Go Veggie and Reduce Global Warming

·   It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

·   Half the rainforests in the world have been destroyed to clear ground to graze cattle to make beef burgers. The burning of the forests contributes 20% of all green-house gases. Roughly 1,000 species a year become extinct because of the destruction of the rainforests.

·   The billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows who are crammed into factory farms each year in the U.S. produce enormous amounts of methane, both in their digestive processes and from the feces that they excrete. Scientists report that every molecule of methane is more than 20 times as effective as carbon dioxide is at trapping heat in our atmosphere.⁴⁵ Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency show that animal agriculture is the single largest cause of methane emissions in the U.S.⁴⁶ Raising animals for food is causing global warming. GoVeg.com (⁴⁵ “Global Warming: Methane,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 8 Mar. 2006. ⁴⁶ “Sources and Emissions: Methane,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2 Jun. 2006.)

·   According to University of Chicago researchers, adopting a vegan diet makes a bigger impact in reducing global warming than does switching to hybrid car does.

·   Raising animals for food, a 2006 United Nations report said, is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale ….” (Ed Ayres, "Will We Still Eat Meat?" Time, 8 Nov. 1999.)  

·   In the U.S., 70 percent of all grains, 80 percent of all agricultural land, half of all water resources, and one-third of all fossil fuels are used to raise animals for food. GoVeg.com