From: Gary S. Gevisser
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 5:25 PM PT
To: Dr. John K. Pollard - JKPJKP@alum.mit.edu;
Devin Standard
Cc: rest; Oprah; Rush
Limbaugh; Professor Rabbi Abner Weiss; astilwell@worldbank.org; Michael Strauss
Esq. - International Monetary Fund; Lars Trupe; drudge@drudgereport.com;
Shunit; The Cow - BIG BEN aka The IT's writer; Marcia
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of The Diamond Invention; Jeffrey R. Krinsk - Finkelstein & Krinsk; Diana
Henriques - journalist New York Times - Big Jury Award in Injury Case Over
Keyboards - December 10, 1996; Randall Kaplan. co-founder of AKAMAI with Daniel
Lewin - 911 victim - Member of Sayeret Matkal - Elite Israeli Special Forces
unit; Kenneth Standard Esq. -Immediate Past President of the New State Bar
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KFMB TV - CBS; Ms Lulama Xingwana - Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy;
Helen Zille - Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa; Obed Mlaba - Mayor of Durban,
South Africa; South African Consulate General; South China Morning Post;
Stedman; Stefan Steiner; Stephanie Saul - New York Times;
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General of New York State - Linked to Prostitution Ring
President@whitehouse.gov
Subject: SELF-ABS-OR-BED - How Farming Animals Impacts the Environment:
Memo to
all Voyeurs:
Marie and
I are not quite vegan in our vegetarian diet now going on 18 months that of
course improves what was already a very healthy sex life which is all you
think, that helped allow us to make the very quick transition from meat eaters,
but maybe your children and grandchildren might see this Brown University study as one way to wake
you up as it suggests that the world being vegetarian-vegan reduces more
pollution than getting rid of all the cars.
How
Farming Animals Impacts the Environment:
Consuming the Planet Bite by Bite
Global
meat consumption has risen nearly 500% since the 1950s.1 The average
American now consumes nearly 900 pounds of animal products every year,2
and 10 billion farmed animals are slaughtered each year in the US alone.3
Over 95% of
these animals are confined in horrific factory farms like the one pictured at
right. This unprecedented consumption of animal products has major
environmental impacts. It wastes valuable resources, harms wildlife, destroys
vast quantities of ecologically valuable open space, and contributes to air and
water pollution and global warming. In 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (UN FAO) report Livestock’s Long Shadow stated that animal
agriculture is “one of the top two or three significant contributors to the
most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”4
For example, it causes more greenhouse gas emissions than even transportation,
and is the leading source of three of the six greenhouse gasses.5
Wasted
Resources: Our Future Squandered
Animal agriculture is an energy intensive, water depleting industry, consuming
over one third the fossil fuels and nearly half the water used in the US
yearly.6 The feeding, housing, transport, slaughter, and packaging
of animal products require heavy equipment, complex machinery, and massive
amounts of energy and water. The USDA calculates that it takes nearly 11
calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of meat, poultry, or fish protein.7
By contrast, soy, a complete protein, is 45 times more energy efficient.8
Water use is also extremely inefficient. Beef production alone accounts for
more water use in the US than all fruit and vegetable production combined.9
China, India, North Africa, and the US all use freshwater for meat production
faster than it can be replenished.10 Because of animal agriculture,
we are headed for a catastrophic drinking and irrigation water shortage.
