Meat-Y Reasons for Global Warming

By Michael Alexander

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” --Albert Einstein

Did you know that animal agriculture is the number 1 polluter of our planet and that it wastes much of our natural resources?

Unfortunately, no one wants to talk about this...why?

Because the fact of the matter is that we love our meat, especially here in the U.S. In fact, it is simply un-American not to love meat, hamburgers, hot dogs, and Thanksgiving Turkey. I'm sure there are many cities in the U.S. where being a vegetarian is grounds for being shot. Bush country anyone?

But the facts are the facts.

I too, used to love eating meat. At breakfast with my eggs. At lunch in my sandwiches. And at night, a dinner without meat just wasn’t a meal! Then I heard that each time I ate meat, it lowered my vibration to the vibration of death. With each satisfying chew, the energy that the animal died with was going straight into my system. Whether I was aware of it or not, the suffering the animal I was eating felt when they died now became my suffering. In fact, I was ingesting death every single time I ate meat. Finally, had to confront my own hypocrisy as a carnivore—I was living my life to raise the consciousness of the planet, to encourage life in all of its forms, but enthusiastically ingesting death on a regular basis?

So I stopped cold turkey. I became a vegetarian and eliminated meat from my diet two years ago and have never felt better. I know what you’re thinking: where do I get my protein? From a variety of sources. I still eat plenty of organic eggs and cheese (so I’m far from vegan), unprocessed soy, peanut butter, beans and even greens, all of which are highly nutritional live sources of protein that don’t require the needless slaughter of a helpless animal.

In case you need more incentive, here are some facts that may be worth considering the next time you saddle up to a burger*:

Water Pollution: According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the runoff from factory farms pollutes our rivers and lakes more than all other industries combined. Animals raised for food produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population — 86,000 pounds per second. A typical pig factory farm generates as much raw waste as a city of 50,000 people. Chicken, hog, and cattle excrement have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

Land: Of all agricultural land in the U. S., nearly 80 percent is used to raise animals for food. More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals. Twenty times more land is required to feed a meat-eater than a vegetarian. (A meat-eater requires 3 and ¼ acres of land to feed him/herself per year, whereas vegetarians require only 1/6 of an acre.)

Rainforest: 214,000 acres, an area greater than that of New York City, is destroyed every day by the meat industry. Some of this is so “beef” cattle can graze, while some of it is to grow crops to feed factory farmed animals. More than 2.9 million acres of rainforest were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that feed chickens and other animals in factory farms.

Water: Raising animals for food consumes nearly half the water used in the United States. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A single individual’s carnivorous diet requires a whopping 4,200 gallons of water per day. A vegetarian diet requires just 300 gallons of water per day.

Global Warming: Meat production exacerbates global warming by emitting both carbon dioxide and methane: In “Diet, Energy and Global Warming” (http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pdf ), scientists at the University of Chicago calculate that switching from the average carnivorous American diet to a vegetarian one will cause a 50% greater reduction in climate warming than switching from the average gas-guzzling car to a Prius, thus suggesting that a shift toward a plant-based diet should be at least as high a priority as advocating improved fuel economy.

Animal burps, flatulence, and feces are the largest sources of airborne methane. According to the EPA, methane is 21 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. In “A New Global Warming Strategy” (http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm), Noam Mohr, a physicist graduated from Yale and Penn (and a former lobbyist on global warming with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group), demonstrates that methane from the billions of animals raised on factory farms will be the most significant source of climate change over the next half-century, not cars and power plants.

Energy: Raising animals for food requires more than one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United States. The processes that bring meat to the table (tilling grains, corn, and soy, transporting these to feed factories, transporting the feed to factory farms, operating the factory farms, transporting the animals to slaughter, operating the slaughterhouses, transporting the sliced up animals to processing factories and then onto grocery stores, restaurants, etc.) are wasteful and pollute our environment more than anything else human beings do, including driving automobiles.

Frightening as the thought of global warming can be, the good news is, there’s plenty you and I can do about it. Question is, are you ready to give up some of the things you think you can’t live without to ensure our survival as a species? That’s the same question I ask myself each day. And though some days are better than others, I’m trying my best to do my part.

“If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you can do.” —Sir Paul McCartney

*For more sources on the facts contained in this article, as well as a plethora of info on how to go veg, visit www.goveg.com (click on “The Issues” and then on “The Environment”).
*Special Thanks to Benay Vynerib and Bart Potenza of the amazingly delicious
Candle 79 & Candle Cafe in NYC (http://www.candlecafe.com/) for putting these facts together!

Do Black and Green Go Together?

By Bianca Alexander
An African-American Treehugger Sounds Off

What’s a black girl from the Nation’s Capital (aka: the Chocolate City) care about compact fluorescent light bulbs, reforestation in the Brazilian rainforest, or endangered wolf packs in Colorado? Had you met me ten years ago, I would’ve told you “not a damn thing!” But today, I stand proudly as an advocate for renewable energy, toxin-free personal care products, and organic food for the masses.

How could this unexpected metamorphosis happen?

Growing up, I always loved taking long nature walks with my dad in the vast woods behind our house, running through the sprinkler on a hot summer afternoon, making mud pies after a good rain, blowing dandelion seeds in the wind, and snapping fresh green beans with my mom from my grandfather’s garden. But I never thought about being an “environmentalist”.

