World Watch
Tuesday, December 26th, 2006I just found this again tonight….
– Editors, World Watch, July/August 2004
Click on the picture to download a .pdf file titled, “Meat: Now, It’s Not Personal! But like it or not, meat-eating is becoming a problem for everyone on the planet”.
On a closely-related topic, today’s post bumped the Farm and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ article and link to their report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” from the home page. Click here to read my 11/30 post The other “Inconvenient Truth” — a message for the Church (and the world).
This editorial appeared in the 12/27/06 edition of the New York Times:
Meat and the Planet
When you think about the growth of human population over the last century or so, it is all too easy to imagine it merely as an increase in the number of humans. But as we multiply, so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present, there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet.
Just how enormous was not really apparent until the publication of a new report, called ìLivestockís Long Shadow,î by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Consider these numbers. Global livestock grazing and feed production use ì30 percent of the land surface of the planet.î Livestock ó which consume more food than they yield ó also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else.
But what is even more striking, and alarming, is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportationís contribution. The culprits are methane ó the natural result of bovine digestion ó and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Deforestation of grazing land adds to the effect.
There are no easy trade-offs when it comes to global warming ó such as cutting back on cattle to make room for cars. The human passion for meat is certainly not about to end anytime soon. As ìLivestockís Long Shadowî makes clear, our health and the health of the planet depend on pushing livestock production in more sustainable directions.
I would hope that when the human population starts taking Global Warming seriously, the “human passion for meat” will end immediately. Also, after reading about the evacuation of 10,000 residents from Lohachara island off the coast of India that had vanished beneath the waves, and people needing to find refuge in new places that might become too crowded to accommodate them, that the human population will also consider making fewer babies. Overpopulation is not only a large contributor to the drain on resources in general, but in a generation or two, there won’t be much worth leaving to our children and grandchildren anyway. For example, researchers warn that seafood could run out by 2048, if something isn’t done to turn that around (besides killing the seals who are the Canadian government’s and fishing industry’s scapegoats-of-choice). Why wait until something devastating happens to the world’s food supply, to shift to a plant-based diet? That could be done during one’s next trip to the grocery store. If people won’t change their diet for the animals, or for their own health, maybe they’d do it for their children and grandchildren who will “inherit the earth” that this generation is trashing with unknowingly, or knowingly without remorse.
