Experiment in Vegetarianism Part 1
Did you know that when you eat beans rather than beef you use 1/27 the amount of fossil fuel to produce the equivalent nutritional/caloric value? Here is the story folks - eating as much factory farmed meat as we do in the United States is environmental suicide. Here are a couple points from earthsave.org:
- Cattle produce one fifth of the methane emissions in the world (were talking cow farts, has anyone ever driven through Greeley Colorado?) Did I mention, with regards to global warming, methane is 24 times more potent as the carbon dioxide that we are familiar with?
- We loose acre after acre of rain forest each day all in the name of the almighty burger.
- Over two thirds of the land (private and public) in the mountain states, my dearest Colorado included, are used for grazing. This poorly managed grazing has a disastrous effect on our natural resources from irrigation concerns to erosion.
- 284 gallons of oil are burned up in the production of one head of cattle.
- By conservative estimates 2,500 gallons of water goes into the production of one pound of beef.
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If you are a meat eating fellow like myself you are probably feeling more than a little bit guilty at this point. Good. We should feel guilty; the consumption of factory/farm raised beef is a leading contributor, if not the leading contributor, in the collapse of the environment.
Where does that leave us, should we just give up meat all together? Maybe”¦ as Bryan had alluded to earlier, I’ve begun what I will call an experiment in vegetarianism. Over the coming days I will provide a couple posts including my journal and thoughts on my time spent as a vegetarian moving from an omnivore with carnivores tendencies. Let the experiment begi