A question: What if none of our clever ideas about being sustainable really helped much? What it if all came down to one choice? It sounds extreme. I can hear the voices chime: there’s no magic bullet to fix our problems.
What if it didn’t matter how smart we were? What if an utopian world of peace and plenty was possible without any actual problem solving.
Yes. I’ve been warming most of you up to this post for months.
There is a magic bullet that can knock the wind out of all our worst problems.
Getting rid of animal products.
Yes. A MAGIC BULLET. I’m shouting it. Refusing meat and dairy is a MAGIC BULLET that kicks the shit out of everything keeping us MISERABLE. Sound emotional? It should. Needless misery and suffering, especially human, plucks at my heart strings.
In fact the more I supress these emotions by turning my attention to ‘intelligent’ and ‘sustainable’ ‘solutions’ for ‘problems,’ the more stressed and useless I feel. Why am I not able to explain to the world that there is a magic bullet? It’s my ego. I don’t want to sound ridiculous. I want to be smart. I want you to listen to me, not think I am a stupid extremist whos view of reality is altered by my extremeism.
Because a magic bullet is ridiculous. We are so smart and clever – how could it be that even the poor and uneducated can prevent problems that the geniuses of the planet have no idea where to start on?
Hunger
Everything to do with hunger is exacerbated by livestock. Half of the grain and 90% of the soy in the world is fed to animals. Basically all of that nutrition is wasted. It’s 85-95% depending on the animal, but why not just say all?
That wastage requires 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the ice-free land on earth. Do you get that? We are using 30% of all ice-free land on earth to create ‘food’ we are throwing away.
The most mind-numbingly stupid thing you will ever hear is that we should produce more meat because people need more food.
Much of the cleared land was forest, sometimes pristine ancient rainforest and just plain old beautiful forest. Livestock production is destroying the ecosystems that balance the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. It is a major cause of emission through deforestation – and by far the biggest cause of the destruction of the lungs of the earth.
Climate change
Would you like to have the shit scared out of you? Here are the facts no climate-change skeptic can dismiss. Temperature and methane and CO2 concentrations going back 800,000 years have been read from tiny bubbles of air trapped in the ice core. The relationship between atmospheric methane, carbon and temperature is 1:1. The amount of methane and carbon currently in the atmosphere are the highest during that time. In fact they’re off the charts high and have been put there in the last 100 years – but mostly in the last 10, and fastest in the last 5.
The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today – and were sustained at those levels – global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland. (Tripati)
Global Warming is making agriculture hard because weather systems are becoming increasingly extreme. Seasons are coming and going at the wrong times. Rains are hitting harder and faster causing damage and flooding. Droughts are more common. This is climate change.
Livestock themselves have created most of the warming we have seen so far through methane emission. Methane is far more devastating in the short term than policy-makers are aware of. They measure it’s effect over 100 years (20x the warming potential of carbon), whereas it is closer to a hundred times as warming in the near term, five years.
It is this three-five year period we should be worried about, because it is right now that the damage is being done. It is right now that we are passing tipping points that will create a negative-cycle climate change feedback situation that could all but end our civilisations. Seriously. Most people have no idea what six degrees of warming can do.
We need to stop breeding animals now. Thus, we need to stop eating animals now.
The extent of livestock’s contribution hasn’t been propperly accounted for. This is something I know intuitively from putting together a big picture from many scientific reports, almost like a collage. Not very ‘scientific.’ Nonetheless, the highest scientific account of livestock’s contribution to human-caused GHG emission so far is“more than” 51% from WorldWatch researchers.
Water shortage
Let’s think about beef, the most wasteful, polluting and unhealthy of all animal products – not least when it comes to water.
1kg of beef produced in Australia requires between 50,000 and 100,000 liters of water. That’s 20-60 times more than the same weight (and healthier nutrition) in soybeans. That’s between 2,000 and 4,000 five-minute showers, with a 2gpm per minute head.
So one steak will cost the water of at least six months to a year’s worth of showers. Can I hear a “holy crap?”
Quick facts:
- It takes 1000 liters of water to produce 1 liter of cows milk. (New Scientist)
- 90% of most people’s water is consumed in the food they eat, with most of that being in animal-based products (Charles Stuart University, Institute for Land, Water and Society)
- Soy produces 1800% the quality protein (all essential amino acids) per unit of land than beef (Compassion in World Farming).
This PDF summarises the environmental impacts of livestock pretty well. The UN also produced a report about it, although sidestepping the obvious prevention at every possible moment.
Health
Ever loved someome who’s died of cancer, heart disease or lost limbs to diabetes? I’m going to state this very clearly. Vegetarians have around 40% less cancer. Heart disease can be reversed in almost all cases, without medicine – and without meat and dairy. Diabetes is likewise highly associated with meat eating.
These are the ‘three killers’ in all developed societies where meat is a daily habit.
I know that you can actually prevent much more chronic disease by being vegan – but this hasn’t been studied propperly yet as vegans are still such a small (but growing!) percentage of the population.
Have you ever been to a hospital and seen the suffering involved in one person’s sickness? Not to speak of their death. Do you know how a chronic disease stops someone’s life in it’s tracks? If you or a loved one has been through it, you do. Otherwise, take it from me.
Please visit the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine‘s website for the best and well-researched/referenced health info.
Social issues
Now I know we have other social problems that are seemingly disconnected from the above.
But what if half the money going into health could go into education? If there was no animal agriculture, 70% of all agricultural land and ample fresh water would suddenly be freed up. Even with ten billion people, there’d be a surplus of nutritions food. Wars would be far less common and money could be diverted from defense to social programs there too. The whole face of our society would be changed.
With a natural abundance economices will change. Essentials will be cheaper, because they’ll be less scarce. Work will be less necessary. There are many factors in economics, but a natural abundance, through a simple, healthy diet, is the first and most important. With more time and energy, we can help others and be helped.
The end.
That wasn’t so hard. I’ve been putting this post off for ages because it seemed like a momentus task to draw so many things together to paint the picture that everyone needs to see. I’m sure I could do it better, but if I don’t publish this now, I never will, because it’ll never be good or complete enough.
I hope I’ve given you a feeling for how important being VEGAN is (milk and cheese do nothing for you. Accept that fact).
We don’t need to get ‘smarter.’ We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. You see we already have the information. It’s not being used in the right way because not enough people are asking the right questions – but it’s not long until the majority catch on.
Now, please, everyone go register at Veg Coach, so I can personally do everything I can to help make vegan eating easy for you.
The truth is absurdly simple. It’s so accessible, yet so impossible because all that has to change is our minds. All the measures to reduce carbon emission from household, transport and industry will mean nothing without the fast elimination of all animal products.
Ali
PS. If this post has opened your eyes a little, do the world a favour and pass it on. Oh, and the dude in the photo is my friend Eric. And he’s vegan 