This week I heard an exchange between
Laurie David and
Jim Earl on the
Marc Maron Show. Laurie was on the air to talk about her favorite topic, global warming. She mentioned that scientists noticed
polar bears are drowning because ice is melting and they have to swim farther and farther while hunting for food.
Jim, a vegetarian, said: "Do you eat meat?" He elaborated "So many environmentalists say they want to stop global warming but they eat meat..."
Laurie cut him off, saying his point is unproductive. She said, we are all environmentalists. Do you like clean air? Do you like clean water? So you're an environmentalist. And it's not about being perfect and it's not about sacrifice. It's about doing what you can.
Jim Earl's contribution is he's a vegetarian (Marc's off the wagon, by the way). Her husband, Larry David, drives a hybrid. Someone else might take public transportation to work or telecommute. But why alienate people by judging them?
So, I'm not here to judge anyone. I'm not even here to convince anyone. I'll share facts I've come across and my own opinions, I'll spark and facilitate debate, and I'll give you some
fabulous vegetarian recipes.
This bunch hardly needs convincing that global warming is a reality BUT I am sure we all run into friends, family, and coworkers who are still clueless. Winger came across an excellent article that reveals scientific analysis showing that rising ocean temperatures are "boosting" hurricanes. If I understand it correctly, it's not creating MORE hurricanes but it's making them more intense and longer in duration.
This isn't just an abstract concept. There is a very direct link between driving a Hummer and the videos everyone saw of people in the Superdome last year. But you knew that already so let's move on.
Here is a blurb from a biking website that I read about a year ago.
Bicycling Wastes Gas?
Most people think that bicycling doesn't use gas, but actually it does. It takes lots of fossil fuel to produce the food for the cyclist's calories -- and cycling requires more food fuel than driving.
Of course, we can't just stop eating, but we can definitely choose what we eat, and here's the kicker: meat requires much more fossil fuel to produce than vegetables and grains. How much more? About 145 times more for beef than for potatoes. The reason for this is simple: Cattle consume 14 times more grain than they produce as meat. They're food factories in reverse. So it takes a lot more water, land, and of course, energy to produce that meat. In short, the more meat you eat, the more gas you waste.
David Pimentel of Cornell University calculates that it takes nearly twice as much fossil energy to produce a typical American diet than a pure vegetarian diet. This works out to about an extra 150 gallons of fossil fuels per year for a meat-eater. This means that meat-eaters are "driving" an extra eleven miles every day whether they really drive or not, when we look at how much extra fuel it takes to feed them.
In fact, meat production is so wasteful that walking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet: "It is actually quite astounding how much energy is wasted by the standard American diet-style. Even driving many gas-guzzling luxury cars can conserve energy over walking -- that is, when the calories you burn walking come from the standard American diet! This is because the energy needed to produce the food you would burn in walking a given distance is greater than the energy needed to fuel your car to travel the same distance, assuming that the car gets 24 miles per gallon or better."
The same is not true of bicycling vs. driving, because bicycling is more than twice as efficient as walking (calories consumed per distance traveled) -- bicycling uses less fossil energy than driving even if the cyclist were eating nothing but beef. But to focus on this misses the point. It's no bombshell that cycling uses less fossil energy than driving. What's important is that meat-eaters use twice as much fossil energy as pure vegetarians -- whether they're bicycling or not.
What does this mean in practical terms?
It means that the amount of gas you use isn't just related to how you get from place to place, it's also related to what you eat. Meatless diets require half as much fuel to produce than the standard American diet. Pimentel calculated that if the entire world ate the way the U.S. does, the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years. The typical American could save almost as much gas by going vegetarian as by not driving.
Food for thought.
The text above was the second to last straw that convinced me to go veg. Maybe in some twisted way I became a vegetarian on a guilt trip because I just can't bring myself to get rid of my car.
The last straw that did it for me is below. I got it from a page that no longer exists on http://www.aavs.org but I saved all of the text.
The land, the water, and the air are being devastated by the over-use of natural resources in the massive production of animals used for food.
- Twenty vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land needed to feed one person consuming a meat-based diet.
- More than half of all the water used in the United States is used in livestock production.
- A University of California study shows that it takes 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat; it takes 2,500 gallons to produce one pound of meat.
- Tropical rainforests in Latin America are being destroyed in order to support the demand for meat in the United States.
- Nearly 3 trillion pounds of solid animal waste is produced each year which equals five tons of fecal animal waste for each person in the U.S. Nationwide, 130 times more animal manure is produced than human waste.
- Animal waste carries parasites, bacteria, and viruses and can pollute drinking water with high levels of nitrates, which are potentially fatal to infants and harmful to all.
- Runoff from animal waste often winds up in lakes, oceans, and streams, accounting for more water pollution than all other human activities combined, including industry and municipal sewers. Millions of fish and other aquatic species have been killed as a result.
One last blurb for you (this one is taken from my own site):
According to figures from the Charles Darwin University in Australia, "About one-quarter of the total methane emissions caused by human activities comes from domesticated animals." Those animals at the top of the list include: cattle, dairy cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, camels, pigs, and horses.
Most of the methane is produced during digestion and so can not be recaptured. However, 25% to 33% of it can be reclaimed by proper disposal of the animals manure, which is unfortunately not a common practice in 1st world agriculture.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric methane concentration has more than doubled, and has contributed 20% to the enhancement of the greenhouse effect, second only to carbon dioxide. While it is a "natural" gas and non toxic, it is most certainly not good for our environment on any level.
If you want to help make a serious impact in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity, you can start by reducing or eliminating the above animals from your diet, including dairy from said animals.
The bottom line? Any reduction in animal product consumption helps the environment. If you drive a hybrid but you get a ridiculous amount of joy from eating the greasiest fast food hamburgers you can find - who am I to tell you you aren't helping wean us off oil? I fly in airplanes an obscene amount (I rack up about 100,000 frequent flier miles a year) and I know that wastes tons of oil - but I'm trying to reduce my footprint on the planet with my diet.
If you want to do a little something to help out, there are many ways to do it. One way is a reduction in animal product consumption. A painless way to do that is to try out vegan baking. The brilliant reason why is you don't have to give anything up! It's hard to have a steakless steak or an eggless omelette, but you can very easily make a butter-and-egg-free cookie. Even better, you can pig out on the cookie dough without worrying about salmonella because there are no eggs!
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Recipes
The following recipes have been thoroughly taste tested by omnivores :)
Vegan Pumpkin Pie
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Low Fat Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Low Fat Vegan Gingersnaps
Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Vegan Amaretto Sesame Seed Cookies