Animal Agriculture is Killing Our Planet
by Garth Davis, MD on June 18, 2015The Pope’s diatribe on climate change is very strongly worded. He says the world is looking like a pile of filth.
The problem is he looks only at big business and transportation as areas to improve the climate. This is a HUGE problem with all the climate change talks.
The science community has demonstrated that climate change is real and that humans play a larger part. Everybody, except for big business and republicans, now agree that something needs to be done. Problem is nobody is prepared to do what it really takes.
Understand this: animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the transportation industry. Animal agriculture is also the main culprit in deforestation. We are basically removing the earth’s lungs to create land for cows to graze.
Animal agriculture is also responsible for unbelievable amounts of pollution. The waste is often dumped into man-made waste lakes that seep into the ground and poison our rivers and oceans.
It is crazy to me that in California, where drought is severe, that no one is mentioning that animal agriculture is the greatest consumer of water. It takes 400 gallons of water to produce one hamburger.
I am very happy that people are beginning to understand that nature is valuable, but we have to come to the realization that our absurdly high consumption of animals is the main contributor to the destruction of our environment. Every dollar spent on meat increases the demand on our environment.
I usually post just on nutrition for health but I do think it is important to understand that the health of the environment will affect the health of the people.