Climate Change is A Choice

Climate change is about choices – our choices.  We all know that we face a serious threat in the form of climate change, especially in Florida.  Sea levels are expected to rise, thus eliminating miles of coastal areas.  Global warming melts polar ice caps and mountain glaciers causing increases in sea levels that threaten coastal areas and small island nations.  Food, water, and security issues are exacerbated by the droughts and floods brought on by global warming.  Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, and floods have been scientifically linked to greenhouse gasses - carbon dioxide and methane – in the atmosphere.  There is a deep injustice in climate change.  Rich countries grow richer while causing the problem.  The poorest countries are the most affected, and have the least responsibility for the causes

Warming of the climate is directly linked to human activity and choices.  The meat and dairy based diet, the livestock sector, generates the most greenhouse gas emissions according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report.  The massive amount of animal feces produced in factory farms is the largest source of airborne methane in the United States.  Methane traps heat in the atmosphere almost 100 times more effectively than carbon dioxide does.

Pollution is about choices.  Animals raised for the meat and dairy based diet in the United States produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population does – 86,000 pounds per second.  A typical pig factory generates a quantity of raw waste equal to a city of 50,000 people, but without the sewage system.  The runoff from factory farms pollutes rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined.  Chicken, hog, and cattle excrement have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated ground water in 17 states. 

Use of scarce resources is also about choices.  Of all agricultural land in the U.S., nearly 80% is used to raise animals for food.  Twenty times more land is required to feed a meat-eater than to feed a vegan.  Raising animals for food consumes nearly half the water used in the U.S.  It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.  More than one third of all the raw materials and non-renewable fossil fuels used in the U.S. are required to raise animals for food.  This includes fuel to produce fertilizer for the crops that are fed to animals, oil to run the trucks that take them to slaughter, electricity to freeze their carcasses, and much more. 

Trees and forests combat rising temperatures, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and provide a defense against climate change.   However, more than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals.  Currently the Amazon rain forest in Brazil is being burned down to provide grazing land for animals raised to be murdered and cannibalized.

The choices you make impact not only you and your family, but the planet, other people, and the billions of sentient beings that are killed in ways that would horrify any compassionate person.  There needs to be a change in human values, hearts, and minds.  We need to plant more threes, and we need to eat a plant based vegan diet.