|
Does this concern you? It should. According to the UN FAO, animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation in the world. That’s right. The breeding and raising of animals for food takes-up more land on the planet than any other human activity. In fact, it currently occupies a staggering 45% of the Earth’s entire land surface!* Keep in mind, it’s not just all the land needed for animals themselves. It’s also the immense expanses of land needed to grow all of the “feedcrops” needed to support the relentless cycle of breeding into existence, fattening-up and slaughtering billions upon billions of “livestock” animals. And every day that passes, as the demand for animal foods grows, more and more sensitive forests are leveled for farmlands to produce more animal foods. This is an unsustainable tragedy, to put it mildly. Trees are an important carbon dioxide sink – they sequester CO2 out of our atmosphere and produce oxygen. Moreover, forests are the home for wild animals. So, as we lose forests, we are losing the species that live in them as well. In fact, we are losing species at such an alarming rate that scientists have labeled our time as the Sixth Mass Extinction in Earth’s biological history. We are now witnessing a loss of biodiversity not seen since the dinosaurs disappeared ~65 millions years ago. For all these reasons and more, going vegan happens to be one of the most (if not the most) impactful action you can take to reduce your impact on the planet. Indeed, it will be near impossible to adequately and timely address these existential problems without an urgent mass global shift away from animal foods. Please think about your responsibility to the environment, the forests we are losing and the animals in them. Please also consider the unnecessary suffering and death imposed on the billions of animals we breed into existence and exploit for products no one needs. Please go vegan. It’s easy, healthy, and something we can all do starting with our very next meal. *This 45% estimate is from the pro-meat International Livestock Research Institute, by the way. |