Earth Song

I happened to watch the video for Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" this week. It'd been so long since I had seen it, but it comes closer than anything I have seen in a long time to showing the kind of desperate, heart-breaking, incomprehensible grief and intensity I feel over the devastating destruction of the planet and abhorrent suffering of all living beings.  Such a grief and anger and helplessness that goes beyond expression and comprehension.  HOW CAN ANYONE ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN, to choose greed and self-interest over the protection and sanctity of lives, of LIFE?  I don't understand.  I only hope that more and more people are inspired to do something, anything!  Each action, no matter how big or small, makes a difference and fights back!

Quote of the Week: The Miracle of Earth

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Quote of the Week: Companion With Earth

"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life."

~Rachel Carson

The Breathtaking Works of Terje Sorgjerd

Thanks to Treehugger, I just discovered the breathtaking works of Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd. These are some of the most beautiful and majestic images I ever seen. "The Mountain" and "The Aurora" display the ethereal awesomeness of Earth and our universe, the incomprehensible, dream-like awe of the celestial landscape. Watching
"The Mountain's" time lapse of the Milky Way as seen from atop El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain, and "The Aurora's" time lapse northern lights as filmed above the Arctic Circle near the border of Russia, steal my breath and make my heart swell with joy and peace. :) How can anything be this beautiful?

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Today is October 15th and Blog Action Day 2010! Powered by change.org, this year's Blog Action Day will bring together thousands of bloggers from all over the world to help shed more light on water issues around the globe.

Here are some facts that illustrate the severity of the global water problem, and why Blog Action Day 2010 is such an important opportunity to raise awareness about the issue:

* Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it's no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.

* More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.

* Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.

* The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.

Petitions by Change.orgStart a Petition »

One of the most negative impacts upon the global state of water is animal agriculture and the consumption of meat and other animal-derived foods. Subsequently, transitioning to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is one of the most critical actions you can take to help shift ongoing degradation of the world's water supply (and the environment as a whole). Here are some important reasons to go vegan or vegetarian for water, for the planet, and for and all of its inhabitants:

* It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that's just one meal! It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States. (Blog Action Day 2010)

* The livestock sector is probably the largest contributor of water pollution, the major sources being animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for animal feed crops, and sediments from eroded pastures. (EcoHearth)

* The largest amount of water the agriculture sector uses for livestock is to provide them with food. The feed production industry uses huge amounts of water to irrigate the land on which food is grown for all these animals, which have been bred to provide people products like meat, dairy and eggs. It has been estimated that the livestock sector may account for about 45 percent of the global budget of water used in food production (source Zimmer and Renault 2003). (Vegan Peace)

* Plant-based diets only require around one-third of the land and water needed to produce a typical Western diet. Farmed animals consume much more protein, water and calories than they produce, so far greater quantities of crops and water are needed to produce animal ‘products’ to feed humans than are needed to feed people direct on a plant-based diet. With water and land becoming scarcer globally, world hunger increasing and the planet’s population rising, it is much more sustainable to eat plant foods direct than use up precious resources feeding farmed animals. (Vegan Society)

* In most of the developing world, untreated manure enters water used by people for drinking, washing and bathing. Along with the manure flow lots of other undesirables including pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and their breakdown products, not to mention the surplus of nitrogen and phosphorus coming from fertilizers placed on the feed crops. All of this livestock-related influx upsets balance in nature. It can lead to fish kills and algal blooms which can deaden lakes. (Vegetarian Resource Group)

* It takes 5,000 gallons (18,900 Litres)of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons (94.5 Litres).A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons (1134 Litres) of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons(15,120 Litres) of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year. (useecofriendlyproducts.com)

While these facts may be grim, there is hope for real solutions as more and more people around the world are waking up to the clean water crisis. It's not too late to join the efforts of Blog Action Day 2010! By registering your blog, sharing something you've written or come across about water, embedding an action widget, signing the petition, fundraising for clean water and spreading the word, you're helping shed light on an often over-looked, yet incredibly important issue.

