Forum

TruthMove Forum

TruthMove Forum » TruthMove Main Forum

Eat less meat to save the planet - UN (3 posts)

  1. truthmod
    Administrator

    Somehow I don't think Alex Jones and the libertarians are going to be taking this advice.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7797594...

    The group of international scientists said the greatest cause of greenhouse gas emissions is food production and the use of fossil fuels.

    But while the use of coal and oil could be gradually replaced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the world will always need to eat.

    As the world population increases it is feared that the production of food will become the main cause of climate change and environmental degradation.

    The International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management pointed out that agricultural production accounts for 70 per cent of global freshwater production, 38 per cent of land use and 19 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

    The report, that will be presented to world governments, said the only way to feed the world while reducing climate change is to switch to more a more vegetarian diet.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  2. Mr-Anderson
    Member

    Is there something wrong with eating meat, even if it's organic?

    A balanced omnivore diet is something I can live with :P

    Posted 14 years ago #
  3. mark
    Member

    Vegetarian Diets: Energy Efficient Eating


    http://www.oilempire.us/peak-grain.html

    The fastest way that agribusiness could reduce oil consumption would be to decrease factory farm production of meat. This shift would probably be more controversial than relocalization or organic standards.

    Adopting a largely plant based diet in the rich parts of the world is not an issue of animal rights or nutrition - but it is needed survival in the era of Peak Oil and climate change.

    Humans did evolve to be omnivorous, but the fast food diet of meat at every meal is a new, toxic innovation. The traditional Chinese style diet of a small amount of meat to flavor the rest of the meal is probably compatible with our vegetarian oriented digestive tract, but our factory farmed meat-three-times-a-day diet is unsustainable under any circumstances.

    Most estimates of the amount of fossil energy and other inputs needed to produce food assume a meat oriented diet, ignoring the fact that much less oil, fertilizer and water is needed to feed vegetarians. Even rice requires much less water than hamburgers!

    Raising chickens on a small farm or suburban backyard for eggs (and the occasional meal of meat) is not as energy consumptive as overcrowded factory farms, but these sensible practices are unlikely to satisfy current rates of meat consumption. Grass fed beef is healthier for the land and the eater than grain fed beef, but free range cows cannot substitute completely for feed lots. A sane food system would produce less beef.


    “It is actually quite astounding how much energy is wasted by the standard American diet-style. Even driving many gas-guzzling luxury cars can conserve energy over walking -- that is, when the calories you burn come from the standard American diet!”

    -- John Robbins, “Diet for a New America” Stillpoint Publishing (1987) 


    Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland) on vegetarian diets:

    “in a former life, one of the things I did was to be a farmer. I would caution that we need to be careful how optimistic we are about how much liquid fuels we're going to get from agriculture ... a fifth of the world will go to bed hungry ...
If we lived lower on the food chain we would have some energy to invest [in biofuels] ...
if you were to eat the corn and soybeans rather than the pig and chicken that ate the corn and soybeans, you would have about 10 times more to eat ...
it takes three pounds of corn to produce one pound of pig but that's three pounds of largely dry corn to produce one pound of really wet pig... you don't eat the bones so the actual conversion ratio if you're lucky is ten to one, for the steer it's probably twenty to one”

    
- Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, May 8, 2006
, “Peak Oil and the Environment” conference in Washington, D.C.


    “American feed (for livestock) takes so much energy to grow that it might as well be a petroleum byproduct.”


    -- “The Price of Beef,” WorldWatch, 
July/Aug 1994

    Posted 14 years ago #

Reply

You must log in to post.