Taking Global Warming Personally (and Shedding Some Holiday Weight at the Same Time)

After the tradition of Thanksgiving overindulgence, wouldn't it be nice if we had a good reason other than vanity to start eating healthfully, some other incentive to help us get on a better track in the wellness arena? Luckily, the United Nations just gave us one.

The U.N.'s latest report on global warming has bad news and good news. On the downside, a lot of scary stuff is heading for us at breakneck speed. On the upside, we still have time to do something about it -- and one thing we can all do is actually fun and delicious.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of thousands of the world's top climate scientists, has described the existence of human-caused global warming in its final assessment report as both "unequivocal," and as having "abrupt and irreversible" effects on global climate. Worse still, these effects are coming stronger and faster than expected in the panel's last report just six years ago. Alarmingly, some effects that had been predicted to arrive decades from now are already here.

The report warns that hundreds of millions of people are threatened with starvation, flooding, and weather disasters. Rain-fed crop production will fall by half, a quarter of the world's species will go extinct, and arctic ice will completely disappear during the summer. We will see more deadly heat waves, stronger hurricanes, and island nations completely obliterated from the map by rising sea levels.

And the good news is...?

Fortunately, there's still time to save ourselves -- but not very much time. The U.N. says point blank: "immediate action is vital." According to the report, we have just a few more years left to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

A problem of such scale will require governments, industries, and private citizens to work together to address what many believe to be the greatest challenge of our time. As with most solutions, the approach must be varied and come from all angles to really make the kind of quantum difference that is necessary. Here's but one -- albeit one of the most powerful -- way to add to the momentum of a turnaround: eat a plant based diet. Give up eating animals and go vegetarian. Seriously.

A U.N. report from just this past November found that a full 18% of global warming emissions come from raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food. That's about 40% more than all the cars, trucks, airplanes, and all other forms of transport combined (13%). It's also more than all the homes and offices in the world put together (8%).

So, one of the simplest and most elemental (and most delicious) things you can do to decrease your carbon footprint is to choose a veggie burger over a hamburger, "un-chicken" patties (try Garden Protein, the new and much talked about faux chicken/turkey) over actual chicken, or some grilled Portobello mushrooms with marinated tofu (I swear it's really good!). Order the vegetarian option whenever you go out to a restaurant -- and ask everywhere you go that they expand the vegetarian section on their menu, since it's good for owners of restaurants, hotels, airlines, etc. to know that there is consumer interest for tasty plant-based entrees.

I'm all for participating in the myriad things we can do to assist turning back the tide on human-made global warming: writing to a corporation about being environmentally responsible, turning off unnecessary lights and keeping the heat or a.c. on "low", voting for the politicians who will lead us into cleaner living, and driving a smaller more fuel efficient car. But on an ongoing more fundamental level, we can make a huge shift by simply eating differently. Being vegetarian is being green.

Eating a plant-based diet isn't just kind to animals and good for your health (and waistline!), it is also the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

We can each think creatively about how to use our roles in our families, jobs, and social circles, and join as part of the solution to this serious global threat.

With so much at stake, it's the least we can do. After all, the U.N. says there's still time if we act now. Surely that's something to be thankful for.

Comments

[srmorris]

Diet is not only one of the key things we can do to change the planet but also one of the key things we can do to save ourselves. this is the topic of my last blog "Killing the Chicken" over at http://teameffortfilms.blogspot.com/

(sorry for the plug but it really is on topic)

[brooklyncitizen]

Becoming a vegetarian was a gradual process and though I was never a meat lover and did not consume much of it...it took me a while to become a committed vegetarian and it didn't happen overnight.

I stopped eating red meat years ago and definitively gave up all animal flesh about 4 years ago. I naturally lost all excess weight and re-discovered my palette...the simplest of foods is absolutely delicious.

For me this was part of my spiritual growth process and I have become increasingly aware of the chemistry of food to my overall wellbeing:emotional, spiritual, and physical.

The beneficial social impact of this lifestyle is a bonus.

[Pdubya]

we should do better at eating more locally grown or raised food...organic too. how bout them farm subsidies, eh? conglomerates own our food with our tax dollars.

we are omnivores. we're supposed to eat some animal protein...just not as much as Americans do. I respect those who don't for supposed health reasons and certainly for religious reasons.

Don't debunk a hunter or fisher.

Eat more squirrel, deer, rabbit, turkey and wild hog.

Skip the Bubba Burgers at your local grocer.

[radmul]

While I agree that a total revamping of the food production system is needed to ensure the longterm health of the population I do not understand the hostility over people choosing to eat a plant centered diet. The facts are the facts fewer animals in the food chain = less CO2 and CH4.