Be a part of this amazing day of blog activism!

The Best Hike Today!

I had the best hike today, filled with unexpected wild encounters! Every day that I hike I swear I will take my camera, and this is one of those days I am kicking myself for forgetting. Here's why...

So I started off with one of my favorite sections of trail, one of those secluded, quiet ones off the beaten path that mountain bikes have made. I wasn't more than 5 minutes along when I tripped over a branch along the path, and, when I caught my footing (hey, I can't be graceful all the time), there hopping in front of me was a little frog (toad?)! The first one I have seen this season! I knelt down and she hopped into my hand and we had a little chat about life. Then she had to go and hopped off- she had a meeting. So I moved on, feeling light...

Not even 5 minutes later, suddenly to my left I heard a huge movement and a heavy thump like hooves and sensed something at the corner of my eye. I gasped in surprise when I saw what it was- leaping away from me was a gorgeous deer! She was so beautiful and elegant. She stopped a few hundred feet from me and turned around and just watched me, and I said hello. I slowly continued along the trail stopping every few feet to take her in, until finally I stood totally still, meeting her gaze. We stood like that for what seemed like minutes, looking into one another's eyes, before I left her in peace and moved on. I had to go- I had a meeting.

THEN, on my way out of the forest, I was crossing a stream bed that was more muck than water despite the weekend's rain, and came across another frog! This one was just like the other but smaller and chubbier. So cute! I knelt down, and she hopped into my hand so we could chat about life. Then she said she had to go- and peed on me. lol














I love these tiny flowers that grow in the woods. It's the little joys...

There just seemed to be so much life and energy in the woods today. Everywhere there was rustling and movement. Everywhere there was lushness and expression and beauty and color. So many little details to awe me. I swear that when it seems I am down to the last bit of light I have inside, Earth offers just what I need to fill back up, to sustain me. I feel so blessed by that, so blessed to have the awareness and gratitude and love to take that in.

It's doubly frustrating and enraging, then, to see people who don't have that respect for Earth and life and who don't, can't, or won't see the tremendous, essential gifts the planet has to share with us and sustain us. To see human beings take it all for granted, strip it, abuse and neglect it, degrade and and destroy it is heart-wrenching. WHY? Why isn't the entire race outraged and doing everything it can to protect our Earth?! While on my hike, I couldn't help but think of the oil spill and the terror and destruction the ocean and the life in and around it are going through. I've been feeling so helpless to stop it, to do something, and I want to scream "STOP!" Just... stop.

But instead I do what I can and soak up the amazing experience I had on my hike and just *exhale*.

Blog Action Day 2009- Vertical Urban Farms: The "Ups" and the Downs

I've been reading quite a bit lately about urban agriculture and the concept of vertical farms, tall, sustainable buildings within cities that would house massive agricultural production of crops and animals raised for food. The vertical farm is being explored as a feasible alternative to current food production as modern farming practices, climate change, environmental degradation, and an ever-expanding world population form a dangerous cycle that is reducing the availability and productivity of land and promising devastating food shortages. It's extraordinary and space-age really (I picture The Jetsons), the idea that farms as we now conceive of them that spread across vast, fertile lands may someday be replaced by skyscrapers of orchards, towers of livestock, fields of corn caged cinder block. It's both compelling and terrifying.

"High rise farms" in cities could be a truly viable solution to worldwide concern about the dire consequences of what many see as inevitable and devastating climate change. These consequences include potential devastation of crops by new disease, pests, and vulnerability that may result from a rise in temperature and rain pattern changes. Add to this the continual reduction in amount of fertile land available for raising food due to the ravages of modern farming practices and soil depleted after trying to keep up with supplying nourishment to the world's ever-expanding population. Considering that traditional soil farming may thus become unsustainable, the vertical farm holds much promise.

