You need to get educated. Additional information http://www.InteliOrg.com/co2_climate_change.html

by DrColes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 9:21:43 PM

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Sorry, but this is a feel good piece disconnected from reality. A sustainable agricultural system will be small-scale and decentralized, unlike today's industrial farming. It can hardly do without animals for food, fertilizer, and labor. Anyone in contact with small scale farming can tell you that. Livestock raised on small family farms in the US are not going to destroy the Amazon rain forests. The problem isn't too many animals releasing CO2; the problem is too many people, even if they all became vegans. The guilt-soothing idea that becoming a vegan is somehow going to deal meaningfully with the problems of a run-away, unstainable society is a psychological distraction. Schumacher was wrong. Stop thinking globally, and start thinking locally. Some of the most viable local food will be meat. Most analyses like this depend on national and global data bases which are largely irrelevant to what it will take to survive locally.

by Kuzminski (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 93 comments) on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 9:29:51 PM

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I have been waiting for this issue to come up. *The author of this short opinion piece is abso-effing-lutely correct. Perhaps his two paragraph explanation of how the meat centered system is all tied together was/is a bit rushed and does not convey the whole picture and so could use some fleshing out ( no pun intended)? The two negative responders who poo poo the idea should actually read the footnotes & links BEFORE embarrassing themselves...? Hmmm? You're gonna feel really silly when you take your head outta there & stop admiring your own colon long enough to actually find out the facts. Denial and obfuscation are simply tactics to AVOID facing facts and taking responsibility. A lot of people WANT to remain blissfully ignorant because they are lazy, selfish and afraid of change. Denial allows them to remain lazy AND selfish. http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp http://www.goveg.com/environment-globalwarming.asp NOTE: "In a groundbreaking 2006 report, the United Nations (U.N.) said that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. Senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Henning Steinfeld reported that the meat industry is "one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems." http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr07/Moore21.htm

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 311 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 7:06:46 PM

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Going vegan is no solution to the global ecocrisis because it presupposes a continuation of the same scale of human exploitation of the planet. Of course too much livestock is being raised; too much of everything is being raised. There are simply too many people. A drastic reduction of human population is the best way to stop destroying the earth. A much smaller population will not have to make these kinds of trade-offs.  And don't presume what the rest of us posting objections know or don't know. Are you a farmer, or just another person sitting all day in front of a computer reading a few things here and there and developing an opinion?  Do you know anything about the role of animals in agriculture?

by Kuzminski (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 93 comments) on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 7:32:13 AM

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I was - Raised on a working dairy farm...  started working "in the barn" @ age seven,  made DAILY trips for YEARS to the co-op dairy to deliver the milk, drove tractors, threw bales, watched calves born, watched the annual cow be slaughtered, gutted, hung up, butchered, ate it... raised hundreds (nay thousands) of fryers ( chickens for market )... then... @ age 21 became a vegan , that was 40 years ago. NEVER regretted it for one second. The more I have learned about meat as a protein source in the human diet, the MORE I am convinced that being vegan is THE RIGHT choice. From any angle: personal health, environmental damage, moral and ethical issues. 

Normally I do NOT evangelize on diet issues - what you put in your mouth is a personal matter - eh?  I DON'T CARE what you eat! (You can eat sh*t for all I care & you probably do. Since you probably don't know how most of what you eat is produced.) However...

However, in modern industrial agri-biz it takes roughly TEN times more grain & water and fossil fuels to raise a pound of meat as it would take if humans consumed those resources directly. And the pollution - is way out of control. 

I'm not assuming what you know, or if you actually know anything at all - only that you are most likely reluctant to face the facts because it would require you to take some responsiblilty for your own ignorance!

Yeah - I KNOW what I'm talking about... Do you? 

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 311 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 7:22:04 PM

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More that 1/3 of all fossil fuels produced in the United States go towards animal agriculture. According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1), the production of one calorie of animal protein requires more than ten times the fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein. This means that ten times the amount of carbon dioxide is emitted as well. Where does all this waste occur?

Each animal that is slaughtered for food must be fed with grains, soy and other crops. The production of these crops requires energy consumption. This feed must then be harvested, transported to feedlots. From the feedlots, animals are then transported to a slaughterhouse, the carcasses are often trucked (in refrigerated trucks – another energy consumer) to yet another processing plant before the meat is ready to be transported to a grocery store.
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Next time you’re driving the interstate, take a look at all the trucks around you and think about all the emissions and fuel consumption each one of those trucks is using to transport materials from one location to another. Many of these trucks are transporting food for animals, or the animals themselves.

A report in the New Scientist estimated that driving a hybrid car rather than an average vehicle would conserve a little over one ton of carbon dioxide per year. A vegan diet, however, consumes one and a half tons less than the average American diet (2). Adopting a vegan diet actually does more to reduce emissions than driving a hybrid car! With the energy needed to produce a single hamburger, you could drive a small car twenty miles. Next time you’re craving a burger, think about the fabulous road trip you could take!

http://tinyurl.com/292ywe

http://tinyurl.com/22e7cn

You can not dredge up anything to dispute this info -
face it - you are going to HAVE to change your behavior.

You can do it voluntarily OR nature & time WILL impose those changes by force.

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 311 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 7:40:18 PM

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