Why be a Vegetarian? To save the world.

One of the best things to do as an individual to help the environment is to stop eating meat. The best way to argue this point is by looking at the facts:

1. Deforestation

-In order to make room for the vast amount of grassland needed to support cattle, forests are clearcut throughout the world. In South America, home of the widest variety of species, 40% of the total amount of rain forests have been cleared in the last fifty years. In another fifty there will be no amazon rain forest. Not only will thousands of species go extinct, with their possible cures to disease, but all the oxygen produced by the Amazon literally regulates oxygen levels in the atmosphere. We could all suffocate ourselves slowly.

-Also, in order to feed all of the cattle and chickens we have to grow food. 80% of all the grain grown in the US goes to feeding cattle. That means more forests must be cleared to make room to grow corn, which isn't even used for human consumption. In order to produce a pound of meat, the animal has to consume 5 times that. In other words, if we all avoided eating meat, we could feed 4 times more people without changing our current techniques.

2. Water Use

-One of the most pressing environmental issues around the world is fresh water. Currently humans have appropriated about half the available fresh water on the planet. Much of this water will be renewed each year because of adequate rainfall. But humans live in such a variety of climates that, in many areas, water is becoming more scarce. The amount of water used every day to sustain a vegetarian diet is 300 gallons/day and for a meat-based diet is 4,000 gallons/day.

3. River pollution from waste

-Cattle produce 130 times more waste than the entire human population. This is too much waste for the earth to absorb, and therefore it is more often washed away, over top the clearcut fields, and into the rivers. This changes the chemistry of the rivers, affecting nitrate/oxygen levels. It is estimated that over 27,000 miles of river ways have been polluted due to animal waste alone.

4. Global Warming

-the amount energy needed to produce and transport meat is exorbitant compared to the same nutrition levels in plant-based products. 1/3 of all the energy consumption in the US goes to meat production. As the largest contributer to greenhouse gases, eating mean in the US is one of the worst things you can do for Global Warming. It takes more energy for a meat eater to walk to a restaurant and order meat than for a vegetarian to drive a hummer and order a veggie sandwich.

5. Disease

-In history, most of the worst epidemics to the human population can be directly traced back to the meat industry. The unsanitary conditions these animals are raised in can harbor new diseases, which can spread to the human population quickly.

-Also, the amount of hormones and chemicals injected into the animals to keep them healthy raise the question of what kinds of chemicals are we now ingesting? The hormones in mild have been connected to girls getting their periods earlier, cancer, allergies, and more.

So why eat meat when our economy and our environment would improve drastically? Why eat meat when the fake meat equivalents taste almost the same?

What often happens over time, once meat is no longer the center of every meal, one becomes more aware of what process took place to get the food on your plate. There is almost an instant connection with the earth, and an ideological shift is forming. You no longer take the role of a dominant predator on the earth, but take more of a side role and become part of nature.