Growing crops in specially-engineered fortresses of agriculture that disappear into the clouds would address serious problems like massive food shortages and lack of fertile soil. Although hugely expensive to build, a 30-story farm tower could feed 50,000 people in a teeny,tiny fraction of the land it would take to do the same with modern farming, according to Dickson Despommier, the "father" of the vertical farm concept. Crops would be grown without soil using hydroponics and aeroponics, eliminating the need for dangerous pesticides and increasing food output, accessibility, and quality. Crops grown in climate-controlled spaces could be protected from pests, drought, and similar events related to the natural environment.

Urban farm structures could better meet the demands of the local food movement, while drastically reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions from farm machinery, vehicles used in transport, and production. Farm lands would be free to recover from damage and to replenish. These urban skyscrapers would be llargely self-sustaining, recycling water over and over and using its waste for energy, heat, or fertilizer . Vertical farms could produce year round, and the influx of plants into cities could help cleanse the air of pollution and improve quality of life in cities. All of this while boosting agriculture and the economy mega-fold as production capacity soars. Sounds idyllic, yes? I find the concept is terrifying...

Of course we want to find solutions to ensure our viability and secure our future in the face of climate change's potentially disastrous effects. It's intelligent, wise, necessary, and hope-instilling. We'd be stupid not to invest in doing so. Then why have issue with technology that could resolve so many critical issues? The reasons span from the cultural significance of the traditional farmer and the importance of connection to Earth to the potential negative impact on the victims of factory farming- animals and people. The feeling at the forefront for me as I learn more about vertical farms is overwhelming, deep sadness that we've let it get to this point of do or die. Conceiving that Earth could become depleted and sick to the point that food must be grown in human-made constructs is impossible. But research into expansion of urban agriculture makes it very real. And I worry...

I worry about what food become without nourishment from the earth? Would the 'farmer' as we now know her become a mythical superhero in tall tales about working in tune with the planet to 'magically' create sustenance? Would the 'farm' become a cultural relic devoid of the rich history and meaning it currently has? Food grown in buildings reaching into the sky sounds void of meaning, empty of energy and life. The magic of growing food in the earth is feeling the soil in the hands, the feet grounding solidly on the land, and the connection to the cycle of life as we watch the sun, skies, and Earth make something from nothing to feed us. The magic of farming the land is the larger understanding of life that happens when we eat food grown from the ground, the joy that comes eating food fresh from its source of life. It's not... "natural."

Humans have become so disconnected from that life source, arrogantly taking it for granted as we plunder it at whim. Vertical farms will only exacerbate the shallow relationship between being and Earth, pulling us further and further "up" and away from understanding the environmental destruction we have caused and implementing action to stop and even reverse it. I fear that this growing disconnect will lead to more complacency about resolving climate change and make stronger the self-righteous idea that humans can manipulate the world and conquer nature- the planet and all of its beings.

I worry about the well-being of many of these beings, as the raising of animals for food is also being explored within the vertical farm concept, perpetuating their victimization by human arrogance and the factory farm. Some fans of the vertical farm dream of "a high-rise 'Pig City' 40-stories high where the pigs would spend their entire lives from conception to slaughter. A structure called an "Agropark" would house 100, 000 pigs on one floor! Movement toward a sustainable future should include a push toward more compassionate interaction with animals as well as the planet.

The modern factory farm inflicts terrible suffering from abuse and neglect on animals raised for food. Housing livestock in high-rises would bring a food source closer to urban residents and dramatically decrease the factory farm's enormous environmental footprint. However, it will multiply a thousand-fold the number of animals imprisoned in food production, sentenced to lives of pain and suffering without opportunity for healthy relationships, fresh air and movement, freedom, and peace.

I worry because I have yet to find an article on vertical farming that specifically mentions the strong connection between climate change and factory farming of animals along with increasing meat and dairy demand . Animals being raised for meat and dairy and the crops needed to feed them lead to widespread and undeniable destruction of land, water, and air while using available, fertile land to grow feed for animals robs billions of starving people of nourishing food . It would seem, then, that any modern discussion about a sustainable future in terms of food production should include talk of animal agriculture as one of the biggest contributors to climate change and of the positive impact wide-scale reduction in meat and dairy consumption would have.

