|
Care for the Earth by encouraging vegetarianism
To truly be green you can not be a meat eater. Being GREEN means being compassionate, caring and protecting the Earth and her inhabitants. A.C. Bhaktivadanta Swami Prabhupada encourages SIMPLE living HIGH thinking. This means only using what is absolutely necessary for our basic maintenance and developing spirituality, God consciousness and compassion for all living things. It’s our responsibility, to Mother Earth, to seriously try and develop this Simple Living and High Thinking lifestyle.
According to the United Nations report "Livestock's Long Shadow", the meat industry is "one of the ...most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."
The Livestock Industry’s Contribution to Environmental Decay
Air Pollution & Releasing Greenhouse Gases: To produce one calorie of animal protein requires 11x the fossil fuels used for one calorie of plant protein. Percentage of TOTAL global emissions: Carbon dioxide18% or 7.8 billion tons of per year which is 40% more than all the worlds cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships combined. Anthropogenic methane 37%, Anthropogenic nitrous oxide 65% and almost 2/3 of Anthropogenic ammonia.
Water Use & Pollution: 240 trillion gallons per year or 7.5 mil gl per second. Animal agriculture is a leading case of water pollution. The UN’s report says "The livestock sector is... the largest sectoral source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, 'dead' zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many others.” In the USA this is responsible for 55% of the erosion causing sedimentation, 1/3 of the nutrient pollutants nitrogen and phosphorous, 1/3 of the pesticides pollutants and 1/2 the antibiotics pollutants in our water.
Land Destruction: Livestock production uses 10 billion acres or 30% of the planets land surface. Since 1970, 90% of Amazon deforestation is form the Livestock industry. Currently 5 million acres or 70% of previous forest is occupied by pastures and feed crops. Soil erosion is 40 billion tons per year.
Wasting Food: 836 million tons of grain and corn and 240 million tons of soy per year. That's more than enough to adequately feed the worlds 1.4 billion people living in dire poverty.
Excrement Waste: 16.6 billion tons per year or million pounds per second, 60 times what the world's human population produces.
Vegetarianism is especially recommended for those who want to follow a truly spiritual lifestyle. The information, recipes and website links in this section are provided to help anyone begin or to increase their ability to be a vegetarian. It also shows that being a vegetarian is not as difficult as some people think, at least if you are new to the idea. There are many of us who have been vegetarian for decades, and millions of others who have been lifelong vegetarians. Such a diet, when properly balanced, is quite healthy and much better for our bodies and environment. The links provided in this section can lead you to the information that will explain that. There are also cookbooks available here, and numerous other recipes and cookbooks that are linked from other websites that you can download or print for immediate use so that you can begin to change your diet right away, or increase the vegetarian recipes that you may already have.
|
Go Veg Go Green 