[enveg01]

Kathy, thank you for your wonderful words. Reading these posts from people who defend meat eating by saying that humans are meant to eat meat or that all the vegetarians they know are walking skeletons is really disheartening. It's also foolish, disingenuous, and serves no purpose.

Switching to a whole foods vegan diet is one of the healthiest and most environmentally friendly things one can do. I don't care what your incisors look like or what cave men used to eat. If you're buying meat, especially from factory farms, you're contributing more to global warming than if you drive a Hummer.

I don't know why people have such strong reactions when others want to discuss this issue. I'm not telling you what to eat, like the restaurant, dairy, and beef industry, who spend millions of dollars on advertisements, try to do; I'm simply saying open your mind and think about this issue. Think about the environment, think about your health, and think about the pain and suffering of billions of sentient beings.

We slaughter 10 billion land animals a year in this country alone and it's completely unnecessary. I'm vegan and trust me, I'm not underweight. In fact, I just had my yearly physical and my doc tells me I'm healthier than ever. Do yourselves a favor and consider going veg... at least try it for a week. Especially if you live in a big city like New York, LA, Seattle, etc. you have so many vegetarian options available to you. Why not give it a shot for yourself before knocking everyone else?

[jackpinesavage]

Finally, Part V

My apologies for being so long-winded, but the solutions to these problems (environmental, agricultural, etc.) are complex...there are no simple solutions. Unfortunately, the "go vegetarian" answer is also overly simplistic, and it disregards a great many issues implicit in the proposed solution. There is no silver bullet to fixing the nexus of agriculture and climate change. It will require a reduction in meat consumption (at least temporarily), but it will also require a reduction in fresh veggie consumption during winter months.

If you really want to make a difference, learn how to grow. The average residential lot in America can supply a very large percentage of the agricultural needs for a family of four. If your community allows it (and many do), add chickens and a turkey or two for thanksgiving.

Again, sorry for the number of words...not that anyone will read the post anyhow, but at least i feel better.

[jackpinesavage]

Part IV

The vegetarian/global warming argument misses the fundamental issue because it assumes that an inefficient (long-term) model of agriculture is the only model for agriculture. Furthermore, it does not address the inefficient model of agriculture, it only changes it...simply discarding the fact that even organic plant agriculture practiced in the current model still strips topsoil nutrition with monocropping, still produces toxic fertilizer and pesticide runoff, and still maintains the industrial nature of agriculture. It also, conveniently, discards the fact that meat has a higher density of calories, which is why it takes so much feed to make a steak.

The vegetarian argument is a fine thing to do for the environment, i will not deny that. But is not the only answer, and it certainly is not the best answer...because it does not address the fundamental facets of the problem. Moreover, where would vegetarianism be without the shipping of produce. Its hard to be a vegetarian in the north during the winter months without some factory farm in California supply the Co-op or the Whole Foods market. And note the kind of climates where vegetarianism is culturally mainstream. What is most efficient in India is not necessarily most efficient in North Dakota.

Militant vegetarianism is not the answer, mostly because it alienates a large portion of the public. Agricultural reform is the answer. Small, well-run farms produce a diversity of foodstuff, and the farmers have a personal stake in the health and wellness of their land...including the plants that grow on it and the animals that feed off of it. To return to Polyface, they hold 450 acres, but only 100 of those are under cultivation. Mostly what they grow is grass, then they harness the energy chain on every step. They produce far more food, in an environmentally friendly manner, on that 100 acres than any vegetable only farm could ever muster.

[jackpinesavage]

Part III

How we get our food is completely fucked up, but before you run off to Whole Foods or Trader Joes to stock up on organic produce, keep in mind that "organic" is as much a canard of the food industry as "corn-fed beef".

Organic became a buzzword and the food industry likes to make a buck, they realized that there were big bucks in organic. Organic does not mean sustainable or healthy, it means without petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Bt is the favorite pesticide of organic farming, it is also highly toxic. Big organic farming concerns spread it heavily, because well, its organic and you figure that what's organic can't hurt you. Large scale organic farming is also labor intensive, mostly low-paid immigrant labor. It also gets processed in the same industrial way that non organic food products get processed.

On an actual farm (such as Polyface Farms in Virginia), manure and compost are the fertilizers. Cows are grazed, but not so hard that they they kill the grass on which they feed. Then they're moved to new pasture. A few days later, chickens come along. The chickens also graze on the new, tender shoots, but they also spread the manure so that it isn't toxic to a small patch of grass. Furthermore, they forage for grubs in the warm rich cowpies. Then they too are moved, but not before they deposit guano, bird poop is high in phosphorus. So the grass has now gotten nitrogen from the cows and phosphorus from the chickens; consequently, it grows like mad. Sometime later, the cows come back and regraze the same spot.