Not because environmentalists are bad people. In fact, some of my “best friends” are environmentalists. Just kidding. In truth, the environmentalist movement has accomplished many great feats, from planet-friendly legislation to helping to spur a counter-culture where “gorgeous” and “green” are now synonymous. But as a young teenager, then in college and finally law school, whenever the issue of environmentalism came up, I always had a negative reaction. A reaction I tend to have about all “isms”. Why? In my view, they are all are based on some form or another of separation consciousness, an insidious “us vs. them”, a human-designed zero-sum game that keeps the “good cops” and the “bad cops” on different sides of the railroad tracks. Like racism, sexism, nationalism and classism, isms have the power to segregate people instead of uniting them--even if in theory, the ism happens to be for a justifiably good so-called ‘cause’.

Historically, the environmentalism movement--unlike many more populist movements—has appealed to people who have the luxury of getting beyond just surviving to contemplate the world at large and their relationship to it. Given the past and present struggles of the African-American community—and other segments of the world population that have traditionally been disenfranchised by the institutionalized isms of mainstream culture—it’s no surprise that the environmentalist movement has not been of much interest to people of color. Disturbing, yes, but think--when was the last time you saw or even heard about an all-Black rally for Save the Whales?

There are numerous reasons for this. Perhaps, like me, many people of color grew up hearing or believing that “environmentalists care more about penguins than they do black people”. Or perhaps, as my brother-in-Spirit, Van Jones, has so eloquently articulated, the “green movement” has traditionally not put much effort into enrolling or advocating on behalf of people of color, the uneducated masses, and those who cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods. And for this reason, it has yet to reach a tipping point within the mainstream population.

The same is true for all movements designed to benefit just a singular group of people: They fail to speak to and for everyone. Personally, I never felt included or inspired by the green movement. I always felt like I had to choose between caring about the fate of “my people” and caring about the fate of “the planet.” Now there’s separation consciousness at its finest.

And then I met my husband, Michael. He was the perfect mate: tall, dark and handsome with an athletic build, a brilliant personality and a sharp mind. And best of all, he shared my values. But he was white, from San Francisco, and…scariest of all…a passionate environmentalist.

Not soon after our wedding, he encouraged me to exchange my toxic Tide detergent for eco-friendly Seventh Generation. “Why?” I asked? “Because each cup of chemical-laden detergent you use kills one cubic foot of phytoplankton” he would answer. But why should I, a sister who prided herself on having the freshest smelling clothes on the block, care about a marine organism I couldn’t even see? Because, he said “the phytoplankton in the ocean produce at least 50% of the world’s oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere”. Wow, impressive. Changing my laundry detergent could minimize global warming! I was starting to believe. As an African-American with a life-long passion for justice, caring about planetary justice seemed like the right thing to do—and best of all, it was an excuse to go shopping!

After that came other green cleaning products, organic food, toxin-free skin care, vegetarianism, carbon-offset credits, CFL light bulbs, sustainable clothing, eco-vacations, saving endangered species, lots of Dave Matthews, and of course, treehugging. My new life as an African-American treehugger meant I got to choose from the best, or worst, of both worlds: Do I eat fried chicken or fried tofu? Listen to Jay-Z or Bono? Become a member of the NAACP or the Sierra Club? Jesse Jackson, or Al Gore?

As for choosing between saving “my people” and saving “my planet”, I choose both. The truth is, as a complex human being, neither extreme fully embodies my tastes, passions or spiritual aspirations. And with the onslaught of global warming, the larger choice for all human beings is whether we will choose to care more about survival than we do separation. After all, if African-Americans are empowered and world poverty is ended, but the planet’s burned up, would my ancestors call that Freedom? Alternatively, if the environmental status quo fails to understand that people of color and the disenfranchised are a critical component of long-term sustainability in the truest sense, who wins? Until we begin to truly work together as a one world community for the good of mother earth—who is crying out desperately for help in a myriad of ways--we are doomed as a human race to reap the consequences of a zero-sum game where everyone loses whether they’re black, white, or green.

As an African-American treehugger, I’ve still got a ways to go. After all, I could already be driving a hybrid car as opposed to shopping for “the right one”. I might have figured out a way to compost in an apartment complex. I might be living in a custom LEED-certified green home. Better yet, I might already be living off-the-grid altogether on a yurt in the wilderness. Had I been enrolled earlier in the “green movement”, perhaps I’d be further along. But for now, it’s one step at a time. I try to consume consciously. I walk 7 days a week. I try to support local businesses. I reduce, I reuse, and I recycle. And most of all, I work on being the change that I want to see. If they could see me now, I think my ancestors would be proud.

The New Cool

by Bianca Alexander

Living in the hot age, doing your part to Step it Up
to prevent global warming doesn’t mean you have to give up living the good life. From the latest epicurean treats to fancy runway threads turned street smart, The New Cool will give you the heads up on the latest trends in Conscious Living.

Think solar and wind power, not coal. Think glaciers, not Tsunamis. Slow food vs. fast food. And think Levi’s Eco-Couture boot cut jeans as an eco-friendly alternative to Juicy Couture. Think gorgeous and green. In other words, think of cool as the new hot. Hot is out, cool is in. Try some of Bi’s favorite things and make living in the hot age, uber-cool.


Bi’s Cool List

HOT
1. Gas-Guzzling Hum-V
2. Classic Chanel
3. Pinot Noir
4. EGO
5. Chai Latte
6. Ostrich Skin
7. Hardwood Floors
8. The Red Carpet
9. Fast Food
10. Secret Deodorant
(full of toxins)

COOL
1. The Tesla Electric Sports Car
(in Candy Apple Red, of course)
2. Linda Loudermilk Eco-Couture
3. Organic Cabernet
4. SPIRIT
5. Green Tea Soy Latte
6. Faux Snakeskin
7. Bamboo Floors
8. The Green Carpet
9. Slow Food
10. Benedetta Organic Deodorant
(with essential oils)