to beef.
If someone has posted a like diary recently, I apologize. Also, this is my first diary so my formatting may be off - please be kind!
After reading articles on the report about the Earth's resources being up to 2/3 depleted, it struck me that one easy thing to do is stop eating beef.
I have been a vegetarian for about 15 years (ok, I eat an occasional shrimp which is bad for the Mangrove forests - I'm working on it). I became a vegetarian after reading "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins. The vegetarian diet provides many benefits healthwise, obviously to the animals that are spared and to the environment.
This is from the Earthsave website -
http://www.earthsave.org/ - in an article by Steve Boyan, PhD:
By not eating beef- and other farm animals as well-you:
- save massive amounts of water - 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of water for every pound of beef you avoid,
- avoid polluting our streams and rivers better than any other single recycling effort you do,
- avoid the destruction of topsoil,
- avoid the destruction of tropical forest,
- avoid the production of carbon dioxide. (Your average car produces 3 kg/day of CO2. To clear rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger produces 75 kg of CO2. Eating one pound of hamburger does the same damage as driving your car for more than three weeks);
- reduce the amount of methane gas produced. (I imagine the next bumper sticker: stop farts, don't eat beef);
- reduce the destruction of wildlife habitat, and
- help to save endangered species.
Beef consumption also uses up lots of oil. This info comes from "The Better World Handbook:"
"To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over 260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef."
More from this handbook can be found here: http://cires.colorado.edu/~maurerj/vegetarian.htm
Eating fish also causes environmental problems.
The Audubon Society has a card http://seafood.audubon.org/ you can print out and keep in your wallet to help you make environmentally conscious seafood choices.
Finally, becoming a vegetarian is a "blue" thing to do. Especially if you buy your food grown locally or organic. Organic is not only healthier but the chemical companies that make pesticides are primarily "red" contributors!
If you have trouble giving meat up, do it gradually. No reason to go cold turkey (pun intended!) Over many years of experimenting I have come up with a list of fave meat substitutes, email me if you are interested.