You call yourself an Environmentalist?

By Meghan Nutting

Throughout the developing world today, one of the first things people do as they climb out of poverty is to shift from their peasant diet of mainly grains and beans to one that is rich in pork or beef. Since 1950, per capita consumption of meat around the globe has more than doubled (Ayres 1999). Actually, global meat production is rising faster than the human population (Leckie). However, animal agriculture poses a grave threat to the environment. I would therefore like to make an unpopular but indisputable claim: It is impossible to be a true non-hypocritical environmentalist and eat meat at the same time.

Perhaps you are fighting for water conservation or you are against rain forest destruction. Does topsoil erosion bother you? Water pollution? Energy over consumption? Or are you fighting to rectify habitat and bio-diversity loss? Is cancer a problem? Do dams disrupt ecosystems? Are we coping sufficiently with waste disposal? Are there too many greenhouse gases? If you are riled by any of these problems then there is something you can do, because all of these problems are influenced in large percentages by the meat industry.

Throughout my research, I have come upon multitudes of percentages and numeric facts and I could easily refer you to hundreds of charts that back up my points. However, I am not going to reference any of them. Look for yourself if that type of proof moves and convinces you. I am not trying to appeal to anyone's rationalistic or scientific side with my arguments, rather I prefer to engage your moral and ethical views. I will be using numbers, it is unavoidable, but I will do my best to explain them and place them in a context.

Nor am I a die-hard vegetarian that will not even associate with those who eat meat. I strongly believe in each person's right to their own opinions and decisions, but for me to be satisfied, those opinions and decisions must be made in light of evidence from all sides of an issue. I therefore commend you if you are a vegetarian, your beliefs will be supported throughout the following pages. And for those "environmentalists" who aren't, I hope I will present some information that will give you something to masticate on because each person's consumption of meat has an effect other than the evanescent glow of temporary satiation.

Farms and ranches cover about half the nation's land base (Ervin 1998) and 56% of this agricultural land is used to produce meat (Gardella 1999). In the last 300 years, we have cut down over half of the trees in the United States and exchanged them for vast fields of corn and oats, which are primarily fed to livestock (NAVS). Agriculture is the world's biggest cause of deforestation and increasing demand for meat is the biggest force in the expansion of agriculture (Ayres 1999). It seems to be a vicious cycle. More people will demand more meat and go on to make more people. Meanwhile, we are turning all of our land into desert.

One fifth to one third of the world's land area is used for grazing (twice the area used for growing crops) (Leckie). Much of this land was once forest or wild grassland and supported a diverse range of plants, birds, rodents, and wild grazing animals. The government actually subsidizes grazing leases to cattle ranchers at a fraction of the value of the land and at a great expense to the environment. Cattle have severely degraded about half of the nation's range-land: turned 10% into desert, and overgrazed the rest, leaving weeds and tough shrubs to multiply (NAVS). These weeds and shrubs lack extensive root systems and guard soil poorly against erosion from trampling hooves, wind, and rain (Leckie).

It has been said that, historically, topsoil depletion has been a cause of the demise of many great civilizations. And in the last 200 years, U.S. agricultural practices have destroyed 1,500 years (or 75%) of the nation's topsoil. Each year an amount of cropland topsoil the size of Connecticut is lost to erosion, 85% of which can be directly associated with livestock raising (NAVS, Robbins). Excessive sediment then fills river beds, promotes floods, and clouds rivers and decreases sunlight which lowers oxygen levels and chokes off life in the water (Ervin 1998). It is easy to see how, with clouded streams and no nutritive soil with which to grow crops, those many great civilizations collapsed.

Rain forests provide a substantial part of the earth's oxygen and are home to more species of plant and animal life than the rest of the earth (NAVS). The American, and increasingly world, meat habit is a driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rain forests, which cover just 7% of the earth's land area, because it takes 55 square feet of rain forest to make one burger (NAVS). 100 acres of rain forest are devastated and disappear every minute (Wellington). Consequently, 1,000 species per year go extinct (Gardella) and carbon dioxide pollution increases. Farm animals are extremely inefficient converters of plants to edible flesh. Cattle excrete 40 kg of manure for every 1 kg of beef they produce (Leckie). US humans produce 12,000 pounds of excrement per second while US livestock produce 250,000 pounds per second (Robbins). Put into perspective, just one hog farm in Utah produces more sewage than the city of Los Angeles (Ayres 1999).

Such vast amounts of dung effect our atmosphere. Livestock are the cause of 15-20 percent of global methane emissions- cows produce one pound of methane for every two pounds of meat they yield (NAVS). And one molecule of methane contributes 25 times more to the greenhouse effect than one molecule of carbon dioxide (Vegi-Buro). The head of the Wuppertal-Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy comments that, "The contributions of cattle breeding the greenhouse effect are about the same as for the total of automobile traffic" (Vegi-Buro).

This one billion tons of livestock waste is not recycled. Rather it is spread on fields or dumped and often ends up in rivers and groundwater, which supply half the US population with drinking water. The most serious contamination of this water appears to be high levels of nitrates from fertilizers and animal waste (Ervin 1998). When drank, this prevents oxygen circulating in the blood stream, a condition that may be linked to disease and birth defects in children (Gardella 1999). Also, this waste has been implicated in outbreaks of such diseases as pfiesteria, which causes memory loss, confusion, and acute skin burning (Ayres 1999).