In industrial agriculture, the manure is sequestered in giant, stinking vats of toxicity...never to be used again in most cases because it is too strong. It just leaches into the ground water.

[jackpinesavage]

Part II

In the old days, a farmer would have some livestock and some plantstock. It became more economically efficient in the later 20th century (short term efficient that is) to get rid of the livestock. That was moved to feed lots, where industrial agricultural science figured out how to feed corn to a grass eating animal.

It should be noted that corn is a very inefficient plantstock. Very little of it is usable and it is a nitrogen hog. You'll note the the large, home gardener often plants pole beans with their corn...this is because beans fix nitrogen in the soil that the corn then uses.

Any time you plant a single plant across a wide swath of land, you will have pest problems. Simply, the pest has an overabundant food source; furthermore, most pests concentrate on certain types of plants. Aphids will ravage bell peppers, while leaving tomatoes planted next door mostly alone...for example. So the industrial agriculturalists answer to the pest problem is pesticides. Just like herbicides are the solution to weeding.

As a side note, all of the above is also very hard on the bees, which farmers count on for pollination. Our current method requires bees to be shipped in, because without variety and with too many chemicals, the bees cannot survive locally. And if you think global warming is a dire situation, do some research: a massive crop failure of all the fruits and nuts and berries that vegetarians love so much could happen as early as next year. CCD is far more clear and present danger than climate change.

[jackpinesavage]

Part I

This topic always brings out bad logic, or maybe it is just that people are so ill informed about food production that they believe the way we do it now is the only way that it has ever been done.

Our current method of agriculture (plant and animal) didn't happen until the 1950's. Earlier in century, a German chemist figured out how to manufacture Ammonium Nitrate, basically a method for extracting nitrogen from the air. At first, this was used for bomb making, but we had too much left over after WWII and didn't know what to do with it. We did know that it held some promise as a fertilizer. Previous to that, most fertilization was done with manure and compost (and crop rotation/grazing so as not to deplete the soil)

It worked like a charm. Yields went up, and it enabled agriculture to be collectivized, centralized, and industrialized...without the nastiness that Stalin went through to achieve the same goal. Combined with industrial farm machinery, it meant that a very few farmers could produce a tremendous amount of food. It also allowed them to forgo crop rotation and encouraged the rise of commodity agriculture...crops like corn and soybeans.

Of course, over production of corn begot a vicious cycle: the price dropped, so the farmers produced more in an effort to balance their accounts. Something needed to be done with all that corn. Industrial food science stepped in and found a bazillion uses for corn.

[veggie4]

Exactly! Enough of Al Gore, the cattle rancher, ignoring the main problem.

[sandmadd]

This is a win-win-win situation-for the planet, for the people, for the animals. Let's just do it!

[cyberbrook]

The role of meat is another inconvenient truth we cannot avoid.

Please visit the following two sites on this vital issue.

Meat Eating and Global Warming
www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html

Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
www.brook.com/veg

[Animals] were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.
Alice Walker

The time will come when people such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of people.
Leonardo da Vinci

Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter.
J Motavalli, So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat?

I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.
Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers

I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn't cause suffering.
Dalai Lama

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mohandas Gandhi

The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future: deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease.
World Watch, July/August 2004

Nothing will benefit health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

There is a direct relationship between eating meat and the environment.
Andrea Gordon, If You Recycle, Why Are You Eating Meat?

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do.
Paul McCartney

[splashy]

It's so much easier these days to eat vegetarian.

For those that can't bear the idea of quitting completely, cutting down to eating less meat would help, along with eating meat that is not grain-fed (which you can have if you raise it yourself or know someone that raises it). We have had chickens that we didn't feed much grain, because we let them run outside of the pen. They got lots of protein eating bugs, and helped us not get eaten by bugs.

[Sciguy]

I don't know about the rest of the folks here, but I personally have incisors that evolved to rip apart animal flesh. I prefer mine cooked and tender, but to say that eating meat is just a habit from the Olde Days is incorrect.

Stewart wrote that animals produce mostly urine and feces. There's another word for those things: fertilizer. Plain old natural fertilizer. Veggies can't be grown without fertilizer (not for very long in the same place, anyway, although crop rotation is important, too). Natural or artificial, fertilizer is a necessary component of producing agricultural yields large enough to feed the billions of people now on the planet.

Folks talk as if plants-only farming has no environmental costs. This is also incorrect. If no fertilizers at all are used, yields are small. If one uses natural fertilizers and keeps pests away by yelling at them, farm runoff can still result in algal blooms that in turn result in killing off parts of the water ecosystem.

The only way to really stop affecting the environment is to stop eating altogether. Of course, the dead starved human bodies will decompose, adding more heat to the earth, but hey, it's organic!