While many Americans are wasting valuable time oggling the news for the latest update on Tiger’s sex life, our atmosphere is filling up with greenhouse gases that may make human civilization unsustainable in the not too distant future.
By now, you’ve probably heard about CO2. Carbon Dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that everyone is talking about. Bill McKibben has done a great job getting the word out about CO2 levels with his group 350.org
There are other gases that create even more damage than CO2, and what you eat on a daily basis creates them.
Methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. The largest source of methane is industrial animal agriculture. Here’s how it works. Cows eat corn and grain which results in belches and blasts out the other end loaded with methane gas. What we need to do: eat less animals.
Nitrous Oxide also known as laughing gas in the dental office, is no laughing matter. A molecule of nitrous oxide traps heat about 200 times more effectively than a carbon dioxide molecule. It’s produced when nitrogen containing fertilizers are applied in conventional agriculture. What we need to do: support organic and sustainable agriculture.
Clearly what we eat and how we grow it can have a big impact on climate change. Research by Rodale Institute demonstrates that we could offset 25% of our annual emissions if we converted existing farmland to organic methods. We’d also save more water, induce less erosion and conserve more resources than conventional farming does.
The bottom line: If you care about our future, focus on what’s on the end of your fork instead of Tiger’s escapades. Our children and grandchildren will thank you for it one day.
Good points Dr.Susan Rubin! Just one thing that has been omitted in this article, which I find of very important information too, is, that wows indeed experience many problems by receiving feed that is corn/animal based and additionally also they get pumped with antibiotics and growth hormones, forced to be in confined lots, which are crammed full with other companions of the same, and all forced to stay there on the same lot, kneedeep in their own excrements. Their gastric intestinal system is by all the above listed being compromised in such a way to provoke the massive “methane clouds”. No wonder I would say. I indeed do abstain from consuming any meat that comes from such a big factory farm.
It has been scientifically proven, that there is a significant difference in how the cows are being raised and on what they are being feed and what medicines they are being administered. If they are raised on small family farms, exclusively grass fed and pastured, rotating from one meadow to the other, as it was used also in past times, gas emissions are by far less, not to forget that in this way their meat is also healthy and fit for consumption. I do agree that one ought not to indulge in red meat or meat in general each and every day. Cutting back from daily meat consumption is sound advice in any case, then moderation and balance is key in everything.
Thank you for the great read!