It would seem that serious efforts and monies should be invested in an obvious, less costly, and more accessible tool in diverting climate change like implementing practices and legislation to decrease human reliance on animals for food. The successful marketing of and transition to a more meat-free diet seems quite preferable to the urban farm high-rises and the loss of the farm and farmer as a cultural icon and our connection to the land. The information I have read about vertical farms seem to accept current farming methods as fixed and focus on how to adapt the earth to meet our needs, rather than investigate changing the food industry to adapt to the needs of the planet.

The Web Out Loud: What's Worth Paying Attention To This Week?

My latest finds worth paying attention for the ethical web surfer: great articles, awesome sites, and other juicy tidbits!

Articles

Animals Don’t Want to Eat GMOs, So Why Are We?, healthychild.org

There is No Vegan's Dilemma, PowellsBooks.blog

4 Million Pounds of Space Junk Polluting Earth’s Orbit, ecoworldly.com

In-vitro meat: Would lab-burgers be better for us and the planet?, cnn.com

Monsanto's Global War on Farmers, organicconsumers.org

New Film on Ocean Acidification Reveals Unseen Face of CO2 Pollution, solveclimate.com

Elephants Pass Self-Awareness Test Passed Only By Humans, Gorillas, and Dolphins, ecoworldly.com

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, MelanieJoy.org

Activism

Protest Ringling Brothers' Animal Cruelty! Sign PETA's petition calling on the USDA to seize the abused, neglected, and heartbroken elephants Ringling hauls around the country in filthy boxcars and forces to perform under the constant threat of punishment. Watch PETA's undercover videos from RinglingBeatsAnimals.com if you need convincing.

Tell your Senators that the path out of world poverty isn't through Monsanto and GMO crops. Sign this CREDO petition to promote helping farmers in developing countries produce and distribute their own food, rather than implementing an Obama administration goal to use genetically modified seeds and chemicals as tools to fight hunger.

Cool Sites

Your Daily Vegan: the daily vegan spin- Your source for all things vegan: intriguing facts, thoughtful editorials, intelligent quips, food talk, news bits, and so much more, all in one place.

Green Lashes and Fashion- Love this blog by a fashionista with a compassionate conscience! Stay informed about ethical fashion, natural beauty, green living, and vegan/vegetarian food- way cool!

Environmental Graffiti- A veritable playground for the eco-conscious, planet loving, ethical, and off-the-wall. An "eclectic mix of the most bizarre, funny and interesting environmental news on the planet... on behalf of all environmentalists who don’t take themselves too seriously and compile it into a daily blog." What lured me in initially were breath-taking, brilliant photos of animal life, like these.

Other Stuff

T-shirts upcycled from plastic bottles?
Two companies, be present and A Lot To Say, launched tees made from recycled plastic last week! They are super cute on top of being super green! be present states on their site that 3-5 plastic bottles are diverted from landfills with every tee made, and A Lot to Say calls their 100%-recycled-bottle tees "eco-revolutionary." Maybe plastic is fashionable after all. ;)

I am in love with this bike! Madsen's Cargo Bikes are dream cycles for those who rely on or choose biking for doing errands like grocery shopping and even moving! I swoon every time I see one... If only I could even think of affording it... ;)

A Global Movement for Weekly Meat-Free Days

Recently, the Meat-Free Mondays campaign and the city of Ghent, Belgium's meat-free Thursdays started an important effort to promote vegetarianism and reduce the consumption of meat to help the environment. Going meat-free even just one day per week will have a huge impact in helping to curb climate change, reduce world hunger, and improve animal welfare (guardian.co.uk). Participating is a way any one of us can help the environment. According to Veg News, there is a global movement happening to encourage cities and countries around the world to skip meat one day per week on an ongoing basis, which would save enormous amounts of land and water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The people at meatfreepetition.com would like everyone to sign their online petition to make this happen in the US and Canada, EU and UK, Australia and New Zealand, Israel, Indonesia, and Taiwan and Hong Kong. A cool thing is that anybody anywhere can vote for a meat-free day in any other city or country, not just their own.

