Should you become a Vegetarian?

If one wants to save the earth, become a veg...
gulf-times august 13 page 23

Global conflicts and the end of meat
Bolt of lightning
By Ingrid E Newkirk
MCT
People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA)
has long said that nonviolence
begins with what we eat, and
an alarming new study shows that
we have no time to waste in ditching
chicken kebabs and steak sandwiches
and choosing humane veggie burgers
and falafel instead. According to a
team of University of California–
Berkeley researchers, unless we get
our act together and take steps to
mitigate climate change, violence will
increase substantially, along with the
increasing temperatures.
They predict that between now and
2050, because of higher temperatures
and extreme weather patterns,
interpersonal violence (murder, rape
and domestic abuse) will increase
between 8% and 16%. War and civil
unrest could increase by more than
50%.
The most eff ective way to fi ght
climate change is with diet change -
by going vegan.
The UN reports that the meat
industry is “one of the top two or
three most signifi cant contributors
to the most serious environmental
problems, at every scale from local to
global”, including land degradation, air
pollution, water pollution, water use
and loss of biodiversity.
Carbon dioxide, methane and
nitrous oxide together cause the vast
majority of global warming - and
raising animals for food is one of the
largest sources of carbon dioxide and
the largest source of both methane and
nitrous-oxide emissions.
And when you add up all the
energy-intensive stages of producing
enormous amounts of grain to feed
to farmed animals, plus killing
and processing the animals and
transporting and storing their fl esh,
it’s easy to see why producing one
calorie of animal protein requires more
than 11 times as much fossil fuel as
producing one calorie of plant protein.
The meat industry wastes a
tremendous amount of water at a
time when wars fought over water
are no longer seen as a movie plot
but a looming threat. PETA tours
the country with a portable outdoor
shower to remind everyone who
stops to look at it that producing just
a single pound of meat requires the
same amount of water as six months’
worth of showers. That’s because the
crops that are fed to farmed animals
have to be irrigated, the animals have
to be given water, and fi lthy factory
farms and slaughterhouses have to be
hosed down regularly.
So indirectly, the average vegan
consumes nearly 600 gallons of water
less per day than the average meateater.
No wonder the UN Environment
Programme says that we need “a
substantial worldwide diet change,
away from animal products”.
The heatwaves, intense storms,
droughts, rising sea levels, crop
damage and other problems caused
by climate change are also draining
billions of dollars from the world
economy.
British economist Sir Nicholas
Stern predicts that if we do not reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions, it will take
less than 40 years for climate change
to cause up to a 20% drop in the
world’s gross domestic product. He
fears that it could be “market failure
on the greatest scale the world has
seen”.
For those who simply can’t - or,
rather, won’t - stop eating flesh
foods, we are now one giant step
closer to laboratory-grown meat that
will end massive animal suffering,
make the food supply safer and
reverse environmental damage. On
August 5, history was made with the
first-ever taste test of an in vitro
hamburger.
Dr Mark Post, who developed the
burger, believes that other “test-tube”
meat products could be available
commercially in as little as 10 years.
PETA predicts that it will be sooner
than that, as scientists share their
fi ndings and commercial interests
fund the work.
But why wait? There are already
so many delicious vegan products on
the market that taste like chicken,
beef, milk and cheese - with more
on the way - that many people are
making the switch now. To avert
environmental disaster and the global
confl icts that will accompany it, we
should all go vegan today.