Lastly, animal agriculture is the #1 cause of erosion, polluting waterways and
depleting soil needed for plant growth.11
A World of
Suffering for ALL Animals
Although animal agriculture only provides 17% of the world’s calories, it
uses 30% of the world’s land surface.12 Globally, every minute,
the equivalent of 7 football fields of land is bulldozed to make room for
livestock.13 In the US alone, over 825,000 square miles are used
exclusively for animal agriculture.14 This use of the land causes
forests to be cut, grasslands to be trampled, and water to be polluted, harming
native species. In the Amazon, 70% of “previous forested land is occupied by
pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder.”15 The
world’s most diverse ecosystem is being destroyed for meat and dairy
production. According to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, PhD, animal
agriculture causes 80% of world deforestation,16 depriving animals
of habitat. Grazing is the leading cause of endangered species.17
Millions of coyotes, wild horses, wolves, buffalo, elk, wild sheep, and deer
were and are killed in the U.S. to make room for food animals. Fishing causes
equal devastation: over 25% of all sea animals caught every year are “bycatch”,
non-target animals injured or killed then simply discarded.18
Fishing kills hundreds of thousands of sharks, dolphins, whales, mammals, and
threatened and endangered sea birds yearly.19
Pollution:
Water, Air, Human Disease
Animal
agriculture causes enormous pollution problems. The EPA estimates that the
industry causes more water pollution than all other sources combined.20
In the US, the industry produces 5 tons of manure every year for every person.21
The manure, combined with runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics, and
other chemicals, regularly overflows into streams and rivers. This water pollution
causes miscarriages, exposure to carcinogens, and outbreaks of bacteriological
diseases such as pfisteria, giardia, and cryptosporidium. Animal agriculture is
the leading cause of ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions, increasing acid rain
and global warming, and killing aquatic life.22
More Trouble
Down on the Farm
People living near factory farms suffer a wide range of health problems from
respiratory problems to permanent brain damage.23 Numerous health
problems from CJD (human mad cow disease) to bird flu to pfisteria are caused
by animal agriculture. Pesticide use is so common that 90% of human exposure
to dioxin, a teratogen and one of the deadliest carcinogens, comes from animal
products.24 And pervasive disease problems have led agribusiness
to turn to genetic engineering and irradiation, causing a new set of
environmental problems.
University of
Chicago geophysicists Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin calculate that each
American meat eater produces one and a half tons more greenhouse gasses every
year than each vegan.
Eshel and Martin calculate that the reductions caused by becoming vegan
outweigh the reductions caused by switching from driving a mid-size sedan to
driving a hybrid. 25 Overall, animal agriculture causes 18% of all
anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions, and is the leading cause
of methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia emissions.26 According to Dr.
James Hansen, Director of NASA's climate change studies, emissions of these
three gases trap far more heat than CO2.27 Our addiction
to animal products is changing our very climate.
Real Solutions
Needed
One oft-proposed
solution is organic or free range meat production. This will not alleviate the
problems—habitat depletion, pollution, loss of wildlife, excess energy and water
consumption, and the continuing unnecessary production and death of billions of
animals. Ammonia and methane are produced by ALL animal agriculture.
Industrialized animal production and increased consumption of animal products
have gone hand-in-hand, and it’s not feasible to imagine that most consumers
will be able to pay the much higher prices often charged for organic/free range
flesh. Veganism is the real solution: a 2004 study by the US Department of
Energy found that dairy produces 29% of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas
emissions, which account for about half of total greenhouse gas emissions, and
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization stated that dairy produces more
greenhouse gas emissions per day than pigs, poultry (meat and egg laying) and sheep
combined.28 A Cornell University, New York dairy study proved that
over 60% of dairy greenhouse gas emissions come from manure and cattle
digestion, which would all be avoided by being vegan.29 Furthermore,
so much additional land would be needed that there is simply no feasible way
for all farm animals to “range freely.”
Go Vegan—for the
Planet, the Animals & YOU!
A plant-based diet offers the only viable environmental solution because it
consumes far fewer resources—land, food, water, and fossil fuels. Depending on
the type of meat, it takes 6-17 times more land to feed the average American
meat eater than to feed a vegetarian.30 Brown University’s World
Hunger Program estimates that switching to a vegan diet could feed twice as
many humans as one in which 25% of calories come from meat31: US
farm animals are fed enough soy and grains to feed the US population 5 times
over.32 Being vegetarian also saves 1 acre of trees a year,33
and soy protein requires half the water needed to produce chicken protein and
1/8th the water needed to produce beef protein.34 Lastly, a
person who lives 70 years as a vegan will save nearly 11,000 gallons of gas35and
prevent over 100 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.36 We all need
to make changes to save our planet. Eliminating animal products is the best,
easiest, most humane and cost effective way to do this. Go vegan to boycott
cruelty & protect the Earth!