Eat Less Meat, Save the Earth

Whilst the pawns of ministers race to and fro from small country working group to big country working group in Copenhagen discussing ways to reduce carbon emissions, which are being caused by excessive use of fossil fuels, once a day the lunch bell rings and these same pawns, a smattering of bishops and an assortment of rooks retreat to the cafeteria.

Tucking into soups and salads and breads with butter many do. Topped with jams are hams. Burgers of beef, salads of chicken and kebabs of lamb adorn plates of paper amidst conversations of conservation and ways to avoid the flu. What the world's climatological elite seem to forget, however, is that world eating habits are as destructive if not more so than world manufacturing.

Meat for Everyone

In 1958, per capita consumption of meat (beef, chicken, turkey and lamb) in the United States was 196 pounds, today it is 273. In Europe it was 123 and today it is 196. Ireland went from 121 to 213; New Zealand from 248 to 312 and China rose from 8 pounds of meat to 119: 1.3 billion Chinese are eating 119 pounds of meat each year.

Most of this meat is eaten in the form of the sadly-ubiquitous and highly-processed hamburger and other such similar "culinary advancements." The hamburger and fast-food industry is like none other with its universal disregard for worker's safety, abuse of the cows, relaxed attitude toward consumer's safety, destruction of the environment, etc.

Now, let us consider this little fact: 33 calories of fossil fuel (as they say "from semen to cellophane") are burned to produce one food calorie of beef. For every 1 calorie of fossil fuel burned, grains and vegetables give us 1.5 to 2 food calories. For every single bite of a piece of meat, we are wasting the earth's limited resources. The larger the steak, chicken or turkey, the warmer we cause the earth to get. It is a simple as that--well, not really, but, for argument's sake and so as not to bore with Gore-like facts and figures, this is the case.

Mass Produced Meat (including "free range and organic") is Destroying the Earth

All across America and the world, ever more and more arable land is being set aside to grow grain and soybeans for the raising of livestock. All throughout Africa, the ruling elite, realizing the wealth that can be attained via the exporting of beef to Europe, China and the US, enforces the planting of crops for the raising of feed for meat production.

We all have heard about the dangers of deforestation. The Brazil rain forest loses .3% each year. The local people hack away hundreds of acres a day, then burn the chopped wood and then plant crops for the production of grain and soybeans. Brazil's loss, however, is nothing in comparison to places like Argentina and Columbia.

In America, Africa and other parts of the world, it is not called deforestation but rather "desertification." In the world today, there are around 1.5 billion cows (20 billion chickens, a billion pigs, a half a billion turkeys and 800 million goats). When millions of cows graze and graze over and over on the same tens of thousands of square acres, the land is destroyed: rivers are destroyed as a result of the destruction of vegetative cover, compaction occurs from the extreme scuffling and infiltration declines resulting in runoff and soil erosion (boring, yes).

(By the way, a single pig farm in Texas produces 2000 tons of urine each day, all which goes into water tables; and daily in the US, 24,000,000 chickens are slaughtered.)

In addition, to ever increase the amount of grain obtained from one acre of land (monocropping), excessive applications of nitrgen-laced fertilizer are used. Nitrogen is 100 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide and will tip the scale toward destructive global warming much sooner than C02 will. Nitrogen leads to the formation of vast wastelands of toxic algae which choke life out of the oceans leading to a depletion of oxygen and an increase of CO2; nitrogen also depletes the ozone layer, to say the very least.

As the world meets in Copenhagen bent on protecting its "development"--a misnomer if there ever was one-- and ever devoted to the post-WWII Pax Americana principles of hyper-consumption, the real issues are not being discussed. Each country will do its best to ensure that its "economic interests" are not being tread upon; however, the ultimate destruction of the earth is not one they consider potentially debilitating--if we in America were to look at the tax payer dollars going to recover areas devastated by hurricanes, forest fires, floods, etc., we would all agree that it would be cheaper to prevent global warming then to deal with its growing effects.

So, as the world misses yet another chance to do something good for all of us, each one of us can start today by merely cutting our meat consumption in half; and, in a year, cut that in half and 6 months after that, cut that in half. With such progressive and positive eating habits, we will have done more to prevent the dangers of global warming then the so-called elected officials whose job it is to protect our interests at day's end.

Eat more veggies, less meat. However, with that said, I will enjoy my monthly stewed rabbit with rosemary and peeled, cherry tomatoes and carrots. Nothing wrong with enjoying some meat, just do it in great moderation.