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If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Stop Eating Meat Posted: 22 Jul 2011 07:06 PM PDT Here in DC (and in much of the country), we’re in the middle of a triple-digit heatwave. Temperatures have been in the 100s all week, and with high humidity, it feels even hotter.
 On days like these, the best way to really cool off is: eat a ripe, cold watermelon…and school the meat-eaters!  If you don’t know by now, animal production for meat and dairy products causes more global warming than all the world’s transportation combined. In other words, methane gas from the manure of livestock accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the cars, busses, trains, and planes on the planet. The meat industry produces an estimated 60 million tons of animal waste annually. That’s the equivalent of 5 thousand pounds of human waste per person each year. As I explain in By Any Greens Necessary, a hamburger does more damage to Mother Earth than a Hummer. Last June, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee issued a report urging a global shift to plant foods to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change. A 2009 World Watch report, “Livestock and Climate Change,” goes even farther, stating that animal production is responsible for 51 percent of human-caused gas emissions and that replacing animal products with plant-based foods does far more than replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Bottom line: what’s on your plate affects not only your health, but mine, too. Change our plate and we change our planet. The choice is ours… |
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