Meat is Hurting Our Environment !

Some people may not understand how their bacon, ribs, hamburger, or orange chicken could possibly be hurting our environment. What some may not see is that through this process to keep up with our high demands for meat our water resources get contaminated, allows global warming to occur, and land degradation.

In the photo is shows how much food, water, land, and fossil fuels go into making just a quarter pound of beef. All these resources could be saved or used for a more efficient purpose than just for a quarter pound of meat. Has the photo above shows we are putting so much energy and time to only get a what our society would consider now a small amount of meat.

Water Pollution

Just like us, animals need a whole lot of water. To simply make a pound of beef one needs to provide 1,799 gallons of water, 576 gallons for a pound of pork, 468 gallons for a pound chicken and 216 gallons for a pound soy beans. Now picture having to supply water to more than 465 million tons of meat in 2050 if we continue to consume large amounts of meats. This is not only thing cutting our water supply, but also polluting our water source because the factory farms.
Animals produces ten times more waste than human population and there is not really place for it to go, but to be used as fertilizer. Their feces can be very contaminated with nitrogen and phosphorus because the food animals eat are contaminated with 37% pesticide. This later contaminates water with bacterias, hormones, antibiotics, and toxic chemicals. This industrial farms store the animals' feces it in places called lagoons until they need it as fertilizer. To the right is a photo of a lagoon and a factory farm. You can tell it is a lagoon by the ugly color of the water. Instead of having a pit of poop we could have farm land to grow vegetables or for better usages.
These lagoons average about 20 acres and 15 ft deep filled with millions of gallons feces. When it is finally used for fertilizer it sinks into the ground and then can contaminate our groundwater, and runs off into freshwater. There also are times when these brown lagoon spill. In 2005 in Lowville, New York a spill consumed the Black River and killed nearly 250,000 fishes and polluted 35,000 miles of river in 22 surrounding states. Not only did it contaminate the river it also contaminated ground water of 17 states. With excess of nutrients in the manure, these spills cause large grow of algae which reduces the amount of oxygen in the water and causes fish to die. The pollution of these lagoons also contaminating and destroying our ocean ecosystem. This may lead to certain marine life numbers to drop or even lead to extinction.

In the link below it speaks about how our livestock is the largest sector to water pollution and "coastal dead zones". Also what well happen in the long run if we continue pollute our environment.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/

Land Degradation

Another issue effecting our environment is land degradation. These industrial farms need to more land to raise these large amount of livestock. Already farm animals use 2/3 of available of agriculture land. The U.S has nearly 55% soil erosion because of our high demand of meat. This high need of meat is killing our soil that we may need one day, but it well no longer be good anymore. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, 

 "More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals."

This is not only happening but in other countries has while. In the Amazon has created about 70% of the land for cattle ranching and pastures. This idea is known has deforestation. This has push animals out of their homes and may also going back to the idea of extinction. This also apples to our ocean life.

In the political cartoon below is portraying that we are only hurting ourselves by clearing out forests for our human wants. By not being to see this it is like death is blinding us from reality. The cutting down of the trees is polluting the world around us.

Global Warming
Methane is found to store more heat than carbon dioxide. Animals release methane when they burp, fart, and breath. In November 2006 FAO identified that livestock is a bigger factor to global warming than our transportation sector with the statistics 18% vs 13%. Although some may argue that the production of plants also needs energy and water; however, according to PETA's article," Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources" it states that, 

"It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein."

Animal protein production releases more carbon dioxide than plant production. Livestock is found to be tied to GHG emission. If we switch our diet to a meatless or just by eating less meat we would save 1.49 tons of carbon dioxide than switching all our cars to hybrids, 1.05 ton carbon dioxide.
 A supporter of reducing our meat consumption is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which he recently won a Nobel Peace Prize.

This link below speaks more about Rajendra Pachauri and his reasoning for why we cut down on  the amount of meat we consume. He talks about how this large demand for eat and production of meat is causing climate change. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink

In the quotes below it speaks about how livestock was created by our human population. Livestock is creating more carbon dioxide that the plants can not keep with it. We are destroying a majority of plant masses because we are making space to expand our industrial farms.

"Livestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO₂ exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover, while over time an equilibrium of CO₂ may exist between the amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today, tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO₂, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to the air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the carbon-absorption system.)"

If we continue to increase livestock and decrease plants life than we are for sure going to burn our planet up because there well not be anymore plants to stuck up the carbon dioxide because we've destroyed them to help support our high demand for meats. Our carbon footprint is predicted to grow bigger and bigger has our appetite for meats grows. We can easily avoid all this unnecessary pollution simple by cutting back on our consumption of meat.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michellemaisto/2012/04/28/eating-less-meat-is-worlds-best-chance-for-timely-climate-change-say-experts/