Sign here now, and help the planet, people, and all beings!

Pigs Have Feelings, Too, and Other Reasons Not to Eat Them

In this powerful article, GoVeg.com reminds us that there are plenty of reasons not to eat pigs! Please note that some of the videos linked to here may show graphic images of animal cruelty.

1. Porking You Up
It’s a fact—ham, sausage, and bacon strips will go right to your hips. Eating pork products, which are loaded with artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, is a good way to increase your waistline and increase your chances of developing deadly diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, asthma, and impotence. Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Plus, meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than pure vegetarians are. Every time you eat animal products, you’re also ingesting bacteria, antibiotics, dioxins, hormones, and a host of other toxins that can accumulate in your body and remain there for years. Learn more about animal products and your health.

2. Pigs Have Feelings Too
Ninety-seven percent of pigs in the United States today are raised in factory farms, where they will never run across sprawling pastures, bask in the sun, breathe fresh air, or do anything else that comes naturally to them. Crowded into warehouses with nothing to do and nowhere to go, they are kept on a steady diet of drugs to keep them alive and make them grow faster, but the drugs cause many of the animals to become crippled under their own bulk. Learn more about cruelty to pigs. Check out these videos from pig farms in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

3. Pigs and Playstations
Think that you can outplay a pig on your Playstation? You may be surprised. According to research, pigs are much smarter than dogs, and they even do better at video games than some primates. In fact, pigs are extremely clever animals who form complex social networks and have excellent memories. Eating a pig is like eating your dog! As actor Cameron Diaz put it after hearing that pigs have the mental capacities of a 3-year-old human: "[Eating bacon is] like eating my niece!" Learn more about [the hidden lives of] pigs.

4. Pigs Prefer Mud, Not Crud
Pigs are actually very clean animals. If they are given sufficient space, pigs are careful not to soil the areas where they sleep or eat. And forget the silly saying “sweating like a pig”—pigs can’t even sweat! That’s why they bathe in water or mud to cool off. But in factory farms, they’re forced to live in their own feces and vomit and even amid the corpses of other pigs. Conditions are so filthy that at any given time, more than one-quarter of pigs suffer from mange—think of your worst case of poison ivy, and imagine having to suffer from it for the rest of your life. Learn more about what happens to pigs in factory farms. Check out the mange-ridden pigs on these South Dakota and Nebraska pig farms.

5. Farming Family Values
Factory farms are pure hell for pigs and their babies. Mother pigs spend most of their lives in tiny “gestation” crates, which are so small that the animals are unable to turn around or even lie down comfortably. They are repeatedly impregnated until they are slaughtered. Piglets, who are taken away from their distraught mothers after just a few weeks, have their tails chopped off, their teeth are clipped off with pliers, and the males are castrated—all without painkillers. Learn more about cruelty to pigs.

6. The Manure Is Blowing in the Wind …
A pig farm with 5,000 animals produces as much fecal waste as a city of 50,000 people. In 1995, 25 million gallons of putrid hog urine and feces spilled into a North Carolina river, immediately killing between 10 and 14 million fish. To get around water pollution limits, factory farms will frequently take the tons of urine and feces that are stored in cesspools and turn them into liquid waste that they spray into the air. This manure-filled mist is carried away by the wind and inhaled by the people who live nearby. Learn more about how factory farming damages the environment.

7. Bacteria-Laden Bacon and Harmful Ham
Extremely crowded conditions, poor ventilation, and filth in factory farms cause such rampant disease in pigs that 70 percent of them have pneumonia by the time they’re sent to the slaughterhouse. In order to keep pigs alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them and to promote unnaturally fast growth, the industry keeps pigs on a steady diet of the antibiotics that we depend on to treat human illnesses. This overuse of antibiotics has led to the development of “superbacteria,” or antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. The ham, bacon, and sausage that you’re eating may make the drugs that your doctor prescribes the next time you get sick completely ineffective. Learn more about the effect of eating meat from sick, diseased, and drugged animals.