US agriculture creates more water pollution than do all other municipal and industrial sources combined (NAVS). Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri had 40 large manure spills in 1996. When a dike around a large lagoon in North Carolina failed, an estimated 25 million gallons of hog manure (twice the volume of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez accident) was released into nearby fields and waterways. Virtually all aquatic life was killed along a 17-mile stretch of the New River (Ervin 1998).

The meat industry not only pollutes the water, it uses up too much of it. More than half of all water use in the US goes toward livestock production. The amount of water used in the production of a cow is sufficient to float a destroyer (Robbins). It takes 25 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of wheat but 2,500 gallons to produce 1 pound of meat (NAVS, Gardella 1999, Robbins). If you pass up one hamburger, you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle (Ayres 1999) or as much water as it takes to maintain a typical household for an entire month (NAVS).

Currently, it is the taxpayers and government who pay for this water. If water was not subsidized by US taxpayers, common hamburger meat would cost $35 per pound (Robbins) and one pound of beefsteak would be $89 (Gardella 1999). Heavily contested dams are being made to provide enough water for livestock and are consequently ruining many pristine habitats.

India, China, North Africa, and the US are all running freshwater deficits. As populations continue to expand, governments will inevitably act to cut these deficits by shifting water to grow food, not feed (80% of grain produced in the US goes toward feeding herds of livestock). These new policies will raise the price of meat to levels unaffordable for any but the rich (Ayres 1999).

Also, almost half the energy used in US agriculture goes into raising livestock. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of protein from beef, while only 2 calories of fossil fuel are needed to produce 1 calorie of protein from soybeans (NAVS). In other words, 40 pounds of soybeans are produced by the same amount of fossil fuels required to produce one pound of meat (Gardella 1999).

Depending on what they eat, 20-60 vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land it takes to feed 1-2 people consuming a meat-based diet (Robbins, Wellington). A child dies of starvation every 2 seconds (Robbins) but this planet can supply ample food for everyone. If Americans ate 10% less meat, one billion people could be saved from starvation (Vegi-Buro) because developed countries often take grain from the third world and feed it to their livestock (Wellington). Scaling back on heightened levels of resource-intensive meat production may be the best way to ensure food security for all (Leckie).

As the world becomes more affluent, the average person will be eating more meat and consuming more agricultural products (Avery 1997) but because the environment can not tolerate our harsh treatment much longer, Ed Ayres of Time warns that "the era of mass-produced animal flesh, and it's unsustainable costs to human and environmental health, should be over before the next century is out" (Ayres 1999).

However, it is becoming increasingly obvious to some that overpopulation is an important problem. Perhaps, although it is politically incorrect to say so, meat is the answer to our problems. Prominent scientists project that the three major contestants for reducing population (growth) are famine, disease, and war. Perhaps famine in undeveloped countries will be the savior that will insure all of us in the industrialized nations a continued comfortable lifestyle.

Along the same lines as allowing the poor to starve, we can continue treating the environment the way we are at present, or worse, because humans are creative dynamic beings that never sit by and let disaster overcome us, rather we use our innovative skills to solve problems, right? But what good are those innovative skills without ethics or aesthetics? Are we doomed to live comfortably in an overexploited hideous world? That decision is entirely yours.

A plant-based diet is the single most significant contribution an individual can make to help minimize these ecological disasters. Most people in the rich countries don't need nearly as much protein as they are getting and vegetable sources can provide the protein they do need (Ayres 1999). Every individual who switches to a total vegetarian diet saves hundreds of thousands of gallons of water each year, saves an acre of trees, uses a fraction of the energy needed to produce a meat-based diet, and reduces the destruction of wildlife habitat, among other things (NAVS).

It is my personal belief that each person should do all that is in their power to preserve their habitat. You don't need to care about humanity (although it would be nice), you just have to be selfish and give a damn about your personal and perhaps your family's well-being.

I agree completely with the saying "We did not inherit this earth from our parents, we are borrowing it from our children". It is true. It would make me sick to think that my children got cancer because of the water that got polluted from the feces of the meat that I ate. I would like to assume that most parents would sacrifice anything, including something as trivial as meat, for the health and happiness of their children. But perhaps I am an idealist, hoping for too much.

Every individual's decisions affect the planet and we must ask ourselves whether meat production is worth ruining the earth for. It is time for everyone to rethink and affirm their values and to stop supporting industry that degrades the environment. Most importantly, you must ask yourself, "Am I an environmentalist?"

Works Cited:

Avery, Dennis T. Taking Sides, "Saving Nature's Legacy Through Better Farming," p195. Duskin/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Ayres, Ed. Time, "Will We Still Eat Meat?" Nov. 8, 1999. Vol 154, issue 19, p 06-111.

Ervin, David. Taking Sides, "Shaping a Smarter Environmental Policy for Farming," p184-7. Duskin/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Gardella, Fiorella. "The Meat Industry...Is It Worth It?" http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/`sustain/global/sensem/Meatindustry.html, (2/22/00).

Leckie, Stephen. "Sustainability of Land Use and Food Production," http://www.trianglevegsociety.org/grapevine/v12/sustain.html, (2/22/00).

North American Vegetarian Society. "Vegetarianism: Tipping the Scales for the Environment," http://www.navs-online.org/enviro.html, (2/22/00).

Robbins, John. "Diet for a New America," http://www.earth.org.hk/vegstats.html, (2/22/00).

Vegi-Buro Schweiz. "The Ecological and Economical Consequences of a Meat Oriented Diet," http://www.vegetarismus.ch/info/eoeko.htm, (2/22/00).

Wellington New Vegetarian Society. "The Environment: A Vegetarian View," http://vegsoc.wellington.net.nz/ENVIRON.HTM, (2/22/00).