As we have all started off saying, we are killing the environment. People have put their needs above the Earth’s. This needs to be reversed in order to preserve our home. There is an ancient proverb that is important to keep in mind: “we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Future generations are at risk to experience water scarcity, food contamination and shortages, soil erosion, and major deforestation. Pertaining to food shortages: heat waves, floods, and droughts have created many failures when it comes to food-producing nations like the United States and Ukraine. This leads to more drought resistant, genetically modified crops which are very unnatural and harmful to the body over time. The problems we create are not only harmful to the environment, but they will also be harmful to us if we don’t change.
People need to implement small changes that will make a huge difference if people do it together. A relatively small thing people can do is become vegetarian. People becoming vegetarian based on animal-based industries being environmentally devastating is an actual thing and has an official name – environmental vegetarianism. According to the Dietary Advisory Committee, “consistent evidence indicates that, in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal-based foods …is associated with lesser environmental impact than is the current average U.S. diet.” Raising livestock and the process in slaughtering the animals emits more than 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is predicted that by 2050, so in 31 years, vegan and/or vegetarian diets could cut greenhouse emissions by 70% and/or 63%. According to Cornell University, “meat based food systems require more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet.” For those who don’t know, a lacto-ovo diet includes dairy products and eggs but no meat. If you think about it, there needs to be a farm where animals are raised, factories where the animals’ food is produced, trucks to ship the food to the farm, trucks to drive animals to slaughter factories, slaughtering facilities, meat packing factories, trucks to ship packaged meats, and grocery stores to sell the meats. There are a lot of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuels burned, water, and land used during the process of obtaining meat for humans to buy and eat. Beef is the most damaging to the environment, compared to chicken and pork. It requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water to produce for human consumption. It also creates five times more climate-warming emissions. Not only is the meat processing industry environmentally harmful, but cows actually are not environmentally “friendly” when it comes to their consumption. They only absorb a small amount of their feed into their bloodstream so most of the energy consumed is lost, which is a huge waste of grains and grass. According to the University of Michigan, meat products create a larger carbon footprint than vegetable and grain products because of the “inefficient transformation of plant energy to animal energy.” Meat accounts for 47.6% of greenhouse gases from average food consumption (seen below).
According to a study in Britain, someone who eats a meat-rich diet emitted 7.2 kg of carbon dioxide while someone eating a vegetarian diet emitted 3.8 kg of carbon dioxide. Additionally, a vegan diet emitted only 2.9 kg of carbon dioxide. Eating a vegan diet is more challenging for people, as cutting out only meat is a much subtler change. Making small changes, such as eating a salad without steak, salads being a staple of vegetarian diets, would be better for the environment, healthier for the person, and a relatively small and easy change. This website offers a long list of meat substitutes that are easy to obtain and make: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-food/the-ultimate-guide-to-vegan-meats-and-meat-substitutes/. If people were willing to make a small change in the grand scheme of things, it could help save future generations. It can help save the environment that we will be passing down to our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. It’s not too late to make changes, especially for younger adults and children, as it would be setting the way for future generations. Strictly implementing a vegetarian or vegan diet won’t save the earth alone but it will help to make a difference.
Websites used:
https://gulfnews.com/uae/environment/how-can-we-save-our-planet-for-future-generations-1.1173074
http://time.com/4266874/vegetarian-diet-climate-change/
https://www.downtoearth.org/go-veggie/environment/top-10-reasons
I enjoy reading your blog because your writing is so emotional and sympathetic. I really like the citation of an ancient proverb “we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” and I agree with it.
You have lots of statistics in this blog to strengthen your idea. I’m surprised that you wrote people are becoming environmental vegetarianisms. In my mind, because I grow up in China, I heard and I saw people eat any animals (yes, not any animals that can eat). I hate those people who eat dogs, rabbits, and sharks. Their behaviors are really devastated to our environment.
The data that shows someone who eats a meat-rich diet emitted 7.2 kg of carbon dioxide, while someone eating a vegetarian diet emitted 3.8 kg of carbon dioxide also surprises me. I can’t imagine the big differences between eating meat-diet and vegetarian-diet. Carbon dioxide is neither good nor bad but we have to less the emission of carbon dioxide. Because CO2 is the major thing that hurts the atmosphere.
Moreover, I’d like to suggest you add some examples like the differences if you eat beaf or pork with if you eat cucumbers and spinaches.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
(See the graph: footprint by diet type)
Finally, I really enjoy reading your first blog. Thanks for writing lots of things that I didn’t know.