooking 16 pounds of pasta, eating one, and throwing 15 out. This is what we do every time we eat meat.
Food grown directly for human consumption utilizes 60 million acres;1,200 million acres are used to grow what is fed to livestock.
In a 2006, UN initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide. The initiative concluded that "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”
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