Eating Less Meat to Cut CO2 Emissions

[Karmadillo]

http://globalwarmingisreal.com/2011/03/02/eating-less-meat-to-cut-co2-emissions/

Eating Less Meat to Cut CO2 Emissions
By GlobalWarmingisReal .Guest Post by Alexis Bonari

According to the United Nations, livestock accounts for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This includes the only seemingly insignificant methane expulsion from the front and back ends of cows, the raising and transportation of grains to feed them, and clearing of land for grazing. In fact, it takes 7 kg of feed to produce just 1 kg of beef, 4 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of pork, and 2 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of chicken as shown in this graphic:



The Price of Meat

What happens to the feed after it’s been, well, fed? In America—the land of CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, the bane of green and animal activists—livestock produces around 900 million tons of waste every year. That’s 3 tons of manure per American, the equivalent of 2 Toyota Priuses.

The logic would be to turn this waste into fertilizer. The antibiotics, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers used in producing the grain and the meat that together produced the waste is so toxic, however, that farmers don’t want it. Thus, nearby every CAFO is a lagoon of toxic waste, a biological experiment producing deformed frogs and plant life, and contributing to air, water, and ground pollution.

Should every American be held accountable for said tonnage of waste? They kind of are, what with 34% of adults aged 20 and over being obese, and another 34% being overweight but not obese. Insurance premiums are going up nationwide to pay for all the obesity and heart disease-related surgeries. The earth isn’t getting any slack either, though. All that cow-burped methane has to go somewhere. Oh, right—it hurts the ozone and is raising our sea levels.

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