The animal(dairy and meat) based diet is emerging as the most dangerous contributor to climate change,one of the reasons being that the methane is a much more damaging gas than CO2. Methane affects climate change 23 times faster than CO2 and the Nitrous Oxide,which is is emitted from the mountains of excrement found on factory farms, is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
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The United Nations Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently released a 400-page document called Livestock’s Long Shadow. This scientific study revealed that animal agriculture causes more greenhouse gas emissions then all the world’s transportation combined! The culprits are a combination of methane from the cows, deforestation of the rainforest for grazing land, and the huge waste of fossil fuels from the factory farm to the slaughterhouse. It takes 8 times as much fossil fuel to produce animal protein as it takes to produce plant protein!
The United Nations Report is unequivocal in its Executive Summary, it states:
“The livestock sector emerges as 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 and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency. Major reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost.”


Posted by: Karin Lease | June 24, 2007 at 10:50 AM