8. Hell on Wheels
More than 170,000 pigs die in transport each year, and more than 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Transport trucks, which carry pigs hundreds of miles through all weather extremes with no food or water, regularly flip over, throwing injured and dying animals onto the road. These terrified and injured animals are rarely offered veterinary care, and most languish in pain for hours; some even bleed to death on the side of the road. After an accident in April 2005, Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter told one reporter, “I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time.” Learn more about cruelty to pigs during transport.

9. Killing Them Without Kindness
A typical slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every hour, which makes it impossible for them to be given humane, painless deaths. The U.S. Department of Agriculture documented 14 humane slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who “were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.” Because of improper stunning methods and extremely fast line speeds, many pigs are still alive when they are dumped into scalding-hot hair-removal tanks—they literally drown in scalding-hot water. Learn more about what happens to pigs at slaughter.

10. Ditch the Bacon and Get Fakin’
Save pigs from hell and yourself from bad health by feasting on faux pork products instead. Stuff a sandwich full of Yves brand veggie ham slices, or throw some Lightlife Smart Bacon into a sizzling skillet—the freezer and “health food” sections of your local grocery or health food stores are packed full of these and other tasty substitutes. Check out VegCooking.com for hundreds of recipes, product recommendations, vegan meal plans, and a shopping guide. Think before you eat another sausage link—order a free vegetarian starter kit full of delicious recipes and celebrity features today!

Go Veg- Nurture Yourself and Earth!

Choosing not to eat meat makes an enormously important ecological impact. Here are some mind-blowing facts about how living a veg lifestyle can benefit the earth:

*Water- Each pound of meat not produced could provide a typical household water for a whole month! Roughly 2,500 gallons of water is required to produce that pound of meat- I3 to 15 times as much water needed to produce the same amount of plant protein. (NAVS) In addition, livestock produces billions of tons of waste/manure every year, contaminating water supplies, killing fish, poisoning drinking water, and contributing to birth defects and disease (Nutting).

*Wasted Resources- It takes up to 16 pounds of soybeans and grains to produce 1 lb. of beef (GoVeg.com)! If Americans alone reduced their meat consumption by 10%, over one-billion people throughout the world could be saved from starvation (Vegi Buro).

*Topsoil erosion- Every year in the U.S. alone, several billion tons of topsoil are lost each year on cropland and grazing land- almost all of which can be attributed to livestock agriculture. This is about the equivalent of losing four inches of topsoil over four million acres of cropland! (Veg. Soc. of CO)

*Fossil Fuel- It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein, but just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans (NAVS). Forty pounds of soybeans are produced by the same amount of fossil fuel required to produce one pound of meat (Nutting)!

*Tropical rainforests – It takes 55 square feet of rainforest to make 1 hamburger from imported cattle! The demand for meat is a huge factor in the devastation of the world’s rainforests, which are being destroyed at an alarming 100 acres per second, in part to provide cheap beef for export. Every lost acre means less oxygen due to destroyed vegetation, extinct species, and more carbon dioxide to contribute to global warming. (NAVS)

*Climate- Livestock are the cause of 15-20 percent of global methane emissions- cows produce one pound of methane for every 2 pounds of meat they yield. That's about 40 percent more than vehicle emissions and more than all the homes and offices in the world put together! (NAVS) One molecule of methane contributes 25 times more to the Greenhouse effect than one molecule of carbon (Vegi-Buro).

*If you ate plant-based meals every other day for a year, you would save 487 pounds of CO2. Based on this figure, going veggie for one week would save about 19 pounds of CO2. (eartheasy.com) **~This translates into 106,792 pounds saved per year by EtsyVeg members alone!~**

* Fifteen total vegetarians can be fed on the same amount of land needed to feed one person on a meat-based diet (NAVS).

In other words, every person who chooses to go veg could potentially save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, save valuable rainforest and land, protect wildlife, increase the food supply for the hungry, reduce energy use, and reduce global warming. Check out some easy changes you can make to reduce your impact on the planet, and/or to go veg!