A very interesting and provocative article....it's really interesting to think about the connection between the "green" and vegetarian movements - can one who truly considers themselves green really be a non-vegetarian considering the environmental toll it takes on the globe???
How the coming vegetarian revolution will arrive by force.
By Jim Motavalli
I have a prediction: Sooner than you might think, this will
be a vegetarian world. Future generations will find the idea of eating meat
both morally absurd and logistically impossible. Of course, one need only look
at the booming meat industry, the climbing rates of meat consumption in the
developing world, and the menu of just about any restaurant to call me crazy. But
already, most people know that eating red meat is bad for their health and
harmful for the planet. It's getting them to actually change their diet that's
the hard part -- and that's exactly why it won't happen by choice.
Going by the numbers, eating meat is pretty hard to justify
for the even moderately health-conscious. A National Cancer Institute report
released last March found that people who ate the most red meat were, as the New
York Times put it, "most likely to die from cancer, heart disease and
other causes." The biggest abstainers "were least likely to die." Those who eat five ounces of meat daily, (the equivalent of one and a half
Quarter Pounders or Big Macs) increase their risk from cancer or heart disease
by 30 percent compared to those who eat two-thirds of an ounce daily -- a stark
difference.
The environmental impact is also crystal clear -- and similarly
appalling. "Livestock's
Long Shadow," a 2006 report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organzation (FAO), found that livestock is a major player in climate change,
accounting for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions (measured in carbon
dioxide equivalents), or more than the entire global transportation system.
The obvious solution to both health and environmental disasters
is to stop eating meat altogether. But this is easier said than done. Even the
studies addressing the impact of meat on the planet downplay vegetarianism, as
if the authors are nervous to press it on people. Going veggie is not even proposed
as one of the FAO's "mitigation options" (which instead include conservation
tillage, organic farming, and better
nutrition for livestock to reduce methane gas production). Nor is it emphasized
in "Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat
Industry," a report by
Danielle Nierenberg at the Worldwatch Institute. The study's author is herself
a vegan, but she told me, "Food choices are a very personal decision for most
people. We are only now convincing them that this is a tool at their disposal
if they care about the environment."
She has a point: Giving up meat is tough, and arguing people
into it is probably a losing proposition. Even with all the statistics out
there about the dangers of meat, there are fewer vegetarians in the world than
you'd think. A Harris
poll conducted in 2006 for the Vegetarian Resource Group found that only
2.3 percent of American adults 18 or older claim never to eat meat, fish, or
fowl. A larger group, 6.7 percent, say they "never eat meat," but often that means
they only avoid the red kind. Worldwide, local vegetarian societies report high
participation in just a few places - for example, 40 percent in India, 10
percent in Italy, 9 percent in Germany, 8.5. percent in Israel, and 6 percent
in Britain.
So how will we become a vegetarian planet? The numbers
suggest that we won't stop eating meat simply because it's "the right thing to
do." People love it too much. Instead, we'll be forced to stop. By 2025, we
simply won't have the resources to keep up the habit. According to the FAO
report, 33 percent of the world's arable land is devoted to growing crops for
animal feed, and grazing is a major factor in deforestation around the world.
It's also incredibly water-intensive. The average U.S. diet requires twice the
daily amount of water as does an equally nutritious vegetarian diet, reports
the Worldwatch Institute. Meanwhile, there will be more than 8 billion people
on this earth, and two-thirds of the world's population will live in
water-stressed regions.
Sounds like a mess -- and one that doesn't bode well for our cattle
cravings. Meat will disappear -- except as a luxury available to few -- and the
ethical issues will evolve, too. In the way that slavery, once a broad social
norm, later became an unthinkable crime, we can expect to see a similar shift once
meat-eating disappears from our planet. Perhaps, some day, the very idea of
eating animal flesh will seem as remote as the idea of owning humans does now. So
if you're a carnivore, enjoy now -- before the inevitable vegetarian revolution begins.
Jim Motavalli is a
senior writer at E/The
Environmental Magazine and blogs for the Mother Nature Network.
Stephen Von Worley has figured out that while located in these United States of America, one is always within 107 miles of a McDonald's.
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