Here's some food for thought on this upcoming Earth Day: Agriculture is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. It even beats out transportation. The food we raise, especially meat like pork, beef and chicken, is contributing more to climate change than the cars and SUVs that clog our freeways. That's not to say we should let our gas guzzling habits off the hook, but it does mean that we should look at our carbon footprint holistically -- including the food we consume.
But people must eat. And we need protein, right? So really, this conversation isn't worth having unless there's another option, another animal protein out there that contributes less to global warming. Well, guess what? There is.
It's called wild seafood.
Before we can fully understand the benefits of this undervalued food source, it's important to dissect the impact that pork, beef, poultry, and lamb have on our already stressed planet.
Let's break down the numbers. On average, Americans eat nearly 275 pounds of meat per year. We're number two world-wide -- Denmark is number one, at an incredible 321 pounds of meat per capita. Pork is the most popular meat worldwide, followed by poultry and then beef. The U.S. is home to around 60 million pigs and they produce more than 21 billion pounds of meat each year. The world's largest slaughterhouse, in North Carolina, processes 32,000 pigs per day.
In order to raise these pigs, they must be fed. And like all living things, what goes in must come out. This waste alone releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- a potent mix of 60 to 70 percent methane and 30 to 40 percent carbon dioxide. Methane traps twenty-three times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and that's one of the reasons why agriculture is the world's single biggest contributor to global warming. We're not talking about a little waste here, either. The 10 million pigs in North Carolina for instance, create more sewage than the residents of North Carolina, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota combined. Most of this waste isn't processed. It's kept in open-air lagoons that pump out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like it's going out of style.
The McKinsey Institute has estimated that we'll need to increase water and land availability by 140 and 250 percent, respectively, in the next two decades to meet the growing demand for food. Doing so -- with our business as usual model that includes processing incredible amounts livestock -- won't be cheap or good for our Earth. Meeting this demand would pump 66 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which could cause temperatures to rise by five degrees Celsius in the next eighty years. Even an increase in temperature at a fraction of that would devastate regions where poor farmers rely on rain-fed agriculture to feed their families.
But we can drastically improve our chances of battling climate change if we start thinking seriously about wild seafood. Unlike land-based agriculture, wild seafood requires no arable land. It requires only minimal traces of fresh water in processing and produces significantly less CO2 than pigs or cows or chickens. Better yet, it is truly one of the world's most renewable resources. It doesn't take a million years to replace fish, like coal or oil. Wild seafood, properly managed, can replenish itself year by year, decade by decade, millennia by millennia.
The potential that wild seafood has to feed the world, however, isn't something we can take for granted. Despite the resiliency of our oceans, we've done a terrible job at keeping them healthy and abundant. We are literally fishing our oceans into oblivion -- catching fish more quickly than they can reproduce to support their populations, destroying ocean nurseries and habitat, not controlling bycatch. As a result, global fish catch has declined since the late 1980s despite more and more boats on the water. Seafood can be a healthy, low-impact protein, but only if we are good stewards of the oceans.
On Earth Day, it's important to remember that our blue planet can still help to sustain us, if we let it.
Gary H. Cohen: Linking Healthy Hospitals with Healthy Communities and a Healthy Planet
Wenonah Hauter: Sick of Being a Guinea Pig for GE Food? Call This Guy
Ted Danson and Andrew Sharpless: How Saving the Oceans Can Feed the World
Wild Salmon | Omega-3 | Wild Seafood | Organic Foods | Vital Choice
get dismal MPG for days on end. Are you sure this is a net
environmental win?
Now you want to "manage" wild seafood? Oh boy....
Profit managed--which is how it is "managed"--NOT.
If the seafood demand continues it would be wise to at least investigate the possibility of removing some of those pleasure boats from small bays and inlets w/narrow mouths and see if "farming" seafood in more places could be practical.
Humans are destroying the planet. We have become dangerous parasites upon it.
We have fished out 90% of the ocean's life.
We may have to cut back on wild fish, much as I love my salmon.
Waste is the solution. And the problem.
We must close the loop.
All wastes must be reprocessed, not dumped.
Waste bio fuels is the backup for solar and wind, using existing fossil generators but clean without the radioactive heavy metals.
http://buildaroo.com/news/article/biofuel-from-human-waste-project-england/ 15% energy needs!
http://in.reuters.com/article/2010/10/04/idINIndia-51941620101004
13 billions tons animal manure per year
Humans 30kg dried sludge per year?
6B people. 180 B kg, 180 M tons from humans.
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-07/world/eco.about.manure_1_manure-methane-carbon-dioxide?_s=PM:WORLD
6 cows enough methane for one home! chickens, pigs, sheepand goats also used mean 6 billion cattel equivalents, of enough for a billion households.
That's enough for everyone.
Also checked by uk link 15% from humans poo alone. over tens times as much animal poo,
again, more than all the energy needs just from shit.
another site lists 1.7B ton dry animal manure, 15 Gjoules per ton, 25 EJ per year,
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/08/the-appeal-of-animal-waste-49621
So the question is, how do you, on the one hand, make wild seafood a viable alternative to land animal protein, while, on the other hand, we are already decimating the wild fish population?
The math doesn't add up here...What does being "a good steward of the oceans" look like, specifically? How would we increase the amount of fish eaten and also fish sustain-ably? Is there some magic formula? I'd like to know...
and...."proteins" ?? Wake up, Teddy, proteins are also plentiful in vegetable matter like beans, nuts, and even bread flour has a whopping 15% of protein.
Better take an example of your CHEERS buddy Woody, he is veg and, oh miracle, still healthy.
No-till is common in my area. Organic guys can't do that. They can't use the GMO seeds needed for no-till. No till greatly reduces erosion and reduces tractor use...it's obvious. It's all thanks to those eeevil GMO seeds..
You represent a small fraction of farmers who use ancient methods found to be very energy and labor intensive. And many old fashioned farms have the obvious problems of their nice pasture manure running directly into streams and lakes during rains. You don't live in shangri-la and don't try to pretend that you do.
A true enviornmentalist would be saying we should seriously limit or present fishing levels to protect the biodiversity of our wild stocks. As most commercially caught fish are in schools or migrating, the same stocks are subjuct to yeartly fishing devastation. As an example suppose you catch 40% of a school each year this means that you catch 40% of the schools gene pool also.So the next year you again catch 40% of the gene pool but this year the total pool is only 60% of what it was the previous year so (60x.40 =24) therefore you destroy another 24% of the gene pool. Afrer a few years most of the fish you now catch are genetically the same and as a reasult any disease in the stock can decimate them.
Properly regulated fish and seafood farms can provide all the fish and seafood we need without damaging the wild stocks.
No, I think a true environmentalist plans on the fish stocks coming back someday. Farmed fish is a poor substitute because since they are confined to pools, they don't get the musculature as free-swimming wild fish do. They also introduce diseases and interbreed with the wild fish and weaking them.
Wild fish do not face threats from overfishing alone - their habitats are being destroyed at alarming rates and being polluted by oil and gas exploration. We need to put the brakes on our out of control demands at least a little bit and shouldn't fish our natural, wild fish into oblivion, ruin their habitats and dam up rivers so that the wild populations can thrive again. Wild fish also have the right to exist because they share the planet with us.
There's a lot to be said for hunter/gathering and sharing our resources - and not selfish greed and